For those interested:

Here's the Donny article from the Independent (london paper):

HIS SOUL GOES GROOVIN' ON; DID HE JUMP? DID HE FALL? THE DEATH OF DONNY HATHAWAY IS SHROUDED IN MYSTERY. BUT ONE THING IS CERTAIN - HE WAS A GENIUS. AND HE INFLUENCED THE BEST

He wrote and produced for Curtis Mayfield, sang hit duets with Roberta Flack, recorded a movie soundtrack at the behest of Quincy Jones and began his own albums with classical tone poems. Donny Hathaway really should have been one of the biggest soul stars of all. But 20 years ago, he fell to his death from the 15th-floor bedroom window of a New York hotel .

On the evidence of a door locked from the inside and information that, six years earlier, the singer had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, police assumed suicide. Some of his family and friends, however, maintain that Hathaway's death was accidental; that his mood on the night of 13 January, 1979, when he'd recorded lead vocals to "Back Together Again", later to become the last of his successful duets with Flack, had been relatively upbeat. Whatever the truth, there's no doubt that the demise of Donny Hathaway at the age of 33 robbed the music world of one of its most naturally gifted performers.

Eric Mercury, co-writer and co-producer with Stevie Wonder of "You Are My Heaven", the other tune recorded by Donny on the fateful night, unhappily describes what had become a typical studio session for his disturbed friend.

"That album, what became Roberta Flack Featuring Donny Hathaway, was supposed to be duets all the way through. In the end, Donny contributed to only two songs. He was so sick he really shouldn't have been expected to do it. In the studio he'd been talking to us in one voice and then answering himself in another. Other times he'd sit down at the piano and play all these fantastic classical themes, stuff he'd written himself. We cut what we could during lucid periods. In the end, the nurse he had with him didn't ultimately save his life. My view is he should never have been left on his own."

Speaking publicly for the first time, Hathaway's widow, Eulaulah, herself a professional classical singer, admits that her former husband's condition had deteriorated to the point of danger: "He'd been diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic in 1973 and subsequently was hospitalised several times. Like most people who take daily medication, Donny began to think that, if he felt better, he could go it alone: he'd come off his medication and he'd end up getting worse.

"But at no point had he ever tried to harm himself. The point is, all New York hotel windows will come open and if you are neglectful enough to sit on such a ledge, you just might fall. Did he feel under pressure from the record company to do the album? Let's just say, if he was still up to it vocally, then..."

Donny Hathaway was born on 1 October, 1945, in Chicago, but largely brought up by his grandmother, Martha Crumwell, in a poor part of St Louis, Missouri. She was paraplegic but also a noted local gospel singer, and encouraged her charge's obvious musical talents through the church. It wasn't until Donny won a scholarship to Washington DC's Howard University that he encountered the "devil's music" that was jazz, soul and pop.

Seventies soul star Leroy Hutson, Donny's roommate for two years at Howard and writing partner on several of his most memorable songs (including his biggest solo hit, "The Ghetto"), remembers his friend as both an overwhelming talent and a social innocent abroad: "I recall one time, maybe a month into us being roommates, he came home when I was playing Miles Davis' Porgy & Bess album, the one with the elaborate arrangements by Gil Evans. He sat on the couch and listened for a while. Then he began moving the needle around from cut to cut. After that he sat down at the keyboard and rearranged the whole thing as it was playing. He stretched the chords and made it all his own. It was an incredible experience.

"But he found himself living life at so fast a pace, he couldn't really handle it. He became prone to making, let's say, unwise decisions - hangin' with the people that could do him no good, getting himself into deals that could and did hurt him. The contrast between his upbringing and what he found in DC and the record business was something he never came to terms with."

Hutson and Hathaway both sang for The Mayfield Singers, a vocal group put together by Impressions leader and Chicagoan soul power-mover, Curtis Mayfield. After two years of straight As, Donny was seduced into joining Mayfield's new label, Curtom, as in-house arranger and writer for acts like The Impressions, The Five Stairsteps and Holly Maxwell. Even the man who created Superfly was surprised by what he'd signed: "To see him there in the studio at about 21 years of age, directing all these real big session guys like he'd been doing it for years, was a tremendous sight to see. But he always believed in himself. He wasn't conceited about it, but he knew he could do anything these guys could do, and almost certainly better. I'd have loved to sign him as an artist, but it wasn't to be."

Instead, in 1969, Hathaway joined Jerry Wexler and Ahmet Ertegun's Atlantic Records. In 1970, "The Ghetto" was released, featuring both his wife, Eulaulah, and crying eight-month-old daughter, Laylah: it was a huge R&B hit. The album which followed, Everything Is Everything, attracted huge acclaim for its merging of classical, jazz and gospel styles.

Then, in 1972, Wexler's suggestion that Donny team up with another of his old college friends, Roberta Flack, for an album of duets, paid commercial dividends. A single, the almost cocktail lounge-smooth "Where Is The Love", was an international Top 10 pop hit, rocketing the Roberta & Donny album to the top of the American album charts. It provided the platform for a slew of Hathaway solo releases throughout the rest of the year, including a superb live album, and his entry to the blaxploitation movie soundtrack archives, Come Back Charleston Blue, which Donny wrote, arranged and performed under the guidance of Quincy Jones. The stage was set for what many regard as Hathaway's masterwork, 1973's Extension Of A Man.

