Issac Hayes

What's WRONG? At CLUB DEAD, the bell tolls for Issac Hayes, a/k/a/ South Park's Chef a/k/a Soul Music's Hot Buttered Icon, dying of an apparent stroke after a session on the treadmill. How could one man have so many cool points? Easy. That cat Issac is a bad motherSHUT YOUR MOUTH

Issac Hayes. His definitive LP also bore one of his nicknames, Hot Buttered Soul. You could almost play a game of free association with his name. Memphis, Stax, Shaft, Hot Buttered Soul, chains(no not 'bling.' Doesn't sound cool enough.) the bald head, the knowing smile, and the voice. It was the voice, and the attitude, that introduced the South Park generation to Issac Hayes. And to those who know only Chef, there's a world of (as Chef might say) hot pulsating music ready to envelop you.

Barry White was the only other person considered, but in the end, Issac Hayes was the perfect choice to be Chef. His musical gift, and his unbelievably complex verbal skills (in addition to his singing talent, he had become a popular radio d.j. in New York City in recent years) gave him the right attitude for the frienly ladle-wielding keeper of the lunchroom at South Park Elementary (I mean come on...we all know Chef really ran the school.)

Thousands will be eulogizing Chef. I'm going to talk about Issac. And to do that, I'm going to talk about Soul. Soul is more than an antiquated term for African-American R&B songs. Soul was an essential element to surviving the sixties... no exaggeration intended. As riots erupted and city after city burned during the long, tense summers, soul became code for survival. As Americans, we became keely aware that just having a good heart and following along with "the way things are" wasn't going to cut it any more.

Soul came to sybolize the new birth of emancipation. To have soul was to have understanding, and empathy for the struggle which could no longer inch along at the pace of the status quo. To be known as having soul was to be venerated as part the new America. To be a Soul Brother or Soul Sister meant that you shared trust, accceptance, and the sober truth that our country was thrashing and kicking as it was finally being held accountable to our daring idea that everone is created equal.

It was spirtual protection, sometimes literal protection... and you damn well better take note of the new order. Dotted across the landscape that summer, I saw many businesses and homes with the words "Soul Brother" proudly displayed, Sometimes it was desperately displayed, as if to say "I sympathize. Please don't burn my store."

These were serious days, and a young boy trying to understand why there was such anger, and such revolution in the wind, looked for answers. My best friend's mother worked at the neighborhood Kroger, and she had been given the honor/task of painting "Soul Brother" over the store's boarded up windows, which were covered for fear they'd be broken. I guess they were just covering any eventuality.

So, "soul" was not a concept to be idly tossed around. It was a badge, a mantra, a statement of who we were, what we stood for, and (most important) what we would no longer stand for. The questions became unavoidable. Like most of my generation, I came to ask them all. I would ask anyone who would answer, or anyone who would even listen. I would ask them at a young age...maybe too young to properly grasp the depth of the feelings. The answers to those questions told me a lot about who I was, who we were as the flower power generation, and where we stood as Americans.

In a nutshell, we found the answers. We survived, and we embraced the changes. And thank God we did.

Issac Hayes was one of those who led the way. As with so many social changes, the culture molded to the message of the entertainers. Soul was cool; soul was right, No one was cooler or righter than Issac Hayes.

We could still be startled though. When Shaft was released in July 1971, it captivated the nation. Some people noticed Richard Roundtree in the title role of a detective hired to find a mobster's daughter. Some others worried about the violence, and the term "blaxpliotation" would soon come into being.

But everyone was buzzing about the song. We'd not heard anything like it before. That three-note bass line, dropping a momentary octave after each triplet, the brass adding layer upon layer of stacotta riffs, climaxing with a question unlike any heard on the radio before:

"Who's the black private dick who's a sex machine to all the chicks?"

"Shaft" came the response. And in 1971, most of us couldn't get away with saying "..they say this cat Shaft is a bad mother(SHUT YOUR MOUTH)." Issac Hayes could. And he kept producing music unlike anyone else's. Wonder what he was listening to on that treadmill, seconds before his time ran out.

I'll bet it had soul. Hell, if Issac Hayes was around it, it had soul.

On the other hand, screw him; he's dead. Let's go look for crocodiles.

StevenK