Isaac Hayes is the perfect example of how our celebrity reductionist society does grave injustice to a long, multi-faceted career. Despite having impact on generation after generation that runs deep and wide there’s no doubt that most of us will remember for whatever that impact looked like at the time we came of age. It doesn’t help that the inter-generational impression ranges from the sublime (”Soul Man”, “Shaft”) to the ridiculous (voice of “South Park”’s Chef), from the earnest troubled narrator of “If Something is Wrong With My Baby” to the flamboyant high-pimpin Playboy magazine spread showing him eating Hors d’Oeuvres off the stretched naked bodies of the girls next door.

Hayes’ music career (and talent, it seems) was over long before he was found next to his still-running treadmill in his home gym the other day. His feeble attempts at reviving it after his split with “South Park” was heart-breaking to those of us who recognized him for a musical genius as well as master showman. His singular ability to turn sex into rhythmic, harmonic sound is what I have missed the most.