This month’s WBSS Soul Talk interview sees Wes Berwise chatting to the Grammy Award-winning, singer-songwriter Lalah Hathaway, aka ‘The Daughter of Soul’.
Hathaway talks about how she can’t imagine not having the legacy of her father, Donny Hathaway, within her, and how she wants to leave her own legacy on the world. Losing her father at the tender age of ten and following in his footsteps has meant she was inevitably compared to the legend of Donny Hathaway. By developing her own voice, she has carved her own niche in the rich world that is soul music. Her first single release was on Virgin back in 1989, followed swiftly with by self-titled debut album in 1990, with the lead single ‘Heaven Knows’ reaching No3 in the R&B charts. A further five albums now shows just how unique her own voice is. Currently on Stax Records, her last album ‘Where It All Begins’ was released in 2011. In the intervening years, and since then, she has recorded with a plethora of fellow performers: Eric Roberson, Robert Glasper, Gerald Albright, The Winans, Grover Washington Jr, Marcus Miller to name but a few.
With a strong opinion of where she is steering her craft, Lalah Hathaway also believes in speaking out for causes close to her heart, such as Circle of Promise, which was launched in 2007 for the cure to educate, empower and mobilize the African-American community in the fight against breast cancer.