RIP Isaac Hayes, Bernie Mac

Isaac Hayes at Celebrate Brooklyn! (06/12/08)
Isaac Hayes
Photo: rsguskind (aka Gowanus Lounge)

Less than two months after kicking off the 30th season of Celebrate Brooklyn!, musician Isaac Hayes died today at his Memphis home.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) “” Isaac Hayes, the pioneering singer, songwriter and musician whose relentless “Theme From Shaft” won Academy and Grammy awards, died Sunday afternoon, the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office said. He was 65.

A family member found him unresponsive near a treadmill and he was pronounced dead an hour later at Baptist East Hospital in Memphis, according to the sheriff’s office. The cause of death was not immediately known. [AP]

Comedian Bernie Mac also passed away this weekend.

CHICAGO – Bernie Mac, the actor and comedian who teamed up in the casino heist caper “Ocean’s Eleven” and gained a prestigious Peabody Award for his sitcom “The Bernie Mac Show,” died Saturday at age 50.

“Actor/comedian Bernie Mac passed away this morning from complications due to pneumonia in a Chicago area hospital,” his publicist, Danica Smith, said in a statement from Los Angeles.

The comedian suffered from sarcoidosis, an inflammatory lung disease that produces tiny lumps of cells in the body’s organs, but had said the condition went into remission in 2005. He recently was hospitalized and treated for pneumonia, which his publicist said was not related to the disease. [Yahoo!/AP]