Black Moses (update)

 

Fifty years ago, Isaac Hayes won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for "Theme From Shaft." The picture and the soundtrack were released in '71, and they were all "bad mother..."

The same year, Hayes released Black Moses, and I would eventually spend many hours of my uncertain adolescence with Ike's smooth, orchestrated soul.

Black Moses included Ike's rendition of "(They Long to Be) Close to You," a 1970 Burt Bacharach and Hal David song that was covered, according to one count, five times the year before Black Moses was released. It was taken to the top of the charts by The Carpenters in '70 even though Perry Como, Diana Ross and Johnny Mathis were among those who covered the song the same year.

Who doesn't know this refrain? "On the day that you were born The angels got together And decided to create a dream come true So they sprinkled moon dust in your hair of gold And starlight in your eyes of blue."

Bacharach ~ a pop composer of the highest order ~ covered the song himself in 1971, with his distinctive though limited vocalizing. I was already familiar with his version of "Close to You" when the needle slipped into Ike's groove.

Being the Black Moses, Hayes wasn't having any of the blond-and-blue business; He omitted the references to "hair of gold" and "eyes of blue." I suppose he understood how marginalizing singing the original lyrics would be to many in his audience. (Mathis and Ross performed versions that included the original words.)

Hayes intoned, "On the day that you were born, the angels got together and they decided to create a dream come true so they sprinkled moon dust in your hair and I see heaven when I look at you."

Ike's rejection of the ABS (American Beauty Standard) in song resonated over the years, and not just for me. More than 30 years after Black Moses, soul singer Gerald Levert performed a version of the song that featured these lyrics.

"On the day that you were born The angels got together And decided to create a dream come true Yes, they did So they sprinkled moon dust in your hair And sunlight in your eyes, like they do." Not Keats, or Hayes, but it gets the job done.

Ike would eventually hang up his Black Moses drag for, until a few years before his sudden death in 2008, a chef's togs and cap on the animated series South Park. As unconventional as he may have become with his Scientology pronouncements, he will always get props from me for pushing his way out of the margins and bringing me and countless others along with him. Had he lived, Hayes would be 80 in August.