Smash hit

The similarly styled Joy followed in 1973, and in 1974 came two film soundtracks, Tough Guys and Truck Turner, in which he also took the lead role. But his relations with Stax soured as it hit financial difficulties and a royalty cheque to Hayes bounced. 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 10 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.

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 30, 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 ranks of the charts, 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.

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

• Isaac Hayes: a new black rock music star

Related Internet Links

• Watch Isaac Hayes sing Walk on by

• Watch the opening scene from Shaft

He returned to music in 1986 with U Turn, an album dominated by synthesizer-created orchestral arrangements and which spawned the minor hit single Ike’s Rap. He 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 brought further film roles, most notably in Mel Brooks’s Robin Hood — Men in Tights (1992) and in 1995, the release of the instrumental album Raw and Refined and the vocal set Branded.

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 and actor, was born on August 20, 1942. He died on August 10, 2008, aged 65