Donny Hathaway - Everything is Everything

The last couple of months I have just been riding a soul/R&B wave. Seems like nothing satisfies of late like a groove and some serious meat behind it.

Hathaway's debut from 1970 hits the spot. The guy changed soul music with this single record. It was a long term project of on and off recording sessions with no intention of making a "hit". He made some good ones after (though the songs would follow a more traditional structure than these), but he'd never make anything like this again. If you have any doubts, The Ghetto will make a believer of you.

The record always makes me think of early 70's FM radio and its wicked combos of long, rocking jams and extended soul tracks that the underpaid, overnight DJ would play so he could take a piss, catch some ZZZs, or smoke a bowl.

Suffering from serious bouts of depression throughout the 70's, this tortured genius finally lost to his demons in 1979 and leaped to his death from the 15th floor of The Essex House in NYC. He was 33.

amg:

Already a respected arranger and pianist who'd contributed to dozens of records (by artists ranging from the Impressions to Carla Thomas to Woody Herman), with this debut LP Donny Hathaway revealed yet another facet of his genius -- his smoky, pleading voice, one of the best to ever grace a soul record. Everything Is Everything sounded like nothing before it, based in smooth uptown soul but boasting a set of excellent, open-ended arrangements gained from Hathaway's background in classical and gospel music. (Before going to Howard University in 1964, his knowledge of popular music was practically non-existent.) After gaining a contract with Atco through King Curtis, Hathaway wrote and recorded during 1969 and 1970 with friends including drummer Ric Powell and guitarist Phil Upchurch, both of whom lent a grooving feel to the album that Hathaway may not have been able to summon on his own (check out Upchurch's unforgettable bassline on the opener, "Voices Inside (Everything Is Everything)"). All of the musical brilliance on display, though, is merely the framework for Hathaway's rich, emotive voice, testifying to the power of love and religion with few, if any, concessions to pop music. Like none other, he gets to the raw, churchy emotion underlying Ray Charles' "I Believe to My Soul" and Nina Simone's "To Be Young, Gifted and Black," the former with a call-and-response horn chart and his own glorious vocal, the latter with his own organ lines. "Thank You Master (For My Soul)" brings the Stax horns onto sanctified ground, while Hathaway praises God and sneaks in an excellent piano solo. Everything Is Everything was one of the first soul records to comment directly on an unstable period; "Tryin' Times" speaks to the importance of peace and community with an earthy groove, while the most familiar track here, a swinging jam known as "The Ghetto," places listeners right in the middle of urban America. Donny Hathaway's debut introduced a brilliant talent into the world of soul, one who promised to take R&B farther than it had been taken since Ray Charles debuted on Atlantic.

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