Isaac Hayes: Appreciating "Black Moses"
People who only associate Isaac Hayes with Chef, the smooth-talking, sweet-love-making, roly-poly cafeteria cook from South Park, may not understand that the Memphis songwriter, producer, musician and performer who came to fame in the 1970s was the very embodiment of the once-popular phrase "black is beautiful."Hayes was monumental. With his instantly recognizable bald head, dark beard and glasses and masculine physique, he appeared as resplendent and exotic as a genie escaped from a bottle. But this son of Tennessee sharecroppers never really "escaped." Like another famous and flamboyant Memphis resident, Elvis Presley, he never cut himself off from his Southern home base or forgot his roots in rural poverty. Elvis, of course, was the King. Hayes was known as "Black Moses." With its origin in the book of Exodus, the name Moses suggested Hayes was a liberator as well as an entertainer — a very glamorous liberator. (If Hayes had come across a golden calf, he probably would have ...
