Donny Hathaway — Extension of a Man | The Last Testament | Full Vinyl Session + The Music It Left Behind

Extension of a Man — played in full, vinyl, start to finish. Eleven tracks. His final studio album, made at 27, opening with a 45-piece orchestra he arranged and conducted himself and closing with a prayer. Atlantic didn't know how to sell it. It barely sold at all. It is now considered one of the greatest soul albums ever made.

The session opens without words. Between each track — one carefully chosen record, showing where this music came from, who carried it forward, and what it has always been holding.

Total runtime approx. 2 hrs.

Thank you for Listening

Rafi Mercer - Founder of Tracks & Tales

TRACKLIST

OPENING TRACK

01  Ready or Not — Fugees feat. Ms. Lauryn Hill - The Score (Columbia, 1996)

A choral wash, a war-drum, and Lauryn Hill arriving over both — with the Delfonics' 1968 melody alive inside the 1996 record. The session's whole argument, declared in the first minute: music carrying music forward, ready or not.

SIDE A

EXTENSION OF A MAN

02  I Love the Lord, He Heard My Cry (Parts I & II) — Donny Hathaway - Extension of a Man (Atco, 1973)

A 45-piece orchestra, arranged and conducted by Hathaway at 27, drawing on the 116th Psalm. Stanley Clarke on bass. The suite flows straight into the next track — one unbroken statement.

EXTENSION OF A MAN

03  Someday We'll All Be Free — Donny Hathaway - Extension of a Man (Atco, 1973)

Edward Howard wrote the lyric specifically about Hathaway's struggles with his own mind. The song that became his most enduring anthem was written about his illness.

04  I Love You More Than Anything (In This World Girl) — Barry White - Can't Get Enough (20th Century, 1974)

White taught himself music theory in juvenile detention. The quietest declaration on a blockbuster record — total assurance, delivered without raising the temperature.

EXTENSION OF A MAN

05  Flying Easy — Donny Hathaway - Extension of a Man (Atco, 1973)

A piano instrumental, originally written for Herb Alpert, reclaimed here as something personal. His mother said he would wake in the night hearing music in his head and play until perspiration streamed down his face.

06  When We Get By — D'Angelo - Brown Sugar (EMI, 1995)

The most gospel moment on the most Hathaway-indebted album of the nineties — handclaps, organ, Fender Rhodes, church phrasing carried into a love song. Twenty-two years between the tracks. The language unchanged.

EXTENSION OF A MAN

07  Valdez in the Country — Donny Hathaway - Extension of a Man (Atco, 1973)

Named for Valdez, Alaska — a soul musician writing about environmental devastation in 1973, sixteen years before the Exxon Valdez spill. Cornell Dupree on guitar.

08  Drama — Erykah Badu - Baduizm (Motown, 1997)

Baduizm was recorded live in twelve hours, no overdubs. Extension of a Man took months across three studios. Both sound like they were made in one sitting by someone who had been preparing their whole life.

EXTENSION OF A MAN

09  I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know — Donny Hathaway - Extension of a Man (Atco, 1973)

An Al Kooper song dissolved into gospel, Gene Page's strings making it feel more like grief than loss. By the time the album was released, Hathaway had already been hospitalised.

10  Killing Me Softly With His Song — Roberta Flack - Killing Me Softly (Atlantic, 1973)

Hathaway's Howard University classmate, on the same label, in the same year. Her album went to number one. His barely sold. The world eventually found both.

SIDE B

EXTENSION OF A MAN

11  Come Little Children — Donny Hathaway - Extension of a Man (Atco, 1973)

Side B opens with a funk track carrying gospel weight — Myrna Summers & The Interdenominational Singers, and Hathaway's only Hammond organ performance on the album.

12  Zealots — Fugees feat. Ms. Lauryn Hill - The Score (Columbia, 1996)

Built on The Flamingos' 1959 recording of I Only Have Eyes for You — a doo-wop harmony group carrying a 1996 hip-hop record. Sampling as inheritance. Hill's voice returns from the top of the session; she is the thread.

EXTENSION OF A MAN

13  Love, Love, Love — Donny Hathaway - Extension of a Man (Atco, 1973)

His answer to What's Going On — a love song sung with complete conviction, arranged with restraint. The genius is not in the complexity. It is in knowing when not to be complex.

14  Live It Up — John Legend & Miri Ben-Ari - Get Lifted (Columbia, 2004)

Legend was a session pianist before his solo career — the same trajectory as Hathaway at Chess Records. What Hathaway built in 1973 was still being built in 2004.

EXTENSION OF A MAN

15  The Slums — Donny Hathaway - Extension of a Man (Atco, 1973)

His 'optimistic, upbeat answer to The Ghetto' — written from the Carr Square housing project in St. Louis, four years on. Fred White on drums. The album's final unbroken stretch begins here: three tracks, no interludes.

EXTENSION OF A MAN

16  Magdalena — Donny Hathaway - Extension of a Man (Atco, 1973)

Written by Danny O'Keefe — the album's most unusual track, somewhere between lounge and soul, never quite settling in either. Hathaway lets it be difficult. The penitent arrives before the benediction.

EXTENSION OF A MAN

17  I Know It's You — Donny Hathaway - Extension of a Man (Atco, 1973)

A Leon Ware song suggested by Jerry Wexler. Stanley Clarke's bass returns from the opening of the album — it begins and ends its love story with the same bassist. The closing sequence starts here.

18  A Change Is Gonna Come — Sam Cooke - Ain't That Good News (RCA Victor, 1964)

The prophecy before the prayer. Cooke performed it live exactly once and never again; he was shot dead two weeks before it was released as a single. The promise was already nine years old when the prayer that follows was recorded — and the prayer was still necessary.

EXTENSION OF A MAN

19  Lord Help Me — Donny Hathaway - Extension of a Man (Atco, 1973)

The album closes not with a love song but with a prayer. The voice that opened the record with a 45-piece orchestra ends it alone, asking for help — the way he did at three years old in his grandmother's church.

CLOSING TRACK

20  Strange Fruit — Billie Holiday (Commodore, 1939)

Written by Abel Meeropol, a schoolteacher from the Bronx. Holiday insisted the room fall silent before she sang it, and walked off without taking a bow. The session's last three records run 1964, 1973, 1939 — it ends by moving backwards, to the root. Two and a half minutes. Piano and voice. Nothing else.