Isaac Hayes
Few figures exerted greater influence over the music of the 1960s and 1970s than Isaac Hayes; after laying the groundwork for the Memphis soul sound through his work with Stax-Volt Records, Hayes began a highly successful solo career which predated not only the disco movement but also the evolution of rap.

Hayes was born on August 20, 1942, in Covington, TN; his parents died during his infancy, and he was raised by his grandparents. After making his public debut singing in church at the age of five, he taught himself piano, organ and saxophone before moving to Memphis to perform on the city's club circuit in a series of short-lived groups like Sir Isaac and the Doo-Dads, the Teen Tones, and Sir Calvin and His Swinging Cats. In 1962, he began his recording career, cutting sides for a variety of local labels.

Two years later, Hayes began playing sax with the Mar-Keys, which resulted in the beginning of his long association with Stax Records. After playing on several sessions for Otis Redding, Hayes was tapped to play keyboards in the Stax house band, and eventually established a partnership with songwriter David Porter. Under the name the Soul Children, the Hayes-Porter duo composed some 200 songs, reeling off a string of hits for Stax luminaries like Sam & Dave (the brilliant "When Something Is Wrong With My Baby," "Soul Man," and "Hold On, I'm Comin'"), Carla Thomas ("B-A-B-Y,") and Johnnie Taylor ("I Got to Love Somebody's Baby," "I Had a Dream").

In 1967, Hayes issued his debut solo LP Presenting Isaac Hayes, a loose, jazz-flavored effort recorded in the early-morning hours following a raucous Stax party. With the release of 1969's landmark Hot Buttered Soul, he made his commercial breakthrough; the record's adventuresome structure (comprising four lengthy songs), ornate arrangements, and sensual grooves -- combined with the imposing figure cut by his shaven head, omnipresent sunglasses, and fondness for gold jewelry -- made Hayes one of the most distinctive figures in music.

David Porter
David Porter is most famous as the songwriting partner of Isaac Hayes during the 1960s. Functioning as house composers for Stax, they penned most of Sam & Dave's hits, including such classics as "Soul Man" and "Hold On! I'm Coming"; they also wrote material for other acts on the roster, such as Carla Thomas, Johnnie Taylor, and the Soul Children. Starting in the late '60s, Hayes became increasingly involved in his own recording career, eventually leading to the end of the partnership. Many soul fans remain unaware that Porter also began to record his own albums for Stax. In fact, in the '60s he had released a few singles for Savoy and Hi under the pseudonyms of Little David and Kenny Cain, and had done a single for Stax itself in 1965, "Can't See You When I Want To." A remake of "Can't See You When I Want To" became a Top 30 R&B hit for Porter, and he cut several albums for Stax in the early '70s, including an ambitious concept LP, Victim of the Joke? which connected conventional pop/soul tunes with dialog. By this time he had teamed up with a different songwriting partner, Ronnie Williams, but as a solo artist he ultimately made little impact.

Carla Thomas
In the glorious decade and a half of sound that was Stax in the '60s and early '70s, Carla Thomas was the Queen of Memphis Soul. She was born in Memphis in 1942, and 18 years later she recorded a duet with her father Rufus Thomas, giving the fledgling Satellite label its first taste of success with the regional hit "Cause I Love You." As her 18th birthday drew nigh, she cut her first solo single, the teen ballad "Gee Whiz (Look at His Eyes)." Written a few years earlier and rejected by Vee-Jay in Chicago, it gave Satellite its first national hit, breaking the Top Ten mark on both the R&B and pop charts. Shortly thereafter Satellite became Stax, and Carla proceeded to claw her way onto the national charts another 22 times with such immortal slices of soul as her answer song to Sam Cooke, "I'll Bring It on Home to You," as well as "Let Me Be Good to You," "B-A-B-Y," "Tramp" (with Otis Redding), and "I Like What You're Doing to Me." Carla released six solo albums and, with Redding, one duet album on Stax between 1961 and 1971.

