Isaac Hayes

Isaac Hayes came to Manassas as a sharecropper's grandson raised by his grandparents, who had already worked farms in Shelby and Tipton counties. He dropped out, and teachers there pulled him back to finish. He worked in a meatpacking plant by day and played clubs at night. At Stax he and David Porter wrote Sam & Dave's Soul Man. After Stax lost Otis Redding and its back catalog, Hot Buttered Soul in 1969 carried the label. In 1976 he and his wife filed for bankruptcy, owing over $6 million, and he later lost his home and future royalties.

What the plaque says

Isaac Hayes In the 1970s Hayes was a multiple gold and platinum-selling recording star. His recording of "Shaft" won an Oscar, Golden Globe, and three Grammy awards. He wrote or co-wrote over 200 songs for Stax Records including "Hold On, I'm Coming" and "Soul Man." His career included acting roles in movies and on television. Hayes was born in 1942 in Covington, Tennessee, and grew up in Memphis, graduating from Manassas High School in 1962.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sun Studio — 2.2 mi
  The small Union Avenue room where Sam Phillips recorded Rocket 88, Howlin' Wolf, Elvis Presley and the Million Dollar Quartet, now a National Historic Landmark.
• Beale Street — 2.4 mi
  The street that became the center of Black Memphis after the Civil War, home to Church's Park, W. C. Handy, Ida B. Wells and the blues, now a National Historic Landmark district.
• National Civil Rights Museum — 2.9 mi
  The Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King Jr. was killed on April 4, 1968, kept as a museum of the civil rights movement from the nineteenth century to today.
• 1866 Memphis Massacre Marker at Army Park — 3.0 mi
  A privately funded NAACP marker in a small downtown park, placed in 2016, that names the May 1866 attack on Black South Memphis as a massacre.

More markers nearby

• Manassas High School / The Cora P. Taylor Auditorium — steps away
• North Memphis Driving Park — 0.3 mi
• William Herbert Brewster, Sr. — 0.7 mi
• Burkle Estate — 0.8 mi