walking upstream…
Donny Hathaway
Donny Hathaway
Raised in a St. Louis housing project by his grandmother Martha Pitts, a professional gospel singer, Hathaway was billed by age four as "Donny Pitts, The Nation's Youngest Gospel Singer." He left Howard University in 1967, three years into a fine-arts scholarship, for Curtis Mayfield's Curtom Records — arranging, producing, and directing the Impressions' band before King Curtis heard him singing (imitating an elevator motor's pitch) and brought him to Atlantic. Jerry Wexler called him the label's "third genius," after Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles. His 1970 debut, Everything Is Everything, turned soul into open testimony; he died in 1979, thirty-three, after a fall from a New York hotel window ruled a suicide. His arrangements, especially "This Christmas," outlived the tragedy.
the sound in question
1970
This ChristmasDonny Hathaway
walk the tributaries ↓
Ray Charles1950s–60s · Soul / R&B / Gospel
Jerry Wexler didn't hedge when Atlantic signed Hathaway: "I used to think we had two geniuses on Atlantic: Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles," he said. "When Donny Hathaway signed up, I announced to one and all that I think we've found our third genius." Hathaway made the lineage audible himself, covering Charles's own "I Believe to My Soul" on his 1970 debut — a reading one critic called "raucously delirious," the same gospel-into-secular conversion Charles had pioneered two decades earlier, run back through a Baptist choir loft.
listen: upstream & heresource: SoulMusic.com — Donny Hathaway ↗
1959
I Believe to My SoulRay Charles
1970
I Believe to My SoulDonny Hathaway
listen forCharles's 1959 original rides a lurching, gospel-vamp piano figure under a voice that keeps threatening to break into a shout. Hathaway's 1970 cover pushes further still — his piano hammers harder, his vocal ad-libs pile up like a preacher losing control of the pulpit. Listen for how both versions treat the title phrase less as a lyric than as something being wrung out of the singer.
Curtis Mayfield1960s–70s · Soul / Funk / R&B
Before he had a record deal of his own, Hathaway spent two years as Curtis Mayfield's "right-hand man" at Curtom Records, directing the Impressions' band and arranging behind Mayfield's socially conscious soul sound. He named that apprenticeship directly when explaining "I Love the Lord: He Heard My Cry," the symphonic opener of his 1973 album Extension of a Man: the track was "a direct result of influence from such diverse sources as Ray Charles, Curtis Mayfield and Rachmaninoff." Leaving Curtom, he framed it in Mayfield's own terms: "like Curtis, I was an innovator and I needed to say certain things."
listen: upstream & heresource: SoulMusic.com — Donny Hathaway ↗
1965
People Get ReadyCurtis Mayfield
1973
I Love the Lord, He Heard My Cry (Pts. I & II)Donny Hathaway
listen forThe Impressions' 1965 "People Get Ready" moves like a congregation filing toward the front of a church — a hushed, unhurried gospel train built from close harmony and a single guitar figure. Hathaway's 1973 "I Love the Lord: He Heard My Cry" takes that same devotional patience and blows it out into full orchestral scale, strings and choir standing in for the Impressions' quiet vocal blend.
Nina Simone1960s · Jazz / Soul / Blues
Hathaway didn't just cover Simone's civil-rights anthem "To Be Young, Gifted and Black" once and move on — he kept performing it live for years, including a 1972 Troubadour set later released on In Performance, what scholar Mark Anthony Neal called "a testament to how the song lived among Black audiences," citing the call-and-response Hathaway's performance drew from the crowd. On the 1970 studio version, a critic wrote, "the sanctified organ, stately gospel sway and impeccable vocal performance wring every ounce of emotion from Simone's composition," until it barely sounds like a studio recording at all.
listen: upstream & heresource: Albumism — Donny Hathaway's Debut Album Everything Is Everything at 50-plus (Ray Charles and Nina Simone covers) ↗
1969
To Be Young, Gifted and BlackNina Simone
1970
To Be Young, Gifted and BlackDonny Hathaway
listen forSimone delivers the song at the piano with a classical player's restraint, her voice carrying the political weight through understatement. Hathaway rebuilds it as a church service: organ swells in, a full band answers his vocal runs, and the arrangement keeps opening up rather than holding still. Listen for how each version trusts a different instrument — Simone's bare piano, Hathaway's rising organ and choir — to carry the song's conviction.