Donny Hathaway - Extension Of A Man - RARE Original 1973 Atco Release LP in NM
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Extension of a Man Studio album by Donny Hathaway Released June 18, 1973 Recorded October 11, 1971-
November 26, 1972
A&R Recording Studios
Bell Sound, Regent Sound
Atlantic Recording Studios
(New York, New York)
Universal Studios
(Chicago, Illinois) Genre R&B/Soul Length 47:33 Label Atco
7029 Producer Arif Mardin Donny Hathaway chronology Live
1972 Extension of a Man
1973 In Performance
1980 Singles from Extension of a Man
- "Love, Love, Love"
Released: 1973 - "Come Little Children"
Released: 1974
Extension of a Man is an album released by the R&B/Soul singer Donny Hathaway on Atco Records in 1973.
The release was his last solo studio album. It is noted for including a young Stanley Clarke of (then) Return to Forever on a couple of tracks, as well as drummer Fred White, brother to Earth, Wind & Fire's Maurice White, who worked with Hathaway in Chicago in the early days. White also played with Hathaway on concert dates and is featured on Hathaway's live performance recordings.
Ranging from inner-city soul to orchestral grandeur to a bluesy ballad to easy-listening pleasantries, Extension of a Man was Donny Hathaway's most ambitious LP, the justly titled capstone to his phenomenal career. Coming, however, from one of soul music's most widely talented figures, this wasn't exactly a surprise; both of his previous studio full-lengths, Everything Is Everything and Donny Hathaway, treated soul as merely a starting point to express his multitude of ideas concerning music and arrangement, song and performance. On Extension of a Man, the ambition began and peaked with the opener, a six-minute orchestral piece titled "I Love the Lord; He Heard My Cry, Pts. 1-2." Arranged and orchestrated for 45 musicians by Hathaway himself, it applied the buoyant optimism of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue to a religious context, and segued smoothly into the transcendent "Someday We'll All Be Free," one of Hathaway's most beloved songs. The next two pieces, "Flying Easy" and "Valdez in the Country," were also Hathaway originals, first recorded during the late '60s as part of Chess studio groups; the first is a piece of pop-soul fluff lifted up by his superb reading, the second a smooth jazz-fusion jam with Hathaway illustrating on electric piano his excellent improv capabilities. "Love, Love, Love" and "Come Little Children" were the charting singles, the former a sublime love song heavily influenced by Marvin Gaye's What's Going On. Unfortunately, these disparate pieces, brilliant as they are, don't coalesce into a single work as well as on his masterpiece Everything Is Everything, but Hathaway never stops impressing with his conceptions of arrangement and performance. Crippled by depression, he would never release another solo album during the last five years of his life, though among the projects he'd hoped to record was the four-part concerto Life, to be performed by the Boston Pops Symphony Orchestra with him in the conductor's chair, and the score of an epic biblical film.
-AllMusic Review by John Bush
Track listing
- "I Love the Lord; He Heard My Cry (Parts I & II)" (Hathaway) - 5:32
- "Someday We'll All Be Free" (Hathaway, Edward Howard) - 4:14
- "Flying Easy" (Hathaway) - 3:13
- "Valdez in the Country" (Hathaway) - 3:33
- "I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know" (Al Kooper) - 5:23
- "Come Little Children" (Hathaway) - 4:35
- "Love, Love, Love" (J.R. Bailey, Ken Williams) - 3:25
- "The Slums" (Hathaway) - 5:11
- "Magdalena" (Danny O'Keefe) - 3:08
- "I Know It's You" (Leon Ware) - 5:13
- "Lord Help Me" (Joe Greene, Billy Preston) - 4:06
"Lord Help Me" was originally only released as a B-side to the single "I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know". It did not feature on Extension Of A Man until the 1993 Compact Disc re-release. The song features Billy Preston. Also, it is the only track produced by Jerry Wexler, with fellow Atlantic producer, Arif Mardin taking over production duties.
The opening instrumental track pays homage to the melody of "Here Comes Da Honey Man" from The Gershwin's Porgy and Bess.
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