VMP Magazine

In the early months of 1982, Patrice Rushen was readying Straight From the Heart, her seventh studio album in eight years, and the fourth she had recorded for Elektra Records. Up until then, the label had taken a hands-off approach: “They so rarely came by the studio or asked any questions,” Rushen recalled. “It wasn't until Straight From the Heart that I had received any kind of hesitation on their part.” According to Rushen’s frequent collaborator, arranger Charles Mims Jr., the promotions staff found the album “kind of light.” Even the lead single, “Forget Me Nots,” didn’t resonate for them. The news was, “Not exactly what we wanted to hear, but at least we know where they stood,” Rushen said. It meant that if the album had any hope of success, she and her team would need to handle things.

They pooled their resources and hired an independent promoter to work “Forget Me Nots.” The gambit paid off almost immediately: “Within three weeks, we had about 54 stations playing the record,” Mims remembered. For a song and album that underwhelmed Elektra at the start, the label must have liked how it ended: both “Forget Me Nots” and Straight From the Heart became the biggest hits in Rushen’s storied career.

“Everything is everything…”

In early ’70s Chicago, somewhere within the tiny 250 watt evening range of AM 1450 WVON — “Voice Of the Negro” — you may have heard that uttered by Herb Kent. By then, he had become one of the biggest Black DJs in the country and was a Chicago institution. Known as “The Cool Gent” for his relaxed demeanor and resonant baritone, Kent shuffled his “everything is everything” catch-phrase throughout his popular 7:30-11 p.m. shift.

One of the people listening was band leader Ric Powell, who explained to me that he interpreted the idiom’s tautology to be an embrace of everyday reality, i.e. “things are what they are…whatever is happening, that's what's happening.” That philosophy inspired Powell to lend the phrase to an album he was co-producing for ATCO Records, Everything Is Everything, the debut LP by Donny Hathaway, released on July 1, 1970.

First albums are often the culmination of a lifetime of hope and struggle but Everything Is Everything was different because Hathaway was different. He was a preternatural prodigy whom Quincy Jones called “a creative musical talent that comes once in 50 years” but stardom was never his childhood ambition. Instead, he followed a more serendipitous path to eventually share his genius with the world.

These excerpted Liner Notes appeared for the first time on Light in the Attic’s reissue of Betty Davis in 2007.