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Donny Hathaway: Angels, Demons, and Unexplained Visions · DISGRACELAND

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Please check the show notes for more information. Disgrayland is
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: a production of Double Elvis. This is the story about
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Donnie Hathaway, a singer, a songwriter, and a performer so
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: inspiring that he made Stevie Wonder change the way that
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: he sang. He made Amy Weinhouse name check him in
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: her lyrics, and he compelled other musical giants Ray Charles
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: and Aretha Franklin to stand up and take notice. But
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: this is also a story about madness, about angels and demons,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: about paranormal phenomena, a haunting in a studio, the mysterious
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: death of a young talent, and about soul, the essence
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: of one soul, and about soul music great music. Donnie
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Hathaway made great music, unlike that loop I played for
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: you at the top of the show that was not
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: great music. That was a preset loop from my melotron
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: called seven Deadly Sins MK One. I played you that
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: loop because I can't afford the rights to too much
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Heaven by the Begis. And why would I play you
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: that specific slice of brothers in Harmony Cheese? Could I
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: afford it because that was the number one song in
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: America on January thirteenth, nineteen seventy nine, and that was
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: the day Soul singer Donnie Hathaway's body was found dead
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: on the sidewalk fifteen stories below was rented Hotel World
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: on this episode Madness, Angels, Demons, paranormal phenomena, a studio haunting,
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: and the death of Soul singer Donnie Hathaway. I'm Jake Brennan,
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: and this this disgraceland. And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went unto
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: the High Priest and desired of him letters to Damascus,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: to the synagogues, that if he found any of this way,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: whether they were men or women, he might bring them
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: bound unto Jerusalem. And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: and suddenly there shined round about him, alight from heaven.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: And he fell to the earth and heard a voice
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: he said, who art thou Lord? And the Lord said,
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: I am Jesus whom thou persecuted. It is hard for
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: thee to kick against the pricks, and he trembled and astonished,
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: said Lord, what would thou have me do? And the
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: Lord said, unto him, arise and go into the city,
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: and it shall be told thee what thou must do.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: a voice, but seeing no man. And Saul arose from
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: the earth. And when his eyes were opened, he saw
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: no man. But they led him by the hand and
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: brought him into Damascus. That, of course, was a passage
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: from the Bible, from the New Testament. King James Version,
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: specifically Acts chapter nine, verses one through eight, one of
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: three tellings in the Bible of the story of Saul,
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: a man who had threatened violence against Christians, a man
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: who was on his way to carry out that violence,
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: but who suddenly had a vision in the middle of
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: the desert. This blindingly bright vision came not from the sun,
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: but from behind the sun, a light from heaven, a
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: light so strong it literally struck him face down onto
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: the ground, shaking, convulsing, Compelled to change his ways and
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: to change his name from Saul to Paul. Not only
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: did he convert to Christianity, but he became one of
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: the disciples. All because of this luminous phenomena, Saul aka
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: Paul literally saw the light. The man he was traveling with, however,
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: heard a voice, but saw nothing, perhaps because Saul had
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  Speaker 1: a gift that the others did not possess, a li
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: allowing him to see beyond the veil of our everyday
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  Speaker 1: reality and into another, a hidden reality that almost two
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  Speaker 1: thousand years later in nineteen hundred, the Canadian psychiatrist doctor
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  Speaker 1: Richard M. Buck, longtime friend of Walt Whitman, by the way,
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: explained this reality like this quote. There has lived on
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  Speaker 1: the Earth for thousands of years among ordinary men, the
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: first faint beginnings of another race, walking the Earth and
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  Speaker 1: breathing the air with us, but at the same time
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: walking another earth and breathing air of which we know
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  Speaker 1: little or nothing unquote Saul aka Paul circa thirty three
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  Speaker 1: a d. And Doctor Richard M. Buck at the turn
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  Speaker 1: of the twentieth century. Nowadays, there are still true believers
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  Speaker 1: here in twenty twenty four, looking to the sky for
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: signs of intelligent life from another planet, a topic that
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  Speaker 1: has recently been investigated in depth at the highest reaches
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  Speaker 1: of the United States government, and look I'm not saying
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  Speaker 1: that Paul was visited by aliens out in the desert
