By Vincent L. Hall
Film Scholar Novotny Lawrence spoke recently on Nation- al Public Radio. “This guy, he comes up out of the subway, he’s walking down the streets of New York City, and he’s owning it,” Lawrence said.
Shaft was a new kind of figure in film, unapologetically Black with swagger. He clapped back at white cops who said dumb things and he busted mobsters. “He gave Black people that icon in the ’70s,” Lawrence said. “Shaft was a huge success and helped create an entire genre: Blaxploitation.”
Shut yo mouth!
What the film scholar Lawrence said was admirable and it was all true, but with all due respect, let me tell you who Richard Roundtree as Shaft was to me! Let me break it down so that it will forever and always be broke!
I was thumbing through Ma- ma’s Ebony magazine to study the Joneses. You can’t keep up with the Joneses unless you know what they doin’! I read a few lines, looked at all the pictures and then it was on to the daily double.
Before we had BET, we had JET!
See, you couldn’t just browse through Ebony to get the whole Black experience. It was a monthly. The “get down with the get down” came in a weekly supplement called Jet Magazine. Jet was coincidentally the venue that introduced the world to Emmett Till. Jet was a whole Black thang!
However, if you ain’t been hipped to it or old enough, ask your granddaddy about Jet. He studied the “Beauty of the Week ” centerfold if he didn’t read it or glance at anything else. Those beauties kept Black barbershops buzzing!
Anyway, after I looked at all the latest rags (fashion) by Eleganza, I saw that the movie Shaft was about to be released. The inaugural and first iteration made it to the screen a little before the “White People’s” Independence Day in 1971.
In retrospect, it was fitting that the June 25th debut was a few days after Juneteenth. Black folks always get freedom, but it’s always late. That’s what you get for taking a free boat ride from strangers.
Anyway…
This brother was well-spoken, well-dressed, and well-built. His Afro was tight and right. Richard Roundtree gave the twins, Polly and Esther, a permanent spot in the Player’s Ball. Add a bad pair of “kicks,” a tailored turtleneck covered by a wide-collared leather coat, and “evathang was copacetic!”
Shaft began his stroll into Black movie history by jay-walking through the cab-filled streets of New York City. For us Southern boys that made his persona all the more permeating. Dallas is a city, but the Big Apple was the Big City!
I was posted up in the balcony of the Crest Theatre in Oak Cliff. We had to fight to sit in the balcony in the hood. The generation before ours had no choice but to sit in the ” crow’s nest” of White movie houses.
Even Rosa Parks would admit that the back of the bus ain’t a bad seat unless you are denied a front seat by segregationists.
By the movie’s end, Richard had defied the police, whipped “The Man” and his gang and left all the girls swooning. But what was more impressive was his ability to act, the beautiful cinematography, and the musical serenades custom-made for each scene of this Black epic.
Shut yo’ mouth. I’m still talking about Shaft.
There have been at least three seminal moments for me regarding Black entertainment. James Brown’s culturally trans- forming hit, “Say it Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud!”
The movie Shaft in all of its artistic and aesthetic beauty.
And finally, the Blackest “Spaghetti Western” ever, Django, starring our homeboy, Jamie Foxx. The brother got paid to kill White criminals! It can’t get no better! Not only was he the first Black superhero to have theme mu- sic, but in doing so, Shaft paved the way for another brother.
Isaac Hayes’ resonate baritone, his iconic bald head, and sunshades, became a whole thing. Shaft’s success was more expansive than the box office. We finally had a cause to support during the Academy Awards.
Hayes’ movie score or soundtrack won an Academy Award, Grammy Award and the British Academy Film Awards. Meanwhile, the title song dominated the Billboard Charts. Hayes added some strings, woodwinds, and timpani to the funk music already sweeping the nation.
Hayes and his contemporary Barry White finally got their respect as musical composers and orchestra leaders. This was a musical artform that Black music had not been regarded for since the days of Cab Callaway and Duke Ellington.
As the credits began to roll on Richard Roundtree’s final movie appearance, I stood in the theater. Richard Roundtree, Samuel L. Jackson, and Jessie T. Usher. Pride was all I could muster as the three generations of Shaft men meandered through the big city streets in full length, double breasted, red velvet riding coats.
I called my Mama and told her Richard Roundtree had taken his last stroll the other day.
She responded appropriate- ly…Shut yo mouth! John Shaft?
Next Week – “Shaft in Africa!”
Vincent L. Hall is an author, activist, and an award-winning columnist.
