Fresh from leaving Curtis Mayfield’s tutelage to strike it out on his own, Donny Hathaway’s debut revels in his myriad talents as singer, songwriter, musician, producer and arranger. His interpretations of the torch standard “Misty” and Nina Simone’s emergent anthem, “Young, Gifted, and Black,” are unmistakably his own while he and Leroy Hutson’s “The Ghetto” and his solo-penned “Thank You Master” announce the arrival of a soul music genius.

Singer, keyboardist and songwriter Hathaway helped widen the sonic vocabulary of soul and R’n’B music by incorporating jazz chords and a sophisticated musicality into his music, effortlessly drawing together blues, jazz and soul and does exactly that across the ten tracks of this album. Hathaway’s voice here is yearning, expressive, as sweet and smooth as honey, perfectly pitched between the church and the streets. His tragically short career meant his influence on other artists has been underplayed, and this is a very influential album but it’s also a beautiful one too.