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  Speaker 1: on his way to Damascus, because I'm not talking about extraterrestrials.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: I'm talking about ultraterrestrials, beings that, to paraphrase doctor Buck,
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  Speaker 1: walk the earth and breathe the air with us. Angels,
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  Speaker 1: not Michael and Gabriel, but other interdimensional angels demons too,
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  Speaker 1: some helpful, others harmful, but all of them invisible to
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  Speaker 1: the majority of us, mere mortals. Because we use what
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  Speaker 1: ten percent of our brains, thirty percent, whatever the number,
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: we don't use our brains to their full capacity. But
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: if we did, if we possess that extrasensorary equipment that
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: a minor portion of the population allegedly possesses, we would
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  Speaker 1: be able to see beyond the spectrum of visible light,
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: to the so called spectrum where strange things, strange figures
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: roam free by our sides, day in and day out,
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: or so say paranormal eupologists or UFO experts, types like
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  Speaker 1: author John Keel, who published a book in nineteen seventy
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  Speaker 1: five called The Eighth Tower, a book in which a
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: lot of what I've just laid out comes from there
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  Speaker 1: exists in this book a desire to make sense of
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  Speaker 1: not just UFOs and alien abductions, but of other strange
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: phenomena like ghosts, Bigfoot, the Lockness Monster, and of course,
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  Speaker 1: to bring us back to where we started religion. God.
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  Speaker 1: John Keel writes about all these things as a mass
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  Speaker 1: of energy tethered to our universe, an energy that we
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  Speaker 1: are unable to see because of the distortion of electrical
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: energy in our everyday lives radio waves, phone lines, microwaves, generators.
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  Speaker 1: But this energy that we are unable to see, this
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  Speaker 1: super spectrum, it is powerful enough to shut down our clocks,
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  Speaker 1: our watches, our cars, as routinely happens in many reports
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  Speaker 1: of supposed alien contact. It controls us like pawns at
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: a cosmic game, and it radiates. We are at the
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: mercy of luminous phenomena which you probably can't see, but
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: you can read about. And in the nineteen seventies people
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: read about it a lot, books like The Eighth Tower,
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: or perhaps more likely, books like The Mothman Prophecies. John
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  Speaker 1: Keel's other books from nineteen seventy five, which was actually
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: a bestseller, the failed hippie movement, Watergate Vietnam. This decade
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: was the time when Americans were desperate for meaning in
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: the New Age, so to speak, the metaphysical, the occult,
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: all these hot button topics at the time, they filled
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: the void to provide meaning for days. But whether or
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: not you believed in it had a lot to do
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  Speaker 1: with whether or not you could see it. So nineteen
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: seventy New York City, back to a time and place
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  Speaker 1: that we normally traffick in. Here in disgrace slam the
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: music industry, and the only thing that band leader and
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: session man King Curtis could see was his own reflection
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: in the closed doors of the elevator. That and the
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: reflection of the guys standing next to him as the
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  Speaker 1: elevator made its way up. The guy was wearing a
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: polyester jacket, turtleneck and a big floppy cap. And King
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: Curtis was one of those secret weapon type musicians. He
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: made his own records, of course, records for Jerry Wexler
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: and Atlantic Records, but he was also the go to
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  Speaker 1: guy when an R and B or soul artist needed
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: a saxophone player. Sam Cook, Jimmy Hendrix, Aretha Franklin, King
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  Speaker 1: Curtis played with them all and like his megawat Peers,
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: King Curtis had an ear for talent, talent possessed by
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: the likes of this dude standing right here next to
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: him now looking straight ahead by see very shy, not talking,
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: but nonetheless humming to himself, and not just some random,
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: pointless melody. He was humming along to the elevator motor,
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  Speaker 1: matching the motor's pitch perfectly, as perfect as this guy's
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: voice was sounding right now while he hummed, a voice
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: that was tapped into the kind of frequency that even
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: eluded an industry veteran like King Curtis. So King was
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: absolutely mesmerized. Hey man, you got a name. The dude
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: in the big floppy hat with the perfect pitch, said
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: Donnie Hathaway. Donny Hathaway didn't just have a name or
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: a voice, he had a demo recording of his own material,
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  Speaker 1: like the song the Ghetto, a nearly seven minute Afro
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  Speaker 1: Latin style grove that grooved hard. King Curtis couldn't believe
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  Speaker 1: how good the song was, and he couldn't get into
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  Speaker 1: Jerry Wexer's hands at Atlantic Records fast enough. Jerry King
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  Speaker 1: Curtis said, after he rushed into Wexer's place. Something great
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: neck Long Island. You got to check this kid out.
