RIP Roberta Flack

[Corky Ramirez up on 94th St.]

One of the best and certainly deserving her own thread.

She ruled the early 70s. "Killing Me Softly" and "Feel Like Makin' Love" were always a favorite.

My favorite song of hers was a remake of "Inner City Blues" at the Springfield (Mass.) Civic Center on Oct. 1, 1972. Give it a listen. It's a 10-minute banger.

 

[Michael_ Gee]

In 1973, you could not go into any public place with a jukebox, meaning most restaurants and all bars, without hearing "Killing Me Softly." It was that dominant a tune, and rightly so.

 

[HanSenSE]

Also that great love scene in "Play Misty for Me" with "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face."

 

[TigerVols]

Roberta Flack is a flat-out rabbit hole artist for me; every few months when I run across one of her tunes, off I go on YouTube looking for more. RIP.

 

[Mr._Graybeard]

Never cared for her that much. Nice voice, but no Aretha, Dionne or Gladys.
Not to speak ill of the dead. She won her share of Grammys, but IMO the Grammy is a BS award.

 

[BTExpress]

Killing Me Softly doesn't need a damn background beat. And sure as hell Lean on Me doesn't, either.

Now get off my lawn.

 

[qtlaw]

In 1973, you could not go into any public place with a jukebox, meaning most restaurants and all bars, without hearing "Killing Me Softly." It was that dominant a tune, and rightly so.

Best cover wasn’t the Fugees but the duet in About a Boy

 

[dixiehack]

Killing Me Softly doesn't need a damn background beat. And sure as hell Lean on Me doesn't, either.

Now get off my lawn.

My friend in Christ, you haven’t let anyone onto your lawn since the Fire administration.

 

[Webster]

The covers by The Fugees and Club Nouveau were both fun, inferior to the originals and interesting because they weren’t just doing the same thing.

 

[BTExpress]

What irked me about them was they both started out almost exactly like the original to suck you in . . . before pulling the old bait and switch.

 

[maumann]

RIP, Roberta.

"Your Face" is one of those songs that defies being pigeonholed into any genre. It was played so often on Top 40 back in the day, at some point, 14-year-old Mark would just pray for it to end because it's loooong and repetitive (5:22 but still 4:20 with the radio edit).

But as I've gotten older and think about the lyrics and her interpretation, I am moved by what she's trying to convey, particularly as I realize what it was like to fall in love for the first time -- and then with a lifelong love.

"Your Face" was written by Ewan MacColl about Peggy Seeger, while he was still married to his second wife, which adds a layer of complexity to the whole thing. And there were a number of other cover versions of the song before Flack scored a No. 1 hit with it.

"Killing Me Softly" was supposedly about attending a Don McLean concert and the writer's reaction to it. To me, the duets with Donny Hathaway were much more catchy and danceable.

 

[I Should Coco]

Her heyday was a bit before my time as a music fan, but a great voice. Sad to hear she was struggling with ALS the past few years.

I agree with @maumann … when I’m in the right frame of mind, “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” can be spine-tingling.

 

[poindexter]

Never cared for her that much. Nice voice, but no Aretha, Dionne or Gladys.
Not to speak ill of the dead. She won her share of Grammys, but IMO the Grammy is a BS award.

Jesus, thanks for sharing.

 

[Mr._Graybeard]

Jesus, thanks for sharing.

Hey, my opinion. She was about a soulful as Helen Reddy. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

 

[garrow]

She had a great career. Feel Like Makin' Love is her magnum opus. So 70s. RIP.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

Not to confuse with her more well-known hit “Feel Like Makin’ Love”, but her song, “Making Love” was one of those lost hits that I remembered as a kid that I used to spend a lot of recent time googling and yahooing trying to discover it again until one day I heard it on the radio, frantically typed in some lyrics and found again.

I always thought it was a mid-70s song, but it actually came out in 1982 as the theme song for movie that was about a couple breaking up because the man came out as gay.



Always enjoyed this song. RIP Roberta.

 

[Shropshire Slasher]

I dreaded every trip to the mall as a kid because my mom would buy every Roberta Flack album we didn't have already and then wear out the record upon home arrival to smithereens. There was only one antidote.


Aerosmith.

 

[Slacker]

Not to confuse with her more well-known hit “Feel Like Makin’ Love”, but her song, “Making Love” was one of those lost hits that I remembered as a kid that I used to spend a lot of recent time googling and yahooing trying to discover it again until one day I heard it on the radio, frantically typed in some lyrics and found again.

I always thought it was a mid-70s song, but it actually came out in 1982 as the theme song for movie that was about a couple breaking up because the man came out as gay.



Always enjoyed this song. RIP Roberta.

Well, there goes your man card. Thoughts and prayers, etc.

 

[dixiehack]

I suspect which version of Killing Me Softly sounds right to the listener depends on which version they heard first. I had to go pull up Flack’s version to hear it all the way through for the first time so I would stop subconsciously defaulting to the Fugees video. I had heard Flack’s intro before but that was it.

You can tell she had a great voice and there was a gem of a song in there if you could extract it from the orchestration. But my God the music bed gave the sensation of floating along in a wood-paneled LTD wagon for an afternoon of shopping at a mall with even more wood paneling. Very much of its time and I don’t think it held up well. (Not that the ending of the Fugees video isn’t a moldy time capsule itself. Thirty years now!)

Worse, the music on Flack’s version drowned out her vocals on occasion and just became a barbiturate-soaked slog, like a bored housewife chasing her pills with Riunite. Dare I say the Fugees had the cleaner arrangement, beat drops and all?

 

[Webster]

I do like using the phrase “it’s like you found my letters and read each one out loud”