‘First Take’: Why Roberta Flack’s Debut Album Demands Repeat Listens

When it came to recording the album itself, Flack described those ten short hours as a “very naïve and beautiful approach… I was comfortable with the music because I had worked on all these songs for all the years I had worked at Mr Henry’s”. She performed with a top-flight band including Bucky Pizzarelli on guitar, Ron Carter on bass and Ray Lucas on drums.

At home in multiple genres, Flack’s song choices were eclectic; some directly referenced the political mood of Black America at the turn of the decade. First Take’s opening song, Compared To What, was written by Eugene McDaniels and is a howl of pain and anger at racial injustice and the horrors of the Vietnam War. Angelitos Negros, which Flack sings in Spanish, dates from 1948, and in it, Flack asks why angels are always painted as white: “Don’t you know there are beautiful Black angels in heaven, too?” Tryin’ Times, written by Donny Hathaway and Leroy Hutson, is a powerful plea for equality and understanding in racially-conflicted America. These three tracks, taken together, form a powerful triptych of a nation confused, troubled, afraid of its people. They sit within a palette of other adventurous songs, including That’s No Way To Say Goodbye, a Leonard Cohen composition.

The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face is different again. Though few people realise it is a cover, the song had been written more than ten years earlier, by British singer-songwriter, folk archivist and political activist Ewan MacColl. Composed for his partner Peggy Seeger, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face was something of a challenge for MacColl – his conscious attempt to write a love song rather than a political screed. “I loved the song, and taught it to the young girls in the Glee Club at the Banneker Junior High School in DC,” Flack said about her relationship with the track, which is now regarded as one of the best Roberta Flack songs of all time. “I regularly performed it at Mr Henry’s, so it was one of the songs I was very connected with when it came to choosing tracks for my first recording project. The tempo and arrangement of the song came as a part of the way I felt the story of the song – when you express your feelings about the first time you ever see a great love, you don’t rush the story.”

The release: “Music reaches beyond age, race, nationality and religion to touch our hearts”

Immediately after finishing First Take, Flack went back to her room at Mr Henry’s, and to teaching in her classroom. But it wouldn’t be long before her star shone too brightly for her to resume her former life. Upon First Take’s release, on 20 June 1969, with Compared To What lifted as a single, Flack received critical acclaim and commercial success. She began recording a follow-up, 1970’s Chapter Two.

Then she got an unexpected phone call. Clint Eastwood, the Hollywood actor du jour at the turn of the 70s, heard The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face playing on his car radio. He found Flack’s number, praised her performance, and offered her $2,000 to use it in his first directorial project, Play Misty For Me. Batting away Flack’s concerns that the song’s tempo was too slow, Eastwood used The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face in a pivotal scene and it sent Flack to No.1 for six weeks in 1972. The song was also played, that same year, as wake-up music to the astronauts of Apollo 17 as they returned to earth – the “face” referring to the face of the Moon.

“I always say that ‘love is a song’,” Flack reflected in 2020, as she looked back on her career as one of the most influential female musicians in history. “Meaning that music reaches beyond age, race, nationality and religion to touch our hearts.” With First Take she explored love in all its forms – for partners, for God, for her brothers and sisters, for her country (however tormented) – and did it with unparalleled sensitivity. One can only imagine these songs being performed in Mr Henry’s restaurant, the plush furnishings of her special room barely containing the audience’s rapture.

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