*On Sunday, September 8, I attended a charity event for the 988 Suicide Lifeline billed as “Heart & Soul: A Musical Tribute to The Life and Times of Donny Hathaway” at The Orpheum Theater in downtown Los Angeles.
Going in, I was under the impression it would be a collection of artists singing his songs. I was misinformed. It also included dramatizations. So, for over a week afterward, I’ve had to reflect long and hard about how to best write about this presentation.
Full disclosure, I have been adoring Donny’s music since I was 7 when the Donny Hathaway Live album was released in 1972 and my parents had it in the house. It remains among my all-time favorite albums and definitive as live albums go. He was an artist of pure genius who composed music, played keyboards, possessed a rich knowledge of Black and European music history, and was hands down among the greatest interpreters of songs the industry has ever known – in Jazz, Gospel, Blues, Soul, and Pop.
Professionally, I had the honor of writing liner note essays for four Hathaway CDs: deluxe reissues of his studio albums Everything is Everything, Donny Hathaway, and Extension of a Man, plus the concert compilation, These Songs For You, Live. I interviewed a plethora of people in Donny’s life for these essays – some no longer here – making my writings essential reading for anyone wanting to know more about him. When I composed them in the `90s, very little was in print about his life. Now, there are documentaries, many magazines, and internet articles.
To begin, the show was put together for a worthy cause. The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is a swiftly developing service offering emergency counseling for people on the brink of mental health and stability issues. Before the show began, actress Sarah Gilman gave a moving testimony about how Didi Hersch Mental Health Services and the 988 Lifeline saved her life during a period of darkness in her life.
Now, when it comes to Donny Hathaway, the night of January 13, 1979, when his life came to an end from out of a 15th-floor window of the J.W. Marriott Essex Hotel in New York, he was alone. Though he had been acting strangely and giving handlers cryptic messages, it is not absolutely known whether he fell or jumped. Investigations ruled out homicide as no other person was present. However, it is understood that Donny was dealing with depression and paranoid schizophrenia – mental health issues that at the time were sorely under-researched and with minimal treatment options. Though much progress has been made today in treating mental illness, it is tragic that the world lost such a gifted individual largely due to a lack of foreknowledge.
The script for the series of monologues that comprise “Heart & Soul” was co-written by Gary Stockdale and Kevin Wachs. Though several characters were clearly intended to be Roberta Flack, Donny’s Grandmother Martha Cromwell, other music industry heavyweights and, of course, Donny himself, a disclaimer in the program read, “The characters and events depicted in this theatrical presentation are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.”
My biggest problem with the way the story was told is that it made Donny seem like an always dark and troubled figure. Singer/Actor Terrell Edwards (a co-producer of the show) spent all his stage time shuffling around a decrepit room, sleeping in the same clothes for days and mostly sleeping. Though this play seems to take place near the end of his life, Donny was livelier as a man at times in his life, full of creative energy, good humor, and competitive musical vigor.
More disturbing is that the script lays the majority of Donny’s mental suffering at the feet of pressures he was getting from “the music business” hassling him with not just new music but music that was more commercial, sexier, and less churchy. Donny’s “trying times” were so much bigger than this, stemming back to issues of his physical appearance, literally hearing voices, and other more sensitive personal issues. Making the music industry the primary culprit was a pat and patently amateurish way to corral his sorrows.
The setup of the show was basically a character taking the stage to share a ruminating monologue about Donny followed by a singer walking on stage to sing one of his songs. The singers, interestingly, were male and female, and of wide-ranging cultural backgrounds. Each handled the songs with varying degrees of success… Best were Sean Holt singing “I Love You More Than You’ll Ever Know,” Lamont Van Hook singing “A Song For You,” Andy Vargas doing the breezy “Love, Love, Love,” Nia Padilla opening the show with “You Were Made For Me,” and the duo of Carly Smithson and Brooke White singing “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother.” The legendary Freda Payne closed Act 1 with the melancholy “For All We Know” but seemed unusually out of sorts this night. Roberta Freeman (in a Roberta Flack-like role) sang two duets. “Where is the Love” with Vargas found her fumbling lyrics and missing the emotional mark. She fared better with Van Hook in Act 2 singing “The Closer I Get To You.”
The man of the hour didn’t get his turn to sing until the very end…but was well worth the wait. Terrell Edwards backed by a choir gave you goosebumps with his rendition of the life-affirming “Someday We’ll All Be Free,” one of only three songs in this show that Donny composed the music for with lyricists. [Note: the others, “This Christmas” and “The Ghetto,” were played instrumentally.] Terrell definitely looked the part with his portly shape, dark brown skin and applejack cap. And he winningly belted his feature to the rafters.
The encore finale was an all-cast version of “I Believe In Music.”
Kudos were in order for veteran actors Monica Calhoun who played “Grand Martha,” Rob Morrow who played a stereotypically insensitive “Record Exec,” Joshua Triplett who played an anonymous “Record Producer” (James Mtume, perhaps), and Jaidyn Triplett who did triple duty playing Donny’s three (unnamed) daughters (Lalah, Kenya and Donnita). The two hurdles for Jaidyn were that because it was not clear she was playing three different girls, you had to be really sharp to figure it out – a scripting problem. It was also troublesome that her vocal inflections, body language, and a single costume made it feel like one person.
The one group that deserves gold stars is the crack set of musicians who backed all for the program: guitarist/MD Steve Postell, bassist Leland Sklar, drummer Herman Matthews, keyboardist Kenneth Crouch and sax/percussionist Sean Holt. This production is a work in progress and pops up for performances in varying scenarios. A tighter script and more story clarity will greatly improve its fortunes as time moves on.
MORE NEWS ON EURWEB.COM: Songwriter Shares Backstory Behind Donny Hathaway’s Holiday Classic ‘This Christmas’
The post Charity Event For Suicide Lifeline Pays Well-Intended Yet Uneven Tribute To Music Legend Donny Hathaway appeared first on EURweb.