A Song for Donny
Good Morning Tom, Sybil, and Jay.
Tom, as a DJ and a man of music, you know how much music can serve as the sound track for our lives…
Whenever something important, wonderful or tragic occurs, we usually can remember it by a particular song or artist who spoke to what we were going through at that time…
Political and social movements and events are no different… We often recall and try to understand such movements through the music and musicians of a particular era…
While I don’t know what future generations of scholars will make of Jay’s murdered hits, music is often the best history book.
And, 65 years ago this week, a history-making musician was born.
Although born in Chicago, little Donny Pitts was raised in the projects of St. Louis by his grandmother. He was a musical prodigy, playing the piano in church, and singing and amazing all within earshot of his rare talent…
In the 1960s, he’d win a scholarship to Howard University where he’d take the school and the local arts community by storm performing with the Ric Powell Trio under his birth name, Donny Hathaway…
But before he could graduate, Sybil, the late great Curtis Mayfield, recognized this young talent and brought him back to Chicago where he began his legendary solo career…
His first major release, The Ghetto, was a socially conscious and critically acclaimed tune that spoke to the blight and desperation of black inner city America… The popular song continues to be relevant, often sampled by a number of current artists.
But unfortunately, Jay –like the subject matter of his song– Donny suffered from some serious troubles himself… He battled with paranoid schizophrenia, a serious condition marked by hallucinations and depression that required strong medication with potent side effects…
Even so, his star kept rising… in the latter part of the 1970’s, he released the holiday standard, This Christmas, that, to this day, is a popular classic most recently performed by Chris Brown in the movie of the same name…
Not long after that, Donny would reunite with Howard University friend and classmate, Roberta Flack, to collaborate on a number of 70s hits including the Grammy-winning, Where is the Love?
But his problems would resurface… Because of his illness, maintaining relationships with friends and family became an increasingly difficult thing to do…
Including Flack… The two fell out in the mid-70s and didn’t reunite until 1978 to record the timeless ballad, The Closer I Get You… Though the song was a success, things got worse for Donny…
On January 13th, 1979, while at a recording session, he began acting irrationally, ending the session… Hours later, his crumpled body was found on the sidewalk below the window of his 15th-floor room in New York’s Essex House hotel, dead from an apparent suicide…
The Rev. Jesse Jackson eulogized the 33-year old a week later…
Despite his tragic death, his presence continues to be felt through his music…
Tom, I don’t know how anyone could ever listen to and not feel the deep emotion of Hathaway’s A Song for You… It’s simply one of the most beautiful, haunting and poignant songs ever written…
With his unique and flawless vocals, he had a way of speaking to our soul as a community, reflecting our emotions, our tragedies and our triumphs…
And who could ever forget Spike Lee’s use of Hathaway’s optimistic classic, Someday We’ll All Be Free, at the end of the 1992 movie Malcolm X…?
It was a beautiful way of letting us know that no matter what dark roads we have traveled, someday, we’re gonna get there, to that better place, beyond the hardships, beyond the drama…
So when you’re relaxing this weekend, maybe you’ll kick back and put on something by Donny and reflect on his music, his life and what he shared with us for the brief time he was here…
I’ll leave you with the words he sang so poignantly:
“Keep on walking tall, hold your head up high
Lay your dreams right up to the sky
Sing your greatest song
And you’ll keep, going, going on…
Take it from me, someday, we’ll all be free.”
Until Next Time, this is Stephanie in Love and Hope.
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