People have often asked me how I learned to play the lap steel.  Here’s how I did it:  playing along with records and copying singers.  With the lap steel, you can really phrase like a singer.  Without frets to disrupt the melodic lines, you can imitate the human voice pretty easily.  One of my all-time favourite singers is Donny Hathaway.

My first Donny Hathaway album was Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway.  I was 17.  I was aware of Roberta Flack , especially since The Fugee’s version of “Killing Me Softly” was so ubiquitous around that time.  Donny was new to me, though, and that album was my introduction.

Actually, I did know one of his tunes, and it happened to be from that album.  “Where Is The Love” was a radio hit, but I didn’t know it was Donny until I had the album in my hands.

My top 5 Donny Hathaway tunes

• “For All We Know” - an old standard, but I’ve never heard a version like this.  Donny’s vocal performance is gut-wrenching, and Roberta’s piano playing is filled with beautiful, dark voicings.
• “Be Real Black For Me” – written by Hathaway, Flack, and Charles Mann.  Amazing.  The bridge kills me.
• “Someday We’ll All Be Free” – written by Hathaway and Edward Howard, from Extensions Of A Man.  I love the arrangement as much as the performance. This is a classic.
• “Lord Help Me” – a bonus track on the Rhino CD edition of Extensions Of A Man.  Written by Joe Greene and Billy Preston (!) Donny is one of the only singers, for me,  who can get away with hanging on a long, bluesy note.  Somehow,  it’s still sweet when he does it.  This song is an example of that ability.
• “This Christmas” – written by Nadine McKinnor and Hathaway.  OK. There are so many horrible Christmas songs in the world, we have to celebrate the fantastic ones.  I love this one.  It’s still totally a Donny Hathaway tune, complete with weird time signatures and orchestral arrangements.

These are just my current favourites.  I go through phases. Donny’s version of  Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On, ” from the Live album, is also brilliant.  That whole album is brilliant!  He doesn’t have too many albums (he died in 1979), so I recommend buying all of them.  There are some beautiful moments on his first record, Everything Is Everything, including one of the coolest intro’s to any tune that has ever been recorded…”The Ghetto.”

Happy listening!