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$44.99 CDx4
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DONNY HATHAWAY
Someday We'll All Be Free Box Set
(WEA France)
On the fourth disc of this long overdue box set, Someday We'll All Be Free, Donny Hathaway announces a live cut, claiming: "...from the black pool of genius...we'd like to give you our rendition of Stevie Wonder's 'Superwoman'..." The late Chi-Town master musician Hathaway, son of Saint Louis, MO, could of course be citing himself and his own compositions -- although often remembered for his thrilling, nonpareil interpretations of others' songs: Marvin Gaye's "What's Goin' On," Leon Russell's "A Song for You," Nina Simone/Irvine Weldon Jr.'s "To Be Young, Gifted and Black," John Lennon's "Jealous Guy," and, if you go deep, Leon Ware's "I Know It's You" (written for Mr. Ware's mother; he told me last year that Roberta Flack says, "Donny peed on it!" which even gives him pause to attempt it anew). Alas, as we know, Donny Hathaway was only buoyant enough to vaingloriously surf the Black Pool of Genius for a short, shining spell.
To ken such grand claims for Hathaway's mysteries and (sonic) magic requires not just comparison between him and the elite of late-1960s/early-1970s auteurs, but also to measure his brief, incandescent "Afropean" achievement against today's plethora of "reality," junk food "culture." Hathaway's oeuvre was never mere entertainment, despite whatever twisted star trips threatened to undermine the precocious, round host of the former "Little Donnie Pitts, the Nation's Youngest Gospel Singer." In fruitful collaboration with the likes of Jerry Wexler, Leroy Hutson, Cornell Dupree, Ric Powell, Arif Mardin, Flack, and wife Eulalah, Hathaway created some of the highest lights of postwar 20th century culture -- when album's were invested in (monetarily AND emotionally) as Art. And his gospelized mountaintop can never quite again be matched -- but don't tell Hathaway's Chi follower Kanye that. Who do y'all see supplying another unofficial Negro National Anthem to rival "Lift Every Voice and Sing," as Donny and Ed Howard did with the set's title track?
To pen this is to weep and be paralyzed by the enormity of this catalog and gargantuan loss once more. I simply don't exist separate from Donny Hathaway's music; he's largely the lens through which I approach the world -- definitely sound. Already last year, before Kathy Hughes saw to it her former Howard schoolmate Hathaway was eulogized via TV One's Unsung series and our noir-lovin' Gaulois brers at Warner Music France saw fit to drop this box like it's hot (which it is!), my consciousness was dominated by the finality that it had been 30 years since Donny Hathaway leapt to his death from the 15th floor of the Essex House hotel on Central Park South...and how could this be -- how could we have carried on so long without him and his particularly warm brand of soul music? I can only gush and cry for 1979, the year he left us and I first moved to Africa, will always starkly remain the end of my childhood (it's also the year I learned French, which y'all will definitely need to wade through the box, glean the nuggets of the set's glossy booklet. No translation, you ask? Y'all don't know the Gauls like I do). For us of Bronzeville, spoiled to enjoy a seemingly never-ending soul-flow of music from Gaye, Wonder, Al Green, Curtis Mayfield (Donny's Chicago mentor), Earth Wind & Fire (featuring Maurice White, his Chi peer who also emerged in the gap between the Motor City's and Philly's dominance of black pop, when Memphis' Stax was momentarily faltering from the death of Otis Redding), and Hathaway lockstep with our Mothers' milk, his suicide rivals the impact of Lennon's murder on the 'Nilla suburbs. And here you thought the (tiresome?) invocation of his name / style / spirit-shout by every neo-soul pretender since even before D'Angelo's mid-'90s stand was mere happenstance (or label hype)?
If you ain't a completist and don't automatically reach for his original "This Christmas" first thing on December 25th / the start of Kwanzaa, you may be wondering if you need this box from across the Pond. Yes, I am slightly saddened to see no gathering of the RobertaAnDonny duets and, moreso, the movements of my third-favorite blaxploitation-era soundtrack -- Come Back, Charleston Blue (featuring Quincy Jones and great pairings with Valerie Simpson and Margie Joseph) -- except for "Little Ghetto Boy." All I can say: this past weekend was a birthday I didn't want to face, but what I did for MYSELF was to swing down to Other and grab Someday We'll All Be Free from Brothas Daniel and Scott. If I hadn't attained this majority, I wouldn't have had parents who met at Howard's grad school when Donny was studying music there and borne witness to the embryonic and golden age stages of his career. I wouldn't know what it was like to cruise through the barrio with that immortal summer of '69 hit, "The Ghetto," still reverberating on our sweltering streets. And I certainly would never know what it feels like to be young, gifted, and black -- that it's actually something to aspire to -- with a champion like Donny Hathaway lurking like an angel o'er your shoulder, our eternal culture hero because he so patently loved and wept for the People. My parents' generation would likely cite Brother Ray and Otis first when queried "What is Soul?" Yet my immediate instinct is to direct uninitiated ears to not only Donny's heaven-sent ululating and yearning on all the live tracks herein so lovingly shepherded by my heroes Papa Wexler and Mr. Mardin, but the interstices wherein folks be screaming back at him and his crack band, raising a joyful noise for posterity. Love, love, loves, we shall be stepping out this weekend in our brown leather Apple Jacks now won't we? [KCH]
Order CD by Texting "omcddonnysomeday" to 767825 |
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