Classic Soul Triple-Play: Donny Hathaway

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    Classic Soul Triple-Play is a SoulTracks feature that spotlights three songs from some of our favorite all time artists. And SoulTrackers have voted on their top three songs for one of the most influential singer/songwriters of the past half century: the great Donny Hathaway

    Biography

    Classic Soul Triple-Play is a SoulTracks feature that spotlights three songs from some of our favorite all time artists. And SoulTrackers have voted on their top three songs for one of the most influential singer/songwriters of the past half century: the great Donny Hathaway

    Biography

    Though his recording career was quite brief, Donny Hathaway has continued to be one of the most influential soul artists of the last four decades. The longevity of and increase in his popularity is due in large part to the rare combination of gifts he possessed: He was a talented songwriter with the ability to write songs that provided, in a secular format, the depth of the most heartfelt Gospel music; and he was a remarkable song stylist who defined (or redefined) nearly every song he touched in his brief career. His death by an apparent suicide was news in 1979, but it has loomed ever larger since then, and one wonders whether his already strong influence on R&B would have been truly singular if he had lived through the entirety of his creative cycle.

    Raised in St. Louis and reared in the church, Hathaway was a child prodigy, singing and playing piano at a very young age...Read Full Biography

    So check out this week's SoulTracks Classic Soul Triple-Play for Donny: "A Song For You," "Someday We'll All Be Free" and "This Christmas"