Theme from Shaft

"Theme from Shaft", written and recorded by Isaac Hayes in 1971, is the soul and funk-styled theme song to the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film Shaft.[1] The theme was released as a single (shortened and edited from the longer album version) two months after the movie's soundtrack by Stax Records' Enterprise label. "Theme from Shaft" went to number two on the Billboard Soul Singles chart (behind "Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)" by Marvin Gaye) and to number one on the Billboard Hot 100[2] in the United States in November 1971. The song was also well received by adult audiences, reaching number six on Billboard's Easy Listening chart.[3] The song is considered by some to be one of the first disco songs.[4][5]

"Theme from Shaft"
Single by Isaac Hayes
from the album Shaft
B-side"Cafe Regio's"
ReleasedSeptember 30, 1971
Recorded1971, Stax Recording Studios, Memphis, Tennessee
GenreSoul, funk
Length3:15 (single edit)
4:34 (album version)
LabelEnterprise
ENA-9038
Songwriter(s)Isaac Hayes
Producer(s)Isaac Hayes
Isaac Hayes singles chronology
"Never Can Say Goodbye" / "I Can't Help It"
(1971)		 "Theme from Shaft"
(1971)		 "Do Your Thing" / "Ellie's Love Theme"
(1972)
Alternate label

The following year, "Theme from Shaft" won the Academy Award for Best Original Song,[1] with Hayes becoming the first African American to win that honor – or any Academy Award in a non-acting category – as well as the first recipient of the award to both write and perform the winning song. Since then, the song has appeared in numerous television shows, commercials, and other movies, including the 2000 sequel Shaft, for which Hayes re-recorded the song.[6][7] In 2004 the original finished at #38 in AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs survey of top songs in American cinema.

Composition and history

In 2000, Hayes told National Public Radio that he had only agreed to write and record the Shaft score after the film's producer, Joel Freeman, promised him an audition for the lead role, which was taken by a then-unknown Richard Roundtree. Hayes, who also had no acting experience, never got the chance to audition, but kept his end of the deal anyway.[8] Director Gordon Parks also had a hand in composing the theme, describing the character of John Shaft (the "black private dick/who's a sex machine/to all the chicks") to Hayes and explaining that the song had to familiarize the audience with him. Hayes recorded the rhythm parts on the theme first, scored the entire rest of the film, then returned to the theme song.[8]

Hayes told Mojo in 1995:

"As this was my first such undertaking, at the initial meeting I had with the producer and director in New York you could see the anxiety on their faces. They tested me by giving me the opening scene – footage of Shaft coming out of the subway – to take away and see how I got on. I remembered a guitar line I had in a tune I'd never used, got it off the shelf and had our guitarist play it exactly the same, but with a wah-wah. Then I got our drummer to play 16-note sequences on the hi-hat and we had it. The core rhythm for the tune, the springboard for the whole soundtrack, we'd cut in under two hours."[9]

The opening sixteenth-note hi-hat ride pattern, played by Willie Hall, was drawn from a break on Otis Redding's "Try a Little Tenderness", a Stax record on which Hayes had played.[8] Guitarist Charles Pitts' wah-wah effect was common in 1970s funk; the riff had originally been written for an unfinished Stax song. The synthesized keyboard is played by Hayes. Even on the edited single version, the intro lasts for more than one and a half minutes before any vocals are heard. The arrangement was by Hayes and Johnny Allen.

The lyrics describe John Shaft's coolness, courage and sex appeal and Hayes' lead vocals are punctuated by a trio of female backup singers. At one famous moment, Hayes calls Shaft "a bad mother—;" before the backup singers (one of whom is Tony Orlando and Dawn's Telma Hopkins) interrupt the implied profanity with the line "Shut yo' mouth!" Hayes immediately defends himself by replying "I'm talking about Shaft", with the back-up vocalists replying, "We can dig it." Other well-known passages include "You're damn right!" also uttered by Hayes, and "He's a complicated man/but no one understands him/but his woman/John Shaft." Hayes' utterance of the word "damn" made this the first #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 pop singles chart to include a curse word.

The song was considered very racy for its time. As late as 1990, censors at the Fox Network thought it too risqué to be sung on The Simpsons (until it was pointed out that the song had been played on television before).[10]

The song was not intended to be a single, but the success of the film and the popularity of the track in nightclubs led to a 45 record of the theme being released on Enterprise Records two months after the soundtrack. Within two months, it hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and stayed there a second week.[6] It peaked at #4 in the UK Singles Chart.[1] The song had an enormous influence on the disco and soul music of the decade.[8]

In 1972, Hayes performed "Theme from Shaft" as part of the Academy Awards ceremony in his signature chain mail vest, but accepted the Academy Award for Best Original Song later that night wearing a tuxedo.[6] He dedicated his historic win to his grandmother, Rushia Wade, who joined him onstage as he accepted the award.[11] Following the Academy Awards, Hayes, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Stax staff dedicated the win to the black community at an Operation PUSH rally.[11] "When it hit so big I was in severe disbelief ..." he later reflected. "Then when it won an Academy Award — it won Best Song, but the album was also nominated for Best Soundtrack — I was in a state of shock. This was after the Academy tried to disqualify it, too, saying, because I can't write music, it wasn't my composition. Quincy Jones got in there and argued my case; saying that, even if I didn't physically write it down, they were my ideas."[9]

Later that year, Hayes performed "Theme from Shaft" live at the Wattstax concert in Los Angeles.[12] Film footage of this performance was recorded for Mel Stuart's documentary film of the concert, but was cut before the film's release due to legal complications with MGM, who would not allow Hayes to perform his Shaft songs in any other film until 1976. A 2003 remastered version of the Wattstax film reinstates Hayes' performance of "Theme from Shaft".[12]

When John Singleton directed an updated version of Shaft in 2000, starring Samuel L. Jackson, Hayes re-recorded the theme for the new film.