Kirk Whalum
From his beginnings in Memphis, where he played in his father's church choir, Kirk Whalum drew inspiration from the rich musical traditions of that city, including gospel, R&B, blues, and eventually jazz. He received a scholarship to attend music school at Texas Southern University, where he formed a band in 1979 and began playing on the local club circuit. When he opened for Bob James in Houston in 1984, the pianist was impressed with Whalum's expressive style and invited him to play on his album 12. Whalum signed with Columbia and released his first solo album, Floppy Disk, in 1985. That album and the next two -- And You Know That (1988) and The Promise (1989) -- were produced by James, continuing their fruitful partnership. The early '90s brought two more Columbia albums -- Caché in 1993 and 1995's In This Life -- each of which brought Whalum increasing commercial attention and critical praise. A duet with James titled "Joined at the Hip" took Whalum's career to a new level with his first Grammy nomination. In 1997, Whalum signed with Warner Brothers. His first solo album for them, Colors, was released that year and perhaps more than any other album showed Whalum's ability to synthesize music from a variety of sources to produce a fusion of pop, jazz, and R&B. The following year, Gospel According to Jazz, Chapter 1 would show his ability to return to the music of his childhood stylistically, while also pursuing the kind of spiritual depth that has a long history in jazz, echoing artists like John Coltrane in taking advantage of the saxophone's unique expressive qualities. The '90s also brought Whalum an amazingly diverse series of session and touring jobs, working with artists like Whitney Houston, Babyface, Yolanda Adams, Take 6, Bebe & Cece Winans, Barbra Streisand, Edwin Hawkins, Quincy Jones, Kevin Mahogany, Al Green, and Luther Vandross. He has worked on a number of film scores, including those for The Prince of Tides, Boyz in the Hood, Grand Canyon, and Cousins. His sax solo was featured on Whitney Houston's hit song "I Will Always Love You," on the soundtrack for The Bodyguard. The fan base that Whalum had been building throughout the '80s and '90s exploded with his 1998 release, For You, which spent nearly two years at the top of the Billboard Contemporary Jazz Chart and yielded four Top Ten NAC hits. His self-produced album, Hymns in the Garden, which followed in 2000, made a much quieter impact, but was critically acclaimed and earned Whalum a second Grammy nomination. In 2001, Whalum was recording again for Warner Brothers and released Unconditional, his third album for the label. Unconditional returned to the contemporary jazz style that had marked his early releases, with a few unexpected covers, including versions of Macy Gray's "I Try" and N'Sync's "God Must Have Spent a Little More Time on You." "Can't Stop the Rain," a song written and sung by Shai, is the only other song on the album not composed by Whalum, who, with Unconditional, shows that his composing and arranging skills are still growing in the new millennium.

Steve Cropper
Probably the best-known soul guitarist in the world, Cropper came to prominence in the early '60s, first with the Mar-Keys ("Last Night"), then as a founding member of Booker T. & the MG's. A major figure in the Southern soul movement of the '60s, Cropper made his mark not only as a player and arranger (most notably on classic sides by Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, and Wilson Pickett) but as a songwriter as well, co-writing the classic "In the Midnight Hour." After the breakup of the MG's, Cropper spent most of the '70s producing Jeff Beck and Mitch Ryder, among others. In the '80s, he rode the classic Stax sound (which he helped shape) back to popularity with a new audience when actors John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd tapped him for service in the Blues Brothers, a Saturday Night Live skit that stretched into several albums and a movie.

Phil Ramone
Phil Ramone built his career as a record producer on a firm foundation of technical knowledge, spending years working as an engineer in the 1960s before beginning a gradual evolution to producing that lasted from the late '60s to the mid-'70s. When he finally made the transition to being a producer, he did so primarily with mainstream pop/rock singer/songwriters, particularly Billy Joel, but also Paul Simon and Kenny Loggins, and he capped his career working with interpretive singers such as Barbra Streisand and Barry Manilow, as well as handling the last recordings of Frank Sinatra. In the 1990s, while continuing to produce selected projects, he moved more toward executive positions, becoming the chairman of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), founding a record label, and advising technology companies on coming developments in the industry, such as Internet downloads. Along the way, he won eight Grammy Awards.

