The great funk/soul artist Isaac Hayes (aka "Black Moses") passed away today; unglamourously falling victim to a treadmill.
According to WashingtonPost.com, "A spokesman for the Shelby County, Tenn., sheriff's office, said that Mr. Hayes's wife, 2-year-old-son and a cousin returned from the grocery store shortly after noon [on Sunday] and found Mr. Hayes lying beside a still-running treadmill in a downstairs bedroom."
Isaac Hayes' story was full of ultimate-highs and rock-bottom-lows. He was raised by his desperately poor sharecropper grandparents, picking cotton near Memphis in the 1940's. He became a father in his late teens (and eventually had three failed marriages). But he developed a love for music and worked hard to rise to the top of his game in 1971, when he wrote the soundtrack for Shaft. The Shaft soundtrack stayed on the pop charts for 60 weeks, and won him an Oscar and two Grammys! However, 3 short years later, the IRS came knocking and he declared bankruptcy as the government auctioned his entire estate to collect his debt. In 1997 he re-emerged as a cultural icon voicing the character of Chef on South Park; he angrily left the show almost a decade later after a well known episode mocking Scientology (which deeply offended him as a follower of the religion).
To the many faces of Isaac Hayes... "Can ya dig it?"
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