Donny Hathaway

Donny Edward Hathaway was born on 1 October 1945 in Chicago, Illinois, and was raised primarily by his grandmother, a professional gospel singer, in St. Louis, where he began performing gospel music as a young child, later attending Howard University on a music scholarship, studying music theory and composition alongside developing his exceptional piano and vocal abilities.

Hathaway began working as a session musician, arranger and producer in Chicago's soul music scene during the late 1960s, contributing to recordings by numerous major artists before signing his own recording contract with Atlantic Records, building a reputation for genuine musical sophistication combining gospel, jazz and soul influences into a distinctive, critically respected sound.

Hathaway's collaborations with vocalist Roberta Flack produced some of the most celebrated duet recordings in soul music history, including 'Where Is the Love' and 'The Closer I Get to You,' their vocal chemistry and Hathaway's sophisticated arrangements establishing a benchmark for soul duet performance that remains influential decades later.

In 1970 Hathaway wrote and recorded 'This Christmas,' a song that did not achieve major commercial success upon its original release but gradually became one of the most enduring and frequently covered Christmas songs within Black American musical tradition, achieving sustained, growing popularity across subsequent decades that eventually made it a genuine holiday standard.

Hathaway struggled with severe mental health difficulties throughout his adult life, including a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, and on 13 January 1979 died after falling from the fifteenth floor of a New York hotel, a death ruled a suicide, cutting short a career that had already established him as one of soul music's most sophisticated and critically respected vocalists and composers.

Hathaway's daughter, Lalah Hathaway, became a significant vocalist in her own right, extending his musical legacy into subsequent generations, and Donny Hathaway remains remembered as one of the most musically sophisticated and influential soul artists of his era, 'This Christmas' continuing to be performed and recorded as a genuine holiday standard, and his Roberta Flack duets remaining benchmark recordings within the soul duet tradition.