Ramone began studying piano and violin at the age of three; a child prodigy, he performed for Great Britain's Queen Elizabeth II at ten. As a teenager, he studied at the Juilliard School of Music while simultaneously attending high school. Though he composed and performed, he was attracted to the technical side of music, and in 1961 he opened his own recording studio, A&R Recording, in New York City. He did his earliest work with jazz musicians including John Coltrane and Stan Getz, notably engineering the popular Getz/Gilberto album, which won him his first Grammy for Best Engineered Recording in 1964. By the mid-'60s, he was working with more pop-oriented performers such as Peter, Paul and Mary and he even began to draw the occasional producing assignment with minor rock bands, such as Orpheus in 1967. (He won his second Grammy as co-producer of the original Broadway cast album of Promises, Promises in 1969.) By the end of the 1960s, more important figures such as Burt Bacharach and Quincy Jones were beginning to rely on him as a producer and while he hadn't broken through to the world of big-time pop production, he had become a trusted name to engineer pop records as of the early '70s, working with James Taylor, Bob Dylan, and Aretha Franklin. It took several years for him to move decisively from the engineer's chair to the producer's on major pop records, but he finally did so as of 1975, winning a Grammy for Album of the Year for Paul Simon's Still Crazy After All These Years. By 1977, he was a major pop producer; that year he produced Kenny Loggins' Celebrate Me Home, Phoebe Snow's Never Letting Go, and, most importantly, Billy Joel's The Stranger.

The Stranger was the album that made Billy Joel a major star and it consolidated Ramone's status, earning him a Record of the Year Grammy for the single "Just the Way You Are." His clean, sharp sound became a pop standard that could be heard on subsequent Joel albums 52nd Street (Album of the Year Grammy, 1978), Glass Houses (1980, the year Ramone won the Grammy as Producer of the Year), The Nylon Curtain (1982), Innocent Man (1983), and The Bridge (1986), and it was one sought by the likes of Paul Simon, Barbra Streisand, the Carpenters, Carly Simon, and Paul McCartney, among others. It was also key to the mid-'80s success of Julian Lennon on his albums Valotte (1984) and The Secret Value of Daydreaming (1986). Meanwhile, in 1983, Ramone won another Grammy as co-writer of the song "Imagination" on the Flashdance soundtrack.

In 1993, Ramone realized any record producer's dream when he drew the assignment to produce a comeback album for Frank Sinatra. Duets was an unusual project in that Sinatra never actually sang in the same studio with his duet partners and Ramone, employing his extensive technical knowledge, also recorded some of the material in more than one location at once, using fiber-optic telephone lines. The result was a commercial smash followed by Duets II.

From the mid-'90s, while accepting selected production jobs such as original Broadway cast albums (winning an eighth Grammy for Passion in 1994) and working with old friends like Peter, Paul and Mary, Ramone increasingly dedicated his time to technical and industry work. He rose to the position of chairman of NARAS (since retired as chairman emeritus). In 1996, he formed a short-lived record label, N2K Encoded Music, also working with N2K's online record seller, Music Boulevard (later merged with CD Now). In 1999, he was named a senior advisor to Lucent Technology on its efforts to develop Internet downloading technology. As the new millennium dawned, Ramone was as busy as ever. His focus was mainly on the production of large events although he still found time to produce some records too. Some of the large scale projects Ramone was involved with were the All Star Tribute to Brian Wilson, a huge concert co-produced with Quincy Jones at the World Economic Forum in 2002, One World Jam: A Concert for Global Harmony in 2002 and along with Sir George Martin, The Queen's Jubilee: Party at the Palace. The albums Ramone produced included Elton John's One Night Only,Diane Schuur's Swinging for Schuur,Liza Minelli's Liza's Back and Rod Stewart's jazz ballad album It Had to Be You: The Great American Songbook.

Bios courtesy All Music Guide - www.allmusic.com