"As its title suggests," says Roberta Flack, "that album showed all the facets of Donny's talents. One of my favourite tracks by him is 'Come Little Children'. It's basically a call'n'holler song, like the slaves in the fields would sing, and yet Donny made it 5/4 - not a rhythm you'd associate with Afro-Americans at all. He could combine the church and the secular like nobody else. I was just glad the record company didn't make him sit on top of some 'rose garden' type strings, like they did to Sam Cooke."

She adds: "There was no end to what he would try. We had learned about writing a tone poem as the opening to a piece of music at college - but black people were not supposed to do that in their own music. So, in 'I Love The Lord (He Heard My Cry)', he put it right there at the opening of the album, as first track. He wouldn't be contained."

Copyright 1999 Newspaper Publishing PLC
The Independent (London)

February 26, 1999

$$$

Here's a recent article on Lalah (from Baltimore Sun):

Hathaway sings honest, straight-up music from the soul
Soul singer appearing at Rams Head Wednesday

---
By Rashod D. Ollison
Sun Pop Music Critic
Originally published January 22, 2004

She looks like him: round face, full lips, haunting eyes. And when she sings, there's more than a hint of him in her vocal texture - the honeyed smokiness, the bluesy phrasing. Lalah Hathaway, the oldest daughter of late soul great Donny Hathaway, has been told many times, "You sound just like your daddy."

But she doesn't believe it.

"All my life people have told me how they have admired my father," says Hathaway, who's calling from her cell phone in a Los Angeles boutique. "Singers I know - Luther Vandross, Stevie Wonder, lots of singers - rank him up there with the top. I think he'd be tickled pink that Justin Timberlake is going around saying, 'Donny Hathaway is my favorite singer.' But, no, I don't really think I sound like him. I don't hear it, anyway."

The soul-jazz singer, who plays Rams Head Tavern Wednesday night , was 9 years old when her father leapt to his death from the 15th floor window of Manhattan's posh Essex House hotel on Jan. 13, 1979. Perhaps best known for his smash '70s duets with Roberta Flack ("Where is the Love," "You've Got a Friend," "The Closer I Get to You") and his oft-sampled first solo hit, 1970's "The Ghetto," Donny was, to many, a musical genius whose church-inspired, classically trained piano style and intense, from-the-soul-pits vocals have been widely imitated but unmatched. (Even Stevie Wonder, especially after 1972's Music of My Mind, and George Benson clearly took a few vocal licks from Donny.)

Artists from today's "neo-soul" movement - India.Arie, Jill Scott, Alicia Keys, Glenn Lewis - often mention the legend as a chief influence. In a recent video, Musiq even rocks a T-shirt emblazoned with Donny's image.

But Lalah Hathaway, who's set to release a new album this spring, doesn't plan to do a full tribute-to-dad project a la Natalie Cole - well, not anytime soon.

"At some point, I'm going to do something like a tribute, I guess - not what Natalie did, because she's already done that," she says. "I'll think about something else. I don't think that [my father] has gotten what he deserves on the tribute tip. But it's great that he is getting recognized here and there for the 15 minutes he was with us."

In the early '90s, before the rise of Mary J. Blige, it looked as if Lalah Hathaway would be the next big thing in R&B, a striking woman who melded the emotional realism of classic soul with the up-front, edgy attitude of hip-hop. Her 1990 self-titled debut garnered critical acclaim and spawned two radio hits: "Heaven Knows" and "Baby Don't Cry." But four years passed before the artist followed it up with A Moment, which also snagged favorable attention and featured a smokin' jam, the keyboard-driven "Let Me Love You."

But Hathaway never really built upon the momentum. With the emergence of such sassy powerhouses as Blige, Toni Braxton and Erykah Badu, the young artist basically faded into obscurity.

But in recent years, Hathaway has resurfaced on stellar projects with Marcus Miller, Meshell Ndegeocello and the great Joe Sample. (Her duet album with the legendary Crusaders' pianist, 1999's The Song Lives On, is a pop-jazz masterpiece.) And her image is a little funkier these days: no more long weaves. The clothes are thrift-store-eclectic chic, and dreadlocks fall past her shoulders.

"I haven't exactly had that commercial success where people go, 'Oh, yeah, that's Lalah Hathaway," the singer says. "But regardless of that, I've been working quite a bit - a lot of touring every year with Joe Sample or Marcus Miller or on my own."

Referring to her tense relationship with Virgin, her old label, the artist says, "I just wanted to be at a place where I had creative control and some dignity. That's important to me. Major labels are like ad agencies now. The consumer doesn't need all that prepackaging, especially with soul music."

Her long-awaited follow-up to A Moment will be issued by the independent Mesa Blue Moon label and will feature production by Mike City, best known for his work on Sunshine Anderson's modern soul classic "Heard It All Before."

"The record is still pretty much me," Hathaway says. "There's not a gimmick. I wish I could say that, but it's not. It's just straight-up, honest music from the soul."

And in that respect, she's every bit her daddy's girl.

Copyright © 2004, The Baltimore Sun | Get home delivery

Thanks for this, Harle. I miss Donnie so much and the folks are right about Lalah's album with Joe Sample. It is a masterpiece.

Donny along with Phyliss Hyman never got the recognition that they deserve.

If I ever get rich I would love to have a Broadway play or a film based on Donny's life called: "I Love The Lord -He Heard My Cry" which Donny recorded on "Extensions Of A Man"

Two great Chaka songs that need to stay on repeat in the CD player are "Quandry" and "This Crazy Life Of Mine"

Peace and Positivity
Cran