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  Speaker 1: Donnie Hathaway is his name. He's as good as Marvin,
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: He's as good as Ray, but on a whole different level.
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  Speaker 1: Jerry wondered what King Curtis meant by that, But he
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: listened to the demo and then he met the cat
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  Speaker 1: with a big floppy hat, and suddenly it all made sense.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: Donnie Hathaway wasn't just an incredible new talent. Donnie Hathaway
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  Speaker 1: heard and saw things that others never could. When Donnie
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  Speaker 1: Hathaway's debut album, Everything Is Everything was released in July
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: of nineteen seventy on the Atlantic record subsidiary AGC Records,
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  Speaker 1: it wasn't a major hit, but a quick became your
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: favorite artist's favorite album. Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin were
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: instant fans. Carol King bought eight copies to give to
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: her friends, and ditto for Stevie Wonder, who was so
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  Speaker 1: blown away by Donnie's voice that he actually changed how
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  Speaker 1: he sang. This totally checks out, by the way, Go
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: listen to Stevie Wonder before Donnie Hathaway hit the scene,
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: and then compare it to how he sang afterward, starting
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: with Stevie's classic album Talking Book, released a year after
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: Donnie's debut. Stevie's suddenly pulling off these incredible vocal tricks
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: that you can directly trace back to Donnie Hathaway. But
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: before Everything is Everything, before Stevie, before Carol King, before
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: King Curtis, there was another Curtis, Curtis Mayfield. Curtis Mayfield
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: was coming off of his tenure leading his R and
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: B group, The Impressions. It was now transitioning into a
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: solo career and he desperately needed some extra creative muscle
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: at his newly formed Curdam Records. Donnie Hathaway was already
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: something of a known quantity. He was once a child prodigy.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: At just four years old, he was touring the gospel
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: circuit as Little Donnie Pitts, a kid who was already
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: hearing complex arrangements in his head at a young age,
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: arrangements said he could not yet translate onto a page.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: Then he stole the spotlight when he played in the
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: Rick Powell trio. He played piano and he sang around Washington,
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: d c. And clubs while attending Howard University. Now Howard
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: University was prestigious, but in Donnie Hathaway's eyes, Curdham Records
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: was even more so. So he dropped out of school
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: for his first real gig in the business, writing, producing
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: and performing for Curtis Mayfield. Donnie Hathaway was AllMusic all
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: the time. He thought about it, he dreamed about it.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: It oozed out of him every time he opened his mouth,
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: and not just one particular genre. He dug music in totality,
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: to use his own words, from the Lowes blues to
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: the highest symphony, no lowbrow, highbrow, bullshit classification either. Everything
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: was everything. He could hear it all, he could explain it, all,
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: he could arrange it all, all that beautiful music saturating
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: his brain. That was the kind of thing that you
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: could not be taught. That's why they called it soul music,
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: because it came from somewhere inside of you. Soul music
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: was in essence, your essence, and Donnie Hathaway embodied this essence.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: Making music came as easy to Donnie as did his
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: ability to tell on something. And the music was off
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: even in the slightest, even when it came to a
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: veteran player like drummer Al Jackson Junior, who played for
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: the legendary Stax House Bam Booker T and the MGS.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: There was a recording session with Donnie for his self
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: titled sophomore album, and Al Jackson was playing great as always.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: He was a living legend behind the drums. But Donnie
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: could hear something that no one else in the room could.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: Al's timing was just slightly off Al. Donnie said, when
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: you come in on the one, you got to come
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: in like this. Donnie demonstrated, and Al Jackson made the correction,
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: and a few bars later, Donnie heard Al's time slip
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: again and again. He asked him the drummer, to tighten
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: up a minor piece of guidance that made a major
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: difference in the long run. It was all there in
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: Donnie's ears and in Donnie's head, and he could hear
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: the good things and the bad. But not just music,
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: not just drums that were off time. There were voices,
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: voices that only Donnie could hear, people people that only
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: Donnie could see. One was inside his television set, and
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: I'm not talking about a news anchor or an actor
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: on a primetime sitcom. Donnie turned the big dial in
