Presenting Isaac Hayes

Ike began to warm to the subject of Stax's past glories. "Sam and Dave and Otis," he let out a low whistle. "Dynamite sessions. Oh, man," he said longingly.

Ike's first job at Stax was working as a keyboard sideman on The Great Otis Redding Sings Soul Ballads, and the association continued until Otis' death. "This cat would go behind a mike and compose as we went," Ike remembered. "We'd get a groove on, rhythm section and horns too, and he'd stand there and the lyrics and melody would pop outa his mouth.

"And when David Porter and I started writing songs for Sam and Dave, those sessions were spontaneous too, most of 'em. Like someone'd say, 'OK, next week Sam and Dave is comin' in.'

"'Oh yeah?' we'd say, 'we gonna get some tunes, we don't have no songs!'

"OK, they're there for a week, right? First two days we just had them cats in the studio and they sit down in a room and we write. We can write better for the artist when the artist is present. But we also can reach back and relate to experiences which we can write about. So we'd say, 'That's a hip title, man — write it down!' We'd write it down and then we'd get in there and start actually writing the songs. We'd write maybe two songs one night and two songs the next night. Third day we go in the studio, and while we're writing, they're learning it. Dave teach it to them while I go teach the band the arrangement and then we just put it all together. And it was live, horns and everything in the studio at the same time."

Writing for Sam and Dave, Ike drew heavily on his feeling for gospel, a feeling he had picked up in his village church where he sang with his sister as a child, as well as in the Morning Stars, the group he joined when his family later moved to Memphis. But most of his musicianship came from outside the church. As a teenager, he often went into the country to do the backbreaking field work of chopping cotton. "One of these places I chopped cotton, I got with this blues band — Calvin Valentine and the Swing Kings, or something like that. At that time I was playing saxophone. We'd leave Memphis every Friday and stay the weekend in Arkansas. We played store porches, man, with people dancin' around, eatin' fish sandwiches, drinkin' wine.

"And we played out on these plantations where people would come in from the fields on the weekend and they would ball. You had a big barrel of corn liquor, moonshine, there with a dip, you know; and crap tables in all these places, man. I slept on crap tables sometimes. Some of these places, a cat get shot, man, they just drag him off. Owner says, 'Keep playing!' and you look up and see the ceiling comin' down from the blast of a double barrel." All this for eight bucks a weekend.

"We played a raw country blues that a lot of these record companies went out into these rural areas to get. Well, I know exactly where to put my hands on all these cats. I mean, unheard-of cats that really sing that blues and, hey, man, I played with a lot of them. I thought about one time goin' out and gettin' these cats and recordin' them but I didn't want to do that 'cause it seems like I'm exploitin' them. Let 'em stay there and be happy and sing their blues, ya know? Leave 'em alone. But that whole scene is part of my musical education. I paid my dues on all these levels."

Graduating from high school at 19, Ike had to pass up the musical scholarships he had won in order to support his pregnant wife. He worked in a packing house slaughtering pigs and cows but walked out on the job after a labor dispute.

"I was singin' here and there, pickin' up a little change, just barely survivin'," he said. Finally a local black vocalist asked him to play piano in a backup combo. "I said, 'Yeah, man,' and after I got home I realized I can't play no piano. But I needed the gig. So it was New Year's Eve and we opened up at this white club called the Southern Club. I didn't know how to play piano. I said, Goddam, they're gonna find out, they're gonna fire me. But when I got there I found out the other cats couldn't play either. Beautiful thing, man. Everybody was drunk so they thought we were groovy. The club owner was impressed and hired us and we improved fast."