Editor’s Note: The Albumism staff has selected what we believe to be the 50 Greatest Live Albums of All Time, representing a varied cross-section of genres, styles and time periods. Click “Next Album” below to explore each album or view the full album index here.
DONNY HATHAWAY | Live
Atlantic (1972)
Selected by Brandon Ousley
At the dawn of the 1970s, Donny Hathaway solidified his place as one of soul’s golden brass with his gospel-charged voice and exceptional musical chops. While he recorded a series of accomplished studio albums that evinced commendable portraits of his virtuosity, his live performances fully captured the commitment and intensity in his artistry.
Sandwiching together his legendary 1971 stints at Hollywood’s famed Troubadour and New York’s beloved Bitter End, Live is a life-affirming tour-de-force that vividly distills the emotional heft and artistic instincts that fueled Hathaway’s genius. The sinewy, soul-jazz dynamism Hathaway mines before an ecstatic crowd, alongside his band of peerless musicians, including bass vets Philip Upchurch and Willie Weeks, guitarists Mike Howard and Cornell Dupree, percussionist Earl DeRouen, and drummer Fred White (who later joined Earth, Wind & Fire), is warmly intimate as it’s tantalizingly electric. Besides the timeless music, what’s even more seductive is Hathaway’s engaged interaction with his audience. Both parties communicate through an exchange of energy.
During a 12-minute take of his searing funk ode to inner-city life, “The Ghetto,” Hathaway orchestrates the crowd’s impulses with his elastic Fender Rhodes stabs, as they excitedly soul-clap and wail to his every command. The sprawling, 11-minute rendering of “Voices Inside (Everything is Everything)” takes on a more spontaneous air of energy and improvisation. The funk-drenched jamming amongst Hathaway’s band gets looser and uninhibited. Yells, grunts, and screams soak up the entire space, evoking the spirit of a down-home, congregational jubilee.
On his impassioned cover of Carole King’s “You’ve Got a Friend,” the frenzied audience anchors the chorus of the song as Hathaway soulfully guides them. Even during the set’s most understated sequence, “Little Ghetto Boy,” “We’re Still Friends,” and his extraordinary cover of John Lennon’s “Jealous Guy,” one can instantly tell that Hathaway is drawing the crowd closer to the vulnerable qualities of not only his musical prowess, but his tortured psyche.
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