'Black Moses' led pop to new ground

Hayes' collaborations with David Porter, a fellow session musician and lyricist at Stax, gave the Memphis-based label some of its biggest hits, including "When Something Is Wrong With My Baby" for vocal duo Sam & Dave and "B-A-B-Y" for Carla Thomas. "Soul Man," another of the songwriting duo's compositions for Sam & Dave, was an early statement of black power that later became a huge crossover hit in 1978 for John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd as the Blues Brothers.

The fact that Hayes projected such a powerful sense of African American dignity, yet also co-wrote a career-defining hit for two white comedians, illustrates the paradoxical range of his appeal.

Headlining Wattstax in Los Angeles -- the 1972 festival that some called "the Black Woodstock" -- Hayes took the stage in gilded warrior garb. The crowd greeted him as a king. As a performer, Hayes embraced this role of ambassador of Afrocentric cool.

The shaved-head look that was central to his image developed in 1964 when the style among some African Americans was to straighten their hair. Tired of the effort that took, Hayes told his barber to cut it off.

"People stared and pointed, but I liked the breeze on my head. It felt great," he told the Chicago Tribune in 1995.

After a concert one night, when the crowd was screaming for him, a former boxer named Dino who was part of his security team said: "These people love you, man. They'll follow you anywhere. . . . You're like Moses. Black Moses!"

A writer from Jet magazine picked up on the phrase, and Hayes had mixed feelings at first as Black Moses became his nickname. He came to like the fact that people "didn't say I'm the Black Moses of the black world, they said of the music world."

But the music Hayes offered was as eclectic as any pop artist's. He covered songs by the Carpenters, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, and Jimmy Webb, transforming those "vanilla" hits into slow jams that would appeal to black and white listeners alike. Bacharach and David's "Walk on By" got a 12-minute reading from Hayes on "Hot Buttered Soul." Webb's "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" ran 18 minutes.

"Music is universal [but] sometimes presentation will restrict you or limit your range," Hayes said in "Soulsville U.S.A." "Glen Campbell and Jim Webb were targeting the pop audience. But when I did it, I aimed to the black market, but it was so big, it went all over."

Hayes' popularity as a recording artist waned in the mid-1970s, and he filed for bankruptcy in 1976.