Mark Ribowsky - Black Moses: The Hot-Buttered Life and Soul of Isaac Hayes

Other Books by
Mark Ribowsky

Praise for The Big Life of Little Richard

We had the great pleasure of performing with Little Richard. He opened the door for Elvis Presley, James Brown, Chuck Berry, and all the greats that came thereafter. This is a must-read for music lovers.

Dr. Otis Williams , founding member of The Temptations

Little Richard kicked open the doors to a new world of wonder for everyone from Dylan to Hendrix to Led Zeppelin to Princeto everything we now take for granted when we think of the most extraordinary music of the late 20th century. Mark Ribowsky tells the whole tutti-frutti story in a-wop-bop-a-loo-bop style.

Mick Wall , bestselling author of When Giants Walked the Earth: A Biography of Led Zeppelin

Ribowsky rips it up with raucous prose in this affectionate biography of Little Richard.... Richard, Ribowsky astutely writes, combined gospel with the grittiness of blues and then amped it up with his fiery piano playing and singing. This entertaining, fast-paced biography will thrill fans of Little Richard and early rock and roll.

Publishers Weekly

Ribowsky cuts through the gossip and mythologizing and delivers a welcome clear-eyed assessment of the larger-than-life character who boasted he was King of the Bluesand the Queen, too!

Goldmine Magazine

Praise for Dreams to Remember: Otis Redding, Stax Records, and the Transformation of Southern Soul

Subtly passionate What Mark Ribowsky has done here is to describe someone who was, not divine, but as godlike as a human can be.

Wall Street Journal

A fascinating tale of the artist and his musical era.

Washington Post

Evokes the fire of Redding and his Memphis label, Stax Records, the cradle of Southern soul. Ribowsky tells the story with nonstop energy, while always probing for the larger social and musical pictures. He vividly evokes localesas well as the Stax sound and Reddings arthis insightfulness and storytelling gift trump all.

New York Times Book Review

Ribowsky provides colorful descriptions of Macons cultural history, including how Redding drew considerable inspiration from its other famous son, Little Richard. Ribowskya veteran chronicler of musical and athletic heroesalso combines thorough descriptions of Reddings songs, and global audiences growing appreciation for soul, with the social changes of the 1960s.

Chicago Tribune

Praise for Signed, Sealed, Delivered: The Soulful Journey of Stevie Wonder

Ribowksys exploration of Wonders music is first-rate.

Publishers Weekly

A fluid and lively read, critical and celebratory.

Time Out

Praise for The Supremes: A Saga of Motown Dreams, Success and Betrayal

A powerful biography.

Midwest Book Review

A dishy, insider look at Berry Gordys making of the Supremes. Ribowsky nicely intersperses some hindsight reflections by the main players. In this engaging, vivacious account, Ribowksy energetically and thoroughly underscores the Supremes significance as one of the first crossover successes.

Publishers Weekly

[Ribowsky] unearths the incredible, real-life drama of Motowns biggest female starsAn extensively researched history of one of the most successful female musical groups of all time.

African American Family Magazine

A narrative so vivid that you would believe [Ribowsky] was there to witness it firsthand. Ribowsky succeeds in constructing a definitive account of the group from its humble and seedy origins to its anticlimactic demise.

Elmore Magazine

Praise for Hank: The Short Life and Long Country Road of Hank Williams

A timely biographyRibowsky has taken on a truly harrowing life[and] spends a significant amount of time on the music.

New York Times Book Review

A compassionate yet clear-eyed study of the iconic country star. Its to [Ribowskys] credit that he gets as close to Williams as any writer could.

Washington Post

A new biography that exhumes the strange case of the poet and the peckerwood[and] offers a feast of juicy anecdotes and sharp analysis that should satisfy devotees and attract newcomers to the fold.

Wall Street Journal

A PERMUTED PRESS BOOK

Black Moses:

The Hot-Buttered Life and Soul of Issac Hayes

2022 by Mark Ribowsky

All Rights Reserved

ISBN: 978-1-64293-886-9

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-64293-887-6

Cover art by Tiffani Shea

Cover photo by Anthony Barboza/Getty Images

Interior design and composition by Greg Johnson, Textbook Perfect

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

Permuted Press, LLC

New York Nashville

permutedpress.com

Published in the United States of America

Contents

I love women. Im a romantic. A natural romantic. And Im very honest with my music. It shows vulnerability, a lot of sensitivity, and thats what women like. They like to see a man show his vulnerabilities. And they like to be seduced. I call it eargasms. Guys would come up to me with his wife and three kids, and hed point to the kids and say to me, Mr. Hayes, this is all your fault. Guys would say, Hey, I aint got to do nothin to get a woman, all I gotta do is put you on the stereo. Listen, James [Brown] may have been the Godfather of Soul, but I was really the godfather of the country.

Isaac Hayes , 1973

T his work came to mind and to life as the reaction to a personal bugaboothe amnesia within the post-millennial generation about where its music came from, misplacing the beating heart that unleashed soul music, and transporting it to the feverish tandem rise of modern hip-hop and rap. Authenticity aside, to those of us who were young when it all began, current soul is the type of interchangeable, disposable idiom that creates a new king of the realm seemingly each week. To be sure, back when soul was new and fresh, it seemed timeless. It was a given that the lions who roared the loudest could last as long as their talent and cachet carried them. And none seemed to be more leonine than Isaac Hayes, the guy who put the words soul man into the cultural lexicon five-and-a-half decades ago and had the stonesand the earned statusto cast himself as Black Moses. Hayes grabbed soul by the heart and below, putting into it all the bold elements that would factor into rap and hip hop yet never seemed to reach too high. Wherever he reached was just right.

As a chronicler of pop culture figures, including the incomparable Otis Redding, at whose 1965 session Hayes made his entry as a Stax Records fill-in piano player, the chronicle of Black Moses in his time took a while for me to get to. It shouldnt have. But Hayes in his post-Moses days was something of a lost soul man. As if with an audible sigh, in 2019, Vanderbilt professor Emily Lordi authored an article in the New Yorker , How Isaac Hayes Changed Soul Music, noting that Hayes legacy remains elusive. Even now, over a decade after the singers death, there is still no biography written of him. Younger fans might remember him chiefly as the voice of Chef on South Park , while older ones might picture Hayes in his prime as the voice of the hypermasculine Shaft , or the sultry Casanova who seduced fans with songs about heartache and fathered fourteen children [actually eleven, four outside of marriage]. As the professor acknowledged, There was more to Hayes than humor and sex.

Hayes, who was a professor only of the art of the heart of soul, once self-defined: I had a renegade mentality. I always dared to go where other people said: You cant go there. But at one [point] I looked around and all I was hearing was me, and people trying to be me. And I started to worry about it. A less direct, but just as significant hominy of his went: If you enjoy the fragrance of a rose, you must accept the thorns which it bears.