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Isaac Hayes, the pioneering singer, songwriter and onetime Atlanta resident who won Academy and Grammy awards for his "Theme From Shaft," was found dead Sunday afternoon in his Memphis, Tenn., home. He was 65.

A Shelby County Sheriff's spokesman said authorities received a 911 call after Hayes' wife and young son and his wife's cousin returned from a grocery store and found the musician collapsed near a treadmill in a downstairs bedroom.

Phil Skinner/pskinner@ajc.com (ENLARGE)
Isaac Hayes walks the red carpet at the Turner Broadcasting System's 2004 Trumpet Awards at the Omni Hotel in downtown Atlanta.
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RELATED: 1995 Q&A with Isaac Hayes on rap, movies Photos: Isaac Hayes career Video: Isaac Hayes highlights

Hayes was pronounced dead at Baptist East Hospital in Memphis. The cause of death was not immediately known.

"I want people to remember my father for the creative, soulful, inspirational force that he was to music and African-American people. He was legendary," Hayes' son, musician Isaac Hayes III, said Sunday night in a text message relayed to the AJC by his publicist.

In the early 1970s, Hayes helped lay the groundwork for disco, for what became known as urban-contemporary music and for romantic crooners like Barry White. And he was rapping before there was rap.

His career hit another high in 1997 when he became the voice of Chef, the sensible school cook and devoted ladies man on the animated TV show "South Park." But Hayes angrily quit the show in 2006 after an episode mocked his Scientology religion.

The singer had strong ties to Atlanta, where he lived from 1979 to 1992, and his son lives in Smyrna. The two worked together on the "Dirty 'N the Bess," an online radio program recorded locally. Isaac III has produced recordings for such local hip-hop acts as Lil Scrappy and the Ying Yang Twins under the name Ike Dirty.

Atlanta producer-executive Michael "Mr. Collipark" Crooms said the elder Hayes "might have been one of the most influential artists ever when it came to just gangster music."

"People sample his music all of the time to give hip-hop that hard edge," Crooms said. "Everybody talks about how influential James Brown has been in music in general, and hip-hop in particular. But Isaac Hayes made it gangster."

And beautiful, added Patrick "Sleepy" Brown -- who as a member of Atlanta's Organized Noize "looked to Hayes for inspiration" for their work on Grammy-winning duo OutKast's music, and others.

"He was a great influence on Organized and the Dungeon Family, just how he arranged songs and melodies," Brown said. "And there was so much emotion in his music. It was sometimes angry, sometimes happy, sometimes sad, but always emotional."

Brown got a chance to meet Hayes when Organized Noize contributed to the 2000 "Shaft" soundtrack. "It was a nice experience," he recalled. "And of course we were proud that he liked what we did."

Brown also concedes that Hayes also inspired his look --from the bald head, to the scruffy beard, to the wide-collared, silky shirts he often wears wide open to his navel. "Yeah, all of that is on purpose," he said.

Tennessee native Joi plans to pay tribute to Hayes on Monday night at her show at Apache Cafe, and to dedicate the next Tuesday Jam at Sugar Hill in Underground Atlanta to Hayes.

"When I got the news, it immediately took me to sitting Indian style in the middle of the floor, as a kid, looking at the 'Black Moses' album cover," Joi said. "It's a sad day in music, and a sad day in history. But for me personally, I'm very, very grateful he left us with such an awesome legacy."

Even the bowling lanes at 300 Atlanta -- a popular local music industry hang-out -- were silenced Sunday when longtime record exec CJ Jimerson announced the news of Hayes' passing.

While living in Atlanta, Hayes was actively involved in the community as a parent and volunteer. In a 1985 interview with the AJC, he talked about living in a downtown apartment, where he was raising two daughters, Melanie, then 17, and Africa Nicole, then 14.

In an AJC interview 20 years later, Hayes said, "I loved the time I lived in Atlanta, man, I really did. But Memphis needed me back. I needed to come back here and help things out. Memphis is on the move again, and I wanted to be a part of that."

The album "Hot Buttered Soul" made Hayes a star in 1969. His shaved head, gold chains and sunglasses gave him a compelling visual image.

"Hot Buttered Soul" was groundbreaking in several ways. Hayes sang in a "cool" style, unlike the usual histrionics of big-time soul singers. He prefaced the song with "raps," and the numbers ran longer than three minutes and had lush arrangements.

Next came "Theme From Shaft," a No. 1 hit in 1971 from the film "Shaft" starring Richard Roundtree.

"At first, it was just a sound we had in the studio," Hayes told the AJC. "I didn't know where it was going to end up. It worked perfectly for the opening of the film where Shaft [actor Richard Roundtree] is walking out in the middle of all that New York traffic and not breaking stride."

Director Gordon Parks "told me, 'This is one relentless cat.' That's when I remembered what we had laid down in the studio with the highhat and the guitar. It all worked."

At the Oscar ceremony in 1972, Hayes performed the song wearing an eye-popping amount of gold and received a standing ovation. TV Guide later chose it as No. 18 in its list of television's 25 most memorable moments. He won an Academy Award for the song and was nominated for another one for the score. The song and score also won him two Grammys.

Hayes was born in a tin shack in 1942 in Covington, Tenn., about 40 miles north of Memphis. He was raised by his maternal grandparents after his mother died and his father took off when he was 1