OBATALLAH HAYTER 1939-2007

Soul Happenings MC left musical mark on Austin

Most Austinites knew Obatallah Edward Terrence Hayter as the MC for the Waxploitation DJ crew's Soul Happening parties. Most didn't know that he was a gigging jazz musician in New York and D.C. before moving to Austin 10 years ago. They don't know he sat on the piano bench with Monk at a show one night when he was a child. That he played piano with the Clovers in the '70s. That Austin was nothing like what he expected (not too many jazz clubs around here) but he loved it nonetheless. Hayter died Nov. 25 after a long struggle with diabetes. He was 67.

Hayter was born Dec. 1, 1939, in Harlem. He identified as African American, but eventually thought of himself as "Blackfoot/West Indian/German."

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Charisse Kelly

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Obatallah Hayter, right, guided the Waxploitation DJ crew's Soul Happening parties.

Charisse Kelly

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Obatallah, Noel and Marshall Allen of the Sun Ra Arkestra.

Andrew Shapter

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Obatallah Hayter enjoyed a storied jazz career in New York before moving to Austin.

"My last name is German and my Blackfoot great-grandmother married a German trapper," Hayter wrote on a genealogy Web site in 2005. "My mother was from St. Croix in the Virgin Islands."

Waxploitation DJ Noel Waggener, who in 1996 asked Hayter to play master of ceremonies at the Waxploitation parties, an occasional series of DJ nights, said Hayter's multi-ethnic Harlem upbringing had a profound effect.

"He went to Catholic school in Harlem with Irish kids and Puerto Rican kids," Waggener said. "He still kept in contact with some of those folks. He really was the most unprejudiced person, one of those people who was interested in everything."

Hayter's jazz career began as a sideman during the Nuyorican movement in the 1960s and '70s. He gigged with such talents as Ray Barretto and Eddie Palmieri. "He had an incredible library of salsa, hard bop and soul-jazz in his head," Waggener said.

Hayter moved to Austin in 1995 and met Waggener in '96. "We were involved in Free Radio Austin before he moved to KOOP," Waggener said. He hosted a show at the latter venue for four years. "He didn't gig that much in Austin; there aren't many jazz rooms here," Waggener said. "He just adapted, getting involved in radio, teaching music lessons to high school kids, whatever."

But he was most famous in town as the "maestro of ceremonies" for the Soul Happenings. "I wasn't sure he'd be down for it," Waggener says, "but we based the Soul Happenings on these basement parties in Harlem that he would describe."

For 10 years, he coaxed kids on the dance floor to the sound of vintage soul and fun. "Just a few days before he passed," Waggener said, "as he reminisced about past Soul Happenings, a smile came across his face as he said, 'Damn, we've sure had some good times!' "

A funeral for Hayter was held Dec. 1 and his body was cremated. He is survived by a daughter, Leslie Brown-Hayter, and son, Tyrone Hayter, and several grandchildren, all of Round Rock.