Black Moses

Who’s the black private dick
That’s a sex machine to all the chicks?
SHAFT!
Ya damn right!

He’s a complicated man
But no one understands him but his woman
JOHN SHAFT!

Caught Isaac Hayes at the Bowl last night.

He headlined the 50 Years of Stax revue, a show that included Mabel John, Lalah Hathaway (daughter of Donny), William Bell, Eddie Floyd and the one and only Booker T. Jones. They all played a hit or two from the Stax catalog — Green Onions’s got such fuckin’ groove, still, after all these years — and each made you realize that they just don’t make soul music like they used to. Stax, in it’s own way, was every bit as important at Motown in defining our national soundtrack and last night proved it, albeit briefly.

Photo found via Google on afroamericansyndicate.com

Hayes and his band played the final about-an-hour of the set. For Isaac, that meant about five songs. It was weird to see him walk out on stage in his robes. He sort of shuffles, I don’t know if he’s ill or of he’s had a stroke or if he’s just an older guy. And he had some problems with his keyboards (like how to turn it on) and he sort of groped his way through the (five song) set list.

Still, the guy is cool as fuck. He’s the sex machine to all the chicks. What’s weird is, he barely sings and he barely plays. He sort of sing song/talks his way through the lyrics and kinda pecks at the keyboard, relying on the band to keep the grooves.

But the band and the grooves are oh-so-righteous. The tunes were familiar (including his take on Glen Campbell’s By the Time I Get to Phoenix), the rhythms locked in. When he rose to lead the band through the Theme From Shaft and asked about the black private dick, he had us laughing and rocking — the lyrics now both nostalgically funny and right on at the same time.