Smash hit

More importantly from Hayes’s point of view, it made him the first black composer to win an Oscar for best score and gave him a chart-topping album. Its distinctive main theme was also a No 1 single, made memorable by its distinctive wah-wah guitar, thrilling staccato brass hooks and deep, minimalist semi-spoken vocal.

With Otis Redding dead and Stevie Wonder’s rise to greatness still to happen, Hayes now rivalled Marvin Gaye as the biggest male star in soul music. His next album, Black Moses (1972), reflected his new status. It came with a sleeve that folded out to form a large cross and featured Hayes attired like a biblical prophet. It was open to charges of pretension but the title track still won him a Grammy for best pop instrumental.

The similarly-styled Joy followed in 1973 and the following year came two further film soundtracks, Tough Guys and Truck Turner, in which he also took the lead role. But his relations with his record company were souring fast. As Stax hit financial difficulties and a cheque for a royalty payment to Hayes bounced, he responded by suing them. The parting of ways was inevitable and in 1975 he left to form his own Hot Buttered Soul imprint.

Elements in his earlier work had already pointed the way towards disco and he pursued the style further on Chocolate Chip (1975) and Groove-a-Thon the following year. Both discs went gold, while the single Disco Connection gave him a Top Ten hit and his biggest record since Shaft. Yet it was not enough to cover all the overheads of running his own label and in 1976 he was forced to file for bankruptcy, listing debts in excess of $6 million. With many of his creditors locally-based in Memphis, he left the city after more than 20 years and moved to Atlanta.

Times Archive, 1973: Isaac Hayes at the Rainbow

A giant of a man bared to the waist except for gold chains hanging round his neck and holding up ludicrously unbecoming black tights

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A double-live album, A Man and a Woman, recorded with Dionne Warwick, appeared in 1977, but disco favoured the single over albums, forcing a change in his modus operandi. A string of albums including New Horizon (1978), For the Sake of Love (1978), Don’t Let Go (1979) and And Once Again (1980) all failed to make the Top Thirty, although he enjoyed dance-floor hit singles with Zeke the Freak and Do You Wanna Make Love.

After another album, A Lifetime Thing (1981) failed to disturb even the bottom echelons of the chart, he retired from music for five years and concentrated on acting, playing tough-guy roles in TV series such as The A-Team and The Rockford Files. He returned to music in 1986 with U Turn, an album dominated by synthesiser-created orchestral arrangements and which spawned the minor hit single Ike’s Rap. Yet he soon returned to acting, appearing in the films Counter Force, I’m Gonna Git You Sucker and Dead Aim. His next foray into the recording studio, Love Attack (1989), sank without trace, hardly helped by his inability to promote it as at the time of its release he was serving a jail sentence for failing to pay child support and alimony.

The 1990s saw further film roles, most notably in Mel Brooks’s Robin Hood — Men in Tights (1992) and his first new music in seven years appeared in 1995 with the release of the instrumental album Raw and Refined and the vocal set Branded. But it was the use of his voice for the character Jerome “Chef” McElroy in the TV animation South Park in 1997 that introduced him to a new generation of fans. The part had not originally been intended as a permanent character, but Hayes’s deep, sensuous voice made Chef an instant cult hero. He remained the voice of Chef for nine years and in that time also contributed the hit song Chocolate Salty Balls to the South Park tie-in album Chef Aid, and appeared in the film South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut.

He left South Park controversially in 2006. A statement claimed that he had asked to be released from his contract because he was upset by the way the show satirised religion. In particular, an attack on the Church Of Scientology, of which he was a prominent member, was said to have caused great offence. Citing the fact that he had recently suffered a stroke and the statement was made not by him but on his behalf, South Park’s creators claimed that he had been coerced into the decision by the Church of Scientology and responded with a new episode of the show containing a thinly veiled plot line which suggested that Chef/Hayes had been brainwashed by sinister and manipulative forces.

His support for Scientology was not his only unusual extra-curricular activity. In 1994 he was admitted to the royal family of Ghana and crowned King Nene Katey Ocansey in return for raising funds through his Isaac Hayes Foundation to build a school there.

Hayes is survived by his fourth wife, Adjowa, and 12 children.

Isaac Hayes, musician, was born on August 20, 1942. He died on August 10, 2008, aged 65