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: the front of the TV to change the station, but
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: stopped on the static in between the stations, almost like
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: it was calling to him. Black and white fuzz dancing
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: like bugs on the surface of a lake, distortion electrical energy,
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: humming and buzzing. The static percolated white noise. They called
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: it the kind of thing that soothed some people and
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: bugged the shit out of others. To Donnie, it was
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: mostly rhythmic. He began to seek out the pulse, the
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: beat propelling the static inside the television box. After all,
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: everything was everything so white. Noise blaring from a tiny
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: television speaker could be music. But soon there was more
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: than sound. There was a face. He could make it
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: out behind the veil of fuzz, trying to break on through,
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: like it was stuck behind a window and wanted desperately
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: to be seen, to be heard. No one else sitting
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: on the couch next to Donnie took notice of what
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: was happening, But the figure inside the TV was now moving,
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: its mouth, blinking its eyes. The glow from the screen
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: became brighter and brighter, until it was nearly blinding. Donnie
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: thought about angels, not people, good virtue, but spiritual attendance
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: messengers of God, about how their visitations in the Bible
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: were often met with the same sort of bright light
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: leanness phenomena. He thought about being a kid. He thought
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: about being raised in the church. He thought about being
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: raised on the gospel circuit, touring the Midwest with the
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: woman who took care of him, his grandmother, a professional
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: gospel singer, Donnie Hathaway aka Little Donnie Pitts one hell
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: of a singer, but also one hell of a preacher.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: Then he thought of the path that he had not taken.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: He thought about how he chose life of secular music
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: over a life of the gospel, thought that he turned
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: his back on religion, far from it. Leading a crowd
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: through a transcendent live music experience was a lot like
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: leading a congregation through an impassioned sermon. But for Donnie's
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: grandmother R and B soul music, it wasn't Christian. It
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: was the opposite of Christian. It was a life of
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: sin and unholiness. And it crushed Donnie Hathaway to think
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: that his preferred career choice had driven a wedge between
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: him and his grandmother. So he took comfort in this
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: figure appearing inside of his television set, which was finally
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: beginning to speak to him. And the voice wasn't a
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: man's or a woman's. He didn't know if it was human,
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: but it was a gentle voice, the kind it reassured him,
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: and he returned the favor, speaking softly to this strange
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: figure so clearly visible to him, now softly enough that
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: no one else in the woman could hear what he
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: was saying. And then her voice stopped, and the figure
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: was gone. All that was left was the glow of
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: the screen and the harsh sound of the television static. Hey, Donnie,
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: his friend said, sitting next to him. You okay. Donnie
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: turned to look at his friend. Yeah, man, okay. Donnie
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: wasn't just okay. He was confident, not just in his voice,
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: but in the music he was making, like a self
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: titled sophomore record that went higher on the R and
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: B chart than his debut, and not in the causes
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: that he was now giving back to you, as any
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: performing artist on the come up would. Helping to raise
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: money for the Fred Hampton Legal Assistant Scholarship Fund for
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: the National Black Political Convention. An activist in Reverend Jesse
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: Jackson's operation push. Donnie was confident that what he'd just experienced,
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: the conversation he'd just had with someone in the television static,
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: was absolutely, unequivocally real. We'll be right back after this.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: We're We're, We're. Marvin Gaye was confused. He was at
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: his studio on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, not far
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: from where Donnie Hathaway had recently recorded the A side
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: of his new album, Donnie Hathaway Live. And Donnie recorded
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: this to a packed house inside Doug Weston's Troubadour nightclub.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: But Marvin was now listening to that album, specifically to
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: the opening song What's Going On, a song that Marvin
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: could have sworn he wrote and originally performed not even
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: a year prior. But here was Donnie Hathaway singing it,
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: and not just singing it, but owning it, killing it,
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: not just the vocal, the arrangement, the shit hot solo
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: Donnie was playing on the world's piano. So, sitting in
