Isaac Hayes was born in Covington, Tipton County, Tennessee, the second-born child of Isaac Hayes, Sr., and Eula Hayes.[2] After their early deaths, he was raised by his grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Willie Wade, Sr. The child of a poor family, he grew up picking cotton on farms around Covington. Hayes dropped out of high school, only to be encouraged later by his former high school teachers at Manassas High Schools to get his diploma, which he earned at the age of 21. He began singing at the age of five at his local church, and, soon after, he taught himself to play the piano, the Hammond organ, the flute, and the saxophone.
His first professional gigs, in the late 1950s, were as a singer at Curry's Club in North Memphis, backed by Ben Branch's houseband.
Hayes began his recording career in the early 1960s, as a session player for various acts of the Memphis-based Stax Records. He later wrote a string of hit songs with songwriting partner David Porter, including "You Don't Know Like I Know", "Soul Man", "When Something Is Wrong with My Baby", and "Hold On I'm Comin" for Sam and Dave. Hayes, Porter and Stax studio band Booker T. & the MGs were also the producers for Sam & Dave, Carla Thomas and other Stax artists during the mid-1960s. Hayes-Porter contributed to the Stax sound made famous during this period, and Sam & Dave credited Hayes for helping develop both their sound and style. In 1968, Hayes released his debut album, Presenting Isaac Hayes, a jazzy, largely improvised effort that was commercially unsuccessful.
His next album was Hot Buttered Soul, which was released in 1969 after Stax had gone through a major upheaval. The label had lost its largest star, Otis Redding, in a plane crash in December 1967. Stax lost all of its back catalog to Atlantic Records in May 1968. As a result, Stax executive vice president Al Bell called for 27 new albums to be completed in mid-1969; Hot Buttered Soul, was the most successful of these releases.[4] This album is noted for Hayes' image (shaved head, gold jewelry, sunglasses, etc.) and his distinct sound (extended orchestral songs relying heavily on organs, horns, and guitars, deep bass vocals, etc.). Also on the album, Hayes re-interprets "Walk On By" (which had been made famous by Dionne Warwick) into a twelve-minute exploration. "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" starts with an eight-minute long monologue[5] before breaking into song, and the lone original number, the funky "Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic" runs nearly ten minutes, a significant break from the standard three minute soul/pop songs.
"Walk On By" would be the first of many times Hayes would take a Burt Bacharach standard, generally made famous as three minute pop songs by Dionne Warwick or Dusty Springfield, and transform it into a soulful, lengthy and almost gospel number.
