as important as anyone else of the 1960's

It comes as no shock to anyone that I've read every book about the 1960's. As a decade for rock'n'roll, jazz, black pop, white pop, Latin music, Jamaican music, and anything else, it was big.

The '60s Mt Rushmore that always goes up is woefully incomplete. Gordy, Spector, the Beatles, Wilson, maybe Bacharach. But James Brown, Owen Bradley,and Curtis Mayfield were at least as important.

Then there's the dreadfully undersung Issac Hayes.

As a piano, organ, and vibes player, he was one of the defining rhythm section players at Stax, the other most important rhythm'n'blues label of the sixties. As a songwriter, he wrote or co-wrote some of the label's most enduring hits, including "Soul man" and "Hold On, I'm Coming".

In 1969, he cut the amazing Hot Buttered Soul, kind of the blueprint for slow, get-you-laid jams for pretty much all male soul singers to follow. Then, in 1971, he scored the film Shaft. "Theme From Shaft" quickly set the bar for "blaxploitation" music, and became the influential bit of guitar-based film music since Peter Gunn. Through the 70's, Issac Hayes continued to write film music and even appear in some films. Also, he continued to make great records. Sadly, Stax's heavily-leveraged deals meant that Hayes lost his royalty claims, so he was nowhere near as rich as he should have been.

By the 90's, he took the role of Chef on South Park. I saw him at the Hollywood Bowl in about 2002, and he was astoundingly great. With the exception of Merle Haggard, I've never seen his equal for commanding a band, a stage, and an audience with such immutable and joyous gravity.

So much of the sixties and seventies would be impossible to explain without Issac Hayes' participation. He's as huge as anybody who gets the props.

Spend some youtube time getting to know the music of Issac Hayes. As great as they come.