1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 226. Isaac Hayes – Shaft (1971)

 

The Theme From Shaft has to be Hayes’ most iconic song except, perhaps, Chocolate Salty Balls from South Park. I imagine he’d prefer to be remembered for Shaft. Although Simon and Garfunkel’s Bookends featured tracks written for The Graduate, I think this is the first proper soundtrack album in the list, and to my shame I’ve never seen Shaft.

Just as the film itself set the standard for “blaxploitation” films forever more, so too did this album set the bar for Seventies crime-based films and series – look me in the eye and tell me that the theme from Starsky and Hutch (and perhaps Antonio Fargas’ Huggy Bear character) weren’t born from this.

Without the film visuals as reference, pieces of what are essentially incidental music lose something, I think, but remain pleasing bits of orchestral-backed soul. Bumpy’s Blues, for example, is a laid-back piece with strings, sleazy sax, and wah-wah guitar that sounds like a superior bit of KPM library music that you would pick out as backing for a Seventies crime drama set amid the brownstones of New York. The exception, beyond the opening and closing themes, is the 19-minute jam that is Do Your Thing, one of the few tracks with scant vocals on it. This, to me, was one of the best pieces, but the extended intro to the Opening Theme is a matchless bit of early Seventies funk.