Donny Hathaway - Jealous Guy

Before I heard this song, I guess I was technically living, but I’m not sure I would call it a life. Things just up and done changed, all at the hands of one Donald Edward Hathaway, a Chicago-born songwriter who penned many a classic and delivered many cover versions, including this John Lennon cover, that easily eclipsed the original.

I simply lack the adjectives to describe how great this version of this song is. The guitar tone could not be better and is the aural equivalent of a skilfully executed handjob. The way the piano is mic’d up is bang on. That snare sounds like a chubby stevedore slapping the side of a tent with a raw t-bone steak. Don’t even get me started on Donny’s vocals. Okay, get me started on them: he is barfing shined-up silk all over my eardrums and I don’t want him to stop. Ever. What the fuck, why aren’t people running screaming in the streets about this song? I don’t want to put to fine a point on it, but how good is this song? Rumor* tells that the gold record contained within the Voyager 1 spacecraft, to be played by any intelligent life that recovers the spacecraft as evidence of our refinement, sophistication and overall worth as a species, only contains this song, playing on a loop forevermore. 

‘Jealous Guy’ can be found on a Live album by Donny Hathaway, inexplicably titled 'Donny Hathaway - Live’, which - I should mention - he is not. He jumped out of a window and then he died. Shortly before his death, Donny complained that his brain had been hooked up to a machine by white people who were using it to steal his music. Donny reportedly ALSO suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, so that’s really two good reasons to be bummed out, which he was, as he also battled bouts of deep depression. 

In an odd bit of trivia, Donny also wrote and performed the theme for the television series 'Maude’, which rocketed Bea Arthur to national fame, and to the status of sex symbol in many of my midafternoon reveries.

Now, I’ve been accused of often speaking too delicately; of trafficking in riddles; beating around the bush even - so hopefully my meaning is clear when I say that I fully plan to put it to my old lady, real slow and meaningful like, on the floor, while listening to this whole record. 

*Patently false.