Isaac Hayes (August 20, 1942 - August 10, 2008) – Disco Connection (1975)

This super funky instrumental jam was the title track to his eighth studio album, written, arranged, and produced by Hayes.

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Before Isaac Hayes became a household name as the composer of the soundtrack to Shaft and an iconic solo artist, he helped shape the sound of Memphis-based Stax Records as a staff songwriter, session musician, and producer.

Born and raised in Tennessee, Hayes started singing in church when he was five and taught himself to play several instruments including the piano, saxophone, and flute.

He began working for Stax Records as a session musician in the early sixties. Along with his songwriter partner David Porter, he co-wrote the classics “Soul Man” and “Hold On I’m Coming” for Sam & Dave, and co-produced most of the label’s material along with Porter and Booker T. & the M.G.’s.

After his 1968 debut solo album Presenting Isaac Hayes flopped, he was prepared to remain a songwriter and producer for other acts. But when Stax lost its back catalog after severing ties with Atlantic Records in May, 1968, Hayes was asked to record another solo album and given complete creative control.

The result was his landmark Hot Buttered Soul LP, released in 1969 and recorded with the Bar-Kays. Hayes only co-wrote one song on the album, its masterpiece “Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic.” Overshadowed by the success of his epic cover of Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “Walk On By” (a #13 R&B and #30 hit on the Billboard Hot 100), it was nonetheless a funk bomb for the ages.

Flexing his acting talent, he both starred in and composed the double LP soundtrack to the 1974 Blaxploitation film Truck Turner, which also starred Yaphet Kotto. It included funky jams like “Breakthrough” and the beautiful instrumental “We Need Each Other Girl.”

The following year, for the 1975 LP Disco Connection, credited to his backing band the Isaac Hayes Movement, Hayes wrote, arranged and produced the ultra-funky title track.

The album went to #85 on the Hot 100. Members of the Isaac Hayes Movement orchestra included Charles Pitts and Michael Toles on guitar, Errol Thomas on bass, Lester Snell and Sidney Kirk on keyboards, Willie Hall and Willie Coles on drums and tambourine, Jimmy Lee Thompson on congas, and the Memphis Strings. A promo video was filmed featuring Hayes conducting the band as they recorded it.

Remembering the legend today on the fifteenth anniversary of his passing, gone too soon at age 65.

#soul #funk #disco #IsaacHayes