Isaac Hayes

Isaac Hayes was born in a sharecropper's family in 1942, in Tennessee. He started working at Stax Records in 1964 as arranger and producer. His solo breakthrough came with 1969's 'Hot Buttered Soul', he made his commercial breakthrough. The album was top of the charts for 10 weeks and forced the music industry, for the first time, to conceive of Soul music as an album art form. The success was followed up by 1971s massive hit 'Shaft'. In 1997 Hayes debuted as the voice of the chef in South Park, reinvigorating his image and music and continued to appear in films. He died in August 2008.