Cover for the 2000 version of "Theme from Shaft", rerecorded by Isaac Hayes for the John Singleton Shaft film released the same year
  • The song has been played or parodied in television shows, including The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (1990–1996), The Simpsons ((1989–), Family Guy ((1999–), The Tick, Sesame Street (1969–), Scrubs (2001–2010), The X-Files (1993–2002), Mystery Science Theater 3000, Father Ted (1995–1998), The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (2002–2006), Histeria! (1998–2000), The Wire (2002–2008) and Ashes to Ashes (2008–2010).
  • On Sesame Street a parodied version of the song, "Cookie Disco", was about Cookie Monster, dressed as Isaac Hayes, who ends up eating the set.
  • The song was featured in the 1988 film I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, where the lead character Slade is a parody on Shaft (Isaac Hayes was in the film in a different role).
  • The 1989 comedy film UHF (co-written by and starring "Weird Al" Yankovic) featured a mock trailer segment on television parodying the 1982 movie Gandhi called Gandhi II, set to music meant to resemble the Shaft theme.
  • A 1998 Burger King marketing campaign featured Hayes singing a retooled version of the song, with lyrics now alluding to Mr. Potato Head, who is seen dancing on the piano that Hayes plays.
  • Another Burger King commercial from 2002 promoted the Shaq Pack, where the lyrics alluded to Shaquille O'Neal.
  • Hayes also parodied "Theme from Shaft" with "Two Cool Guys", the opening theme song for the 1996 film Beavis and Butt-Head Do America (1993–1997), in which Hayes adapts the Beavis and Butt-Head television theme as a rhythm guitar line for a "Shaft"-esque song about the title characters.
  • In the series Two and a Half Men (2003–2015), there were occasional references to the song, including one episode where Alan, Herb, Gordon, and Jerome are seen singing the song as a barbershop quartet.
  • Since very early in the 1970s, the Swedish national television network Sveriges Television sports show on Sundays, Sportspegeln (Sports Mirror), has used different variations of the end of "Theme from Shaft" for its opening theme; roughly the same samples have also been used for daily sports news bulletin Sportnytt.[13]
  • Also since the early 1970s, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's radio current affairs show As It Happens has used the theme as bumper music.
  • An instrumental version of the song served as the news theme for Memphis television station WMC-TV for a time in the 1970s.
  • In Australia, an edited instrumental version was used as the theme for "Seven's Big League" rugby league broadcasts hosted by Rex Mossop in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as preview music for upcoming scenes from the Network Ten serial series Number 96 ( 1972–1977).

Covers and samples

Personnel
gollark: C++ is like C but stupider and overcomplicated, and C# is totally different.
gollark: I mean, I don't like C very much (as a general application programming language) because it is very unsafe, but unlike PHP it actually has... some amount of design.
gollark: * bad
gollark: PHP is the enemy of mankind. PHP must be destroyed at all costs. Unless the costs involve using COBOL or something.
gollark: It's the internet. Roving bot things are automatically scanning probably every publicly routable device and trying exploits constantly (my webserver logs are filled with what looks like exploits on poorly designed PHP/CGI applications). Don't make their job easier.

See also
  • List of Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles of 1971

References
  1. Roberts, David (2006). British Hit Singles & Albums (19th ed.). London: Guinness World Records Limited. p. 136. ISBN 1-904994-10-5.
  2. Whitburn, Joel (2004). Top R&B/Hip-Hop Singles: 1942-2004. Record Research. p. 249.
  3. Whitburn, Joel (2002). Top Adult Contemporary: 1961-2001. Record Research. p. 112.
  4. "Disco Savvy: 1972-1974 Disco". www.discosavvy.com.
  5. Echols, Alice (29 March 2010). "Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture". W. W. Norton & Company – via Google Books.
  6. Douglas Wolk (2005). "The Greatest Songs Ever! Theme from Shaft". Blender. Archived from the original on 2006-10-19. Retrieved 2006-09-06.
  7. Alex Pappademas (2000). "Shafted: The baddest "theme from" ever". Boston Phoenix. Retrieved 2006-09-06.
  8. National Public Radio, "The NPR 100," December 21, 2000. Radio program. Archived at . Retrieved September 9, 2006.)
  9. Mojo, 1995 (precise issue unknown)
  10. Al Jean (2002). The Simpsons: The Complete Second Season, "One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Blue Fish" commentary track (DVD). 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.
  11. Bowman, Rob (1997). Soulsville U.S.A.: The Story of Stax Records. New York: Schirmer Trade. p.229-233 ISBN 0-8256-7284-8
  12. Bowman, Rob and Chuck D (2004). Audio commentary track for Wattstax. Los Angeles: Saul Zaentz Company and Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc.
  13. "SVT Sport - slutsignatur 1987". YouTube. Retrieved 2016-10-05.
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