OG Shaft producer passes away at 95

Just wanted to say, my grandfather, Joel Freeman, was the EP on this film. Here he is on the back of the original album: https://www.discogs.com/Isaac-Hayes-Shaft/master/122050 He passed away at 95 last month, but would have loved to see the story continue (and would still be bargaining to produce it lol)

A story: While filming Joel (Freeman) and Gordon (Parks) were trying to get a cab out of Harlem. They stood there for ages, but no cab would stop. Finally a single cab pulls over. Joel goes over to open the door, and the cab freaks out and drives away. As the cab flees, Joel screams, "Goddamn anti-semites!"

One more: So Isaac and Joel were in the studio recording the Shaft theme. Isaac bangs out the instrumental, and everyone's thrilled, except Joel. Issac can tell and says, "Hey man, what's wrong?" Joel goes, " It's great, terrific, but you know, the academy has never nominated a song without lyrics. So, let's just try one with WORDS ." Isaac frowns (for obvious reasons). "Fine, you have a pen?" Isaac hammers out some lyrics in about 10 minutes on the back of a manilla envelope. 20 minutes later, they have the first take. A few months later, the academy award.

Submitted February 20, 2018 at 08:10PM by knowyourcoin http://ift.tt/2HvwDQZ