Rhino / Wea
2004
These Songs For You, Live!
About This Album
Few musicians gave more to their audience than Donny Hathaway. Capable of leading the section or letting the crowd take him away, a man whose sensuality oozed out of him on-stage but who also aired his struggles with despair and social unrest, Hathaway really had no comparison in soul music, or even pop music in total. (His closest kin, Sam Cooke, was the only one who possessed a similarly transcendent voice, gloriously simple yet with enormous depth.) Fans of latter-day soul music's most cathartic figure previously had two avenues to enjoy Hathaway in a live context: the brilliant original album Live from 1972 and the valuable document In Performance, issued in 1980 after his suicide (perhaps the most tragic death in pop history). Atlantic/Rhino's breathtaking compilation These Songs for You, Live! combines roughly half of those LPs and bolsters the program with six unreleased tracks (only some from the same concerts) and an interview. The results prove that, arranging skills aside, Donny Hathaway reached his peak facing not a mixing board but an audience of living (and often screaming) people. Compilation producers Dave Nathan and Barry Benson start out with a pair of light pieces, Hathaway originals "Flying Easy" and "Valdez in the Country," before beginning the heart of the disc, a selection of inspired covers.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,5,6,8,11,12 and 13)

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