Donny Hathaway — The Ghetto
Live · 1972
Label: Atlantic · Genre: Soul / Deep Soul · Country: USA · From: Hollywood, CA, North America
Donny Hathaway's Live is widely considered the greatest live soul album ever recorded, captured across two nights in 1971 at the Troubadour in Hollywood and the Bitter End in New York. Hathaway transforms every song he touches — Marvin Gaye, John Lennon's Jealous Guy — into something more raw and communal than the originals. His electric piano playing on The Ghetto runs to eleven minutes, driven by the audience, with Hathaway feeding off their energy until the whole room becomes the instrument.
Did you know: Donny Hathaway recorded the Live album in two nights at the Troubadour in Los Angeles and the Bitter End in New York in 1971. He played piano, sang, and held the room with almost no rehearsal. Hathaway suffered from severe paranoid schizophrenia throughout his career; he died in 1979 after falling from the fifteenth floor of the Essex House hotel in New York. He was 33.
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