Donny Hathaway: Extension of a Man Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		5.0
Video		0.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		5.0

Donny Hathaway: Extension of a Man Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 14, 2024

As lovely as they are undeniably are, Donny Hathaway's rightly celebrated duets with Roberta Flack like "Where Is the Love?" may have unwittingly eclipsed Hathaway's work as a solo artist, at least for a certain demographic only tuning into things like what used to be called "Top 40" stations. For anyone otherwise unacquainted with Hathaway's expertise as a singer, player and maybe especially songwriter would do well to check out this often gorgeous and frequently moving release from 1973, in what turned out to be Hathaway's sad swan song as a soloist before his untimely death from an apparent suicide in 1979. Extension of a Man is in fact an extension for Hathaway, offering some really superb arrangements (including orchestrations done by Hathaway), breezy Rhodes solos, and Hathaway's unforgettable vocals. The material ranges from quasi-gospel (Hathaway contributes an African American church music history of sorts in his liner notes) to kind of metaphysically minded pop jazz ("Someday We'll All Be Free"). The "backup" band (if one dares to call them that) is filled to the brim with legends like Stanley Clarke, David Spinozza, Hubert Laws and Cissy Houston, among many others.

The track list for this album can be seen in the screenshots of the main menu I've uploaded to accompany this review.

Donny Hathaway: Extension of a Man Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The "video" content here is simply a static menu, and since Rhino has commendably authored this disc so that the colored buttons on the remote allow toggling between codecs, there's really no reason to even have a monitor or display engaged.

Donny Hathaway: Extension of a Man Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Donny Hathaway: Extension of a Man features DTS-HD Master Audio 4.0 and DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 options, both at 192/24. This is another wonderfully immersive quad outing that provides both simultaneous engagement of all four speakers for any number of elements ranging from Hathaway's voice to his Rhodes solos, but which also can provide clear and unambiguous discrete channelization, as in keyboards front and guitars rear in the interesting cover of Al Kooper's "I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know". Orchestrations are similarly split at times, with brass and winds toward the rear channels, and strings up front (the strings sounded just a little on the dry side in "I Love The Lord: He Heard My Cries", but they may have had a ponticello marking or something similar at times). Fidelity is superb, and considering the huge gamut of styles on display, dynamic range is also appealingly wide.

Donny Hathaway: Extension of a Man Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no on disc supplements. The insert booklet replicates the original album liner notes and lyrics, and also has a couple of photos of the original labels on the recording studio reels. Rhino's typical verbiage about bass management options is also included.

Donny Hathaway: Extension of a Man Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Extension of a Man is a kind of mini-masterpiece in my personal estimation, and it provides more than ample evidence of what a so-called "multi-hyphenate" genius Donny Hathaway was. Whatever personal demons he was battling didn't seriously interfere with him crafting an absolutely stunning album, which is offered here in sterling quadraphonic sound. Highly recommended.