Family of Isaac Hayes threaten Donald Trump with lawsuit over use of song in rallies

Family call for $3m in licensing fees stemming from Trump’s frequent use of the Hayes-penned Sam & Dave track Hold On, I’m Comin’

The family of late soul and funk singer Isaac Hayes has ordered Donald Trump to stop using the Hayes-penned song Hold On, I’m Comin’ at campaign rallies.

A letter sent to Trump and his campaign team, shared by Hayes’s son Isaac Hayes III, threatens Trump with legal action if he continues to use the 1966 Sam & Dave song, written by Hayes and David Porter. It alleges copyright infringement, and also demands $3m in licensing fees incurred from the use of the song between 2022 and 2024.

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‘All that mattered was survival’: the songs that got us through 2020

Butterflies with Mariah, Bronski Beat in the Peak District, Snoop Dogg on a food delivery ad … our writers reveal the tracks that made 2020 bearable

When it came to lockdown comfort listening, there was something particularly appealing about lush symphonic soul made by artists such as Teddy Pendergrass and the Delfonics. But there was one record I reached for repeatedly: Black Moses by Isaac Hayes, and particularly the tracks arranged by Dale Warren. Their version of Burt Bacharach’s (They Long to Be) Close to You is an epic, spinning the original classic into a nine-minute dose of saccharine soul. But their cover of Going in Circles, another Warren exercise in expansion, is their masterpiece, reimagining the Friends of Distinction original as a seven-minute arrangement with stirring strings and beatific backing vocals that builds into a story about lost love that transcends the genre’s usual parameters. A perfect, if slightly meta, balm for the repetitive lockdown blues. Lanre Bakare

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