Donal Leace

Donal Richard Leace (May 6, 1939 – November 21, 2020) was an American musician and educator.

Early life and education

Leace was born in Huntington, West Virginia, and raised in Philadelphia, later moving to New York City and Washington D.C. He received a degree from

Career

During the 1960s, he worked and lived at The Cellar Door in Georgetown. For a while a sign at the club read “The Home of Donal Leace”. He performed with John Denver, Nina Simone, Odetta, Judy Collins, Muddy Waters, Ramsey Lewis, The Staple Singers, The Chad Mitchell Trio, Manhattan Transfer, Take 6, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Big Mama Thornton and Emmylou Harris. He toured nationally with Nancy Wilson and worldwide with Roberta Flack.

He also appeared and recorded with comedians

Leace’s recordings of “Oh! Alabama” and “The Death of Medgar Evers” on some of his many recordings captured the pathos of the 60’s Civil Rights era. His 1962 recording "At The Shadows" with Carol Hedin was groundbreaking featuring Leace, a black male folk singer-guitarist and Hedin, a white female singer and autoharpist, a racial crossover. It was recorded at "The Shadows" restaurant in Washington, D.C., on September 16, 1962.

In video footage, Leace is listed as a regular performer on the early PBS music program "The Show" in 1970. In 1969 Donal Leace (1939-2020) was a popular Washington, DC, singer who performed as a regular on an early PBS program for young people called The Show. Presented here are sixteen songs from that series. Leace often performed at Washington, DC’s The Cellar Door where he also worked and lived.^[1]

Leace appeared and recorded with a numbers of artists including Odetta, Muddy Waters Nancy Wilson and Roberta Flack. He was considered a master interpreter of contemporary American songwriting, but he also made his mark was as an educator teaching theater arts at the Duke Ellington School in D.C. Leace was recognized as both a Fulbright and a U.S. Presidential Scholar.

Death

Leace died from

Washington Area Music Association Hall of Fame – 2000 [1]

Washingtonian Magazine's "Washington Music Hall of Fame" – 2003 [2]

Discography

Leace made several recordings.

Specific examples follow.

• At The Shadows with Carol Hedin (1962) - Franc
• Donal Leace At The Cellar Door (1965) - Gateway Recordings
• Donal Leace (1972) – Atlantic
• Leace On Life (1992) – JBL
• Freedom Is A Constant Struggle: Songs of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement (1994) - Folk Era Productions
• Leace Renewed (2001) – JBL

References

Notes

Sources

• Donal "Don" Leace Obituary, The Washington Post (29 Nov. 2020)
• Christgau, Robert. “Growing by Degrees: Kanye West.”
  in Is It Still Good to Ya?: Fifty Years of Rock Criticism, 1967-2017 (Duke University Press, Durham; London, 2018), pp. 301–303. Accessed 10 Jan. 2021.
• Epstein, Daniel Mark. The Ballad of Bob Dylan: A Portrait (2011), p. 4.
• Kalodner, John David. "Roberta Flack at the Academy: A Great Setting, a Great Singer," Philadelphia Bulletin (10 Oct. 1973)
• Weinberg, Jack, et al. Los Angeles Free Press, vol. 6, no. 281, 1969. JSTOR; accessed 10 Jan. 2021.
• Weinberg, Jack, et al. Los Angeles Free Press, vol. 6, no. 282, 1969. JSTOR; accessed 10 Jan. 2021.

External links

• Donal Leace – Rate Your Music [3]
• The education of Dave Chappelle: How a D.C. arts school prepared him for stardom [4]