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: his sprawling, state of the art studio, listening to the
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: record as its spawn on the turntable, Marvin could hear
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: the music not just coming from a stereo speakers, but
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: coming directly from Donnie Hathaway's Soul. The rendition of the
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: song was so good that Marvin Gave momentarily forgot that
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: he wrote it. He thought it was Donnie's song. Maybe
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: it was. Now it was nineteen seventy two, and Donnie
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: Hathaway was suddenly all the rage. There was Donnie Hathaway Live,
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: the record that was tripping up our guy, Marvin Gay
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: here and the one which pushed Donnie over the line
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: from one of the industry's best kept secrets to one
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: of its budding new stars. But there was also ROBERTA.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: Flack and Donnie Hathaway, a collection of duets with his
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: fellow Howard Alum and Good Friend, released just two months later.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: That album included the hit where Is the Love along
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: with a sublime cover of Carol King's You've Got a Friend,
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: a track which incredibly was released just one week after
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: James Taylor's equally iconic version that song. More than Marvin's
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: What's going On or Donnie's own the Ghetto lights Up
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: the Crowd. On the Donnie Hathaway Live album, Donnie plays
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: the opening notes on his World's or electric piano and
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: women shriek with delight. The audience goes on to sing
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: along to the course so loudly that they practically overtake
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: the star of the show. It's this energy and the
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: way in which Donnie Hathaway and his band feed off
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: the energy that makes Donnie Hathway Live arguably one of
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: the greatest live albums of all time, almost as good
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: as James Brown's Live at the Apollo and Johnny cash
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: Is at Fulsome Prisoner America thought so too. It was
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: Donnie's only album to go gold during his lifetime. He
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: began to get noticed in public, and while out to
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: dinner with some friends, two women at the next table
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: over recognized a handsome guy with the mustache and the
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: big floppy cat, and they giggled amongst themselves while stealing looks,
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: before eventually working up the nerve to lean over and
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: say something, Hey, aren't you Donnie cracked a smile, Yes
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: he was, and it was a pleasure to meet them both.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: And the ladies have been knocking back glasses of shardon Hay,
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: and they wanted to know if Donnie wanted to come
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: back to their place, you know, and let them take
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: care of it. Donnie was flattered, but he turned them
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: down gently flashed his wedding ring while also flashing another smile.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: But behind that smile, Donny wasn't happy. Not what the
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: music that is, specifically with how Donnie Hathaway live sounded.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: For a guy who went to great lengths to make
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: sure that the sounds he heard in his head were
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: accurately imperfectly represented in the finished product. Downy Hathaway found
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: the live album format two raw, from the lowest blues
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: to the highest symphony sher But he knew he could
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: do better. He knew he could be more polished, allish,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: like the music he wrote it conducted for the nineteen
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: seventy two film Come Back Charleston Blue, a scoring gig
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: handed to him personally by none other than the great
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: Quincy Jones. Or the music for his next project, which
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: was his third studio album that he had called Extension
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: of a Man, some of the most progressive music of
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: his still young career that pushed the boundaries of soul
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: in R and B. Even Rolling Stone Magazine noticed. They
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: called it an ambitious breakthrough album. Donnie Hathaway's ambition didn't
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: stop there. Before long, he was back in the studio,
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: back to pouring all the genius inside his brain onto
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: two inch tape on a reel, working on some new
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: tracks in a New York City studio with some new musicians,
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: including James of Twomey, a great percussion and keyboard player
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: who'd just come off a string of wild jazz rock
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: hybrid records with Miles Davis. James was in the groove now,
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: even if Donnie had a coaching to get him there
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: the way he'd done with Al Jackson Junior a few
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: years earlier. Donnie looked around the studio, musicians, engineers, a
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: tape operator making coffee, songwriter and session producer Eric Mercury James.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: The two me over there working out some nasty polyrhythms
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: on the Congress. But there was someone else too, someone
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: that Donnie didn't recognize. And that someone stood in the
