I’ve been watching a lot of The Rockford Files recently, so the temptation was strong to give you an image of Isaac Hayes as Gandolph Fitch, the erstwhile Hammer of C Block. It’s a fine, nuanced performance that deserves to get a lot more attention than it does. But let’s be real. Even though he does a good job in those three episodes, and I am fascinated by the idea of a world where the proposed spinoff starring Hayes and Louis Gosset, Jr., was actually made and successful, that’s not where I think of him first. I think of him from the moment that is my solid proof that the Oscar telecast should always do whatever beautiful, over-the-top nonsense production numbers the music seems to merit.

Isaac Hayes, Jr., was born in Covington, Tennessee. His mother died young; his father abandoned the family. He was raised by his maternal grandparents in a sharecropping family. He dropped out of high school to support the family, but did manage to complete his diploma. He turned down music scholarships because he was still bringing money home. Just being able to go to college wasn’t enough. But he did work in music, mostly juke joints, and managed to find work in North Memphis. The first song he wrote that was truly successful was “Soul Man.”

Don’t get me wrong; “Theme from Shaft” is one of the most iconic songs of the ’70s. We used to adapt the lyrics to be about my cat, years ago, and one of the best X-Files moments is when Scully tells us that Mulder awoke from being out cold and recited lyrics from it. There’s a reason it’s probably the best-known Oscar winner in its field for its entire decade, with the only two coming close to it being a couple of easy listening staples. (Now, there’s also the reason that several years, the Academy chose poorly, but still.) It’s probably one of the only “theme from [thing]” songs that remains wildly successful decades after the fact.

But genuinely, for personal listening, I’d rather listen to the score he wrote for the movie. It lost the Oscar to the score for The Summer of ’42, a movie I’m not sure I’ve seen and a score I’m not sure I know. Because that’s the aspect people forget, even when they manage to remember that you don’t get Oscars for performing songs, just writing them, so that Oscar for “Theme from Shaft” was as a composer. But I’ve got a piece called “Early Sunday Morning” from the Shaft score on my computer that is gentle and lovely.

Further, Gandy Fitch is just a fun character. He was an enforcer for a loan shark in Pasadena who went to prison for the murder of his girlfriend. Reading between the lines, half the reason his sentence was as long as it was happened because he was black, and half of it was that Gandy wasn’t exactly getting time off for good behaviour. But Gandy Fitch as played by Hayes was a guy who’d never encountered a problem he didn’t at least believe he could punch his way out of who was then in a world where you really, really can’t punch your way out of your problems. Unless your problem is that the bar you’ve tracked someone down to is full of Nazis. In which case punch away.

That Shaft is one bad mother who would support my Patreon or Ko-fi!