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: middle of the room, surrounded by the session players that
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: Donnie had hired to cut this track, and that someone
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: was seemingly unnoticed by any of them. That someone just
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: stared at Donnie sitting there at the piano. Donnie stared back.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: The dude was a white guy. He had neat hair,
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: he was smartly dressed. He was the only Caucasian in
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: the room. He didn't speak. He didn't have to gave
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: off this vibe dread, doom or reckoning, the complete opposite
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: of the vibe given off by those women in the
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: restaurant or by the thing that Donnie saw in the television.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: This was malevolent. They wanted to hurt him. Donnie jumped
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: up from the piano bench and bolted from the studio room.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: James Matoma found him a few minutes later in another room,
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: squatting against the corner Donnie. James said, Man, what's wrong.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: Donnie was shaking James. He said, they're trying to kill me.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: Who white people? They have my brain hooked up to
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: a machine. James. They're stealing my music and my sound.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: James was shocked. He didn't know what to say or
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: how to react. He'd never seen Donny like this before,
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: and given the state that Donnie was currently in, the
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: best move in the moment seemed to be to call
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: off the recording session for the night and pick it
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: back up again a few days later. So Donnie took
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: off from the studio and he cooled out at his
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: friend ROBERTA. Flack's apartment. He had dinner, and then he
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: returned to his room on the fifteenth floor of the
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: Essex House Hotel on Central Park South. Donnie didn't mind
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: heights when he lived in Chicago, back when he worked
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: for Curtis Mayfield. Donnie used to open up his window
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: on the seventeenth floor, lean out and make a joyful noise, singing, preaching,
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it. He loved to blend
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: his natural instrument with the sights and sounds of the
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: natural world. But when he did, he was oblivious to
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: what was going on around him. Sometimes he leaned out
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: a little too far, in which case one of his
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: friends would have to grab him and pull him back
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: inside before he fell. But tonight Donny Hathaway was alone,
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: or so goes one version of the story, because it's
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: impossible to truly understand what happened that night. The night
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: that Donny Hathaway, still haunted by what he'd witnessed in
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: the recording studio, still dressed in his polyester jacket and
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: big floppy cap, fell from his open fifteenth story window
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: overlooking Central Park and died instantly when his body hit
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: the ground. Did Donnie Hathaway jump from his window in
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: the Essex House Hotel, or did he fall. So hang on,
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: before we get into that, we need to just back
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: up a quick second. First, I need to tell you
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: something about his final recording session, the one with James Mitumay,
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: in which Donnie Hathaway freaked out and said that white
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: people were trying to kill him. That session took place
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: on the day at Donnie's death, Saturday, January thirteenth, nineteen
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: seventy nine. Perhaps the more important piece of information is
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: that at the time of that session it had been
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: six years since Donnie released any music. Six years. And remember,
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: this is a guy who, from nineteen seventy to nineteen
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: seventy three put out not just three studio albums, but
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: a live album for the Ages, a collaboration with ROBERTA. Flack,
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: and a soundtrack, not to mention, one of the greatest
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: holiday jams of all time this Christmas. And then nothing
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: for six long years, nothing at all. So what was
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: Donnie Hathaway doing during those six years? Well, sometimes he
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: was performing, or attempting to. At the Cellar Door in Washington, DC.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: He sat at the keyboard, barely playing humming to himself
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: while audience members walked out one by one and demanded
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: a refund. Not a week later, he was at the
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: Village Gate in New York City, delivering a riveting show
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: with an incredible band at his back. But as the
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: highs and lows of these shows demonstrate, mostly Donnie Hathaway
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: spent those six years struggling not just with making music
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: or even navigating his newfound fame, he struggled with paranoid schizophrenia.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: As early as nineteen seventy one, before Donnie Hathaway Live
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: was even conceived, Donnie's wife, Yulela, noticed that Donnie was
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: acting strange at first, in the way that only a
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: husband or a wife would notice. Over time, it got worse,
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: and when his third studio album, Extension of a Man,
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: came out in nineteen seventy three, Donnie was hospitalized several times.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: In fact, he was taking something like fourteen different pills
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: three to four times a day, and the pills made
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: him agitated, they made him drowsy, and they affected his
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: ability to write and perform, so naturally he didn't like
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: to take them, and when he didn't take them for
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: days or weeks at a time, his illness went into overdrive.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: The figure, the voice that he saw in the TV
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: screen there was no figure and there was no voice,
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: or maybe there was. I don't know. I'm not Donnie Hathaway.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: Only Donnie Hathaway knew. But what we do know for
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: sure is that Donnie Hathaway sat on a couch with
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: a friend at his side, completely mesmerized by the distorted
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: static sizzling on the screen, black and white fuzz dancing
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: like bugs on the surface of a lake. Donnie saw something,
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: or he thought he did at least, And what about
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: those women hitting on him at the restaurant? In reality,
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: that was not women plural but woman singular. One woman
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: sitting at the table next to Donni's, a woman who
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: was not talking to Donnie. Rather, Donnie was talking to her.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: He didn't even know her. He just stopped eating and
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: conversing with the people at his table, turned to this
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: woman and said, you need to go home and take
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: care of your kids. Donnie did make the Great drummer
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: Al Jackson Junior play a take after take to get
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: his part right, to stay on time the way Donnie
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: heard it in his head. But in reality this dragged
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: on for hours and nearly drove Al Jackson crazy. And
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: at the end of that time, after all those takes
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: and after all of Donnie's notes, according to Jerry Wexler,
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: Al Jackson was not playing any differently than he was
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: playing at the start, which brings us back to Donnie's
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: final recording session on Saturday, January thirteenth, nineteen seventy nine,
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: just hours before his death. Did Donnie Hathaway see someone
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: or something in the studio that was invisible to everyone else?
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Probably not, but then again, only Donny knew. Donnie did
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: say to James Mitomy White, people have my brain hooked
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: up to a machine. And according to Eric Mercury, the
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: songwriter who was producing that day's session, Donnie also spent
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: a lot of his time talking out loud in one
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: voice and answering himself in another. So when you look
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: at Donnie Hathaway's tragic death, the official cause of that death, suicide,
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: seems to track Donnie was spooked that day, really freaked out.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: His behavior was erratic, He panicked, he removed the safety
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: glass from his hotel room window, and then he jumped,
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: suicide being one of the leading causes of death for
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: people suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. On the other hand, Donnie
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: was trying to restart his career. He had three young daughters.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: He was a major source of musical inspiration for superstars,
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: from Aretha Franklin, who had Donnie play keys on her
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: hit rock Steady, to Stevie Wonder, who co wrote the
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: song Donnie was recording on the final day of his life.
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: At Donnie's funeral, Jesse Jackson delivered the eulogy and said
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: that Donnie's death was an accident. That no man would
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: go through the preparation of putting on his jacket, scarf
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: and cap just to jump out of a window. Point
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: take in, Reverend Jackson. But no one knew exactly what
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: Donnie Hathaway heard or saw, Not in the TV set,
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: not out at dinner, not in a recording studio, and
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: certainly not on that cold January evening in his Essex
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: House hotel room. Maybe it was something invisible to the
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: rest of us, luminous phenomena. Maybe it was absolutely nothing.
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: Either way, deliberate or not, it took the tremendously talented
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: and soulful Donnie Hathaway away from us at just thirty
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: three years old. And that is a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan,
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: and this is Disgraceland. Disgraceland was created by Yours Truly.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: It is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: this episode can be found on the show notes page
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: at disgracelandpod dot com. Subscribe, follow, like, rate, and review
• 34:41
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• 34:44
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• 34:49
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• 34:52
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• 34:54
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• 34:57
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• 35:01
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• 35:06
  Speaker 1: Rock a Roll. He's a bad down man.