Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, October 29, 1993 TAG: 9310290091
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Then Roberta Flack might have been just another talented singer who made a couple of modestly successful records before slipping quietly into obscurity.
Instead, Clint plucked a song off her 1969 debut album, "First Take," and featured it in his 1971 movie, "Play Misty For Me."
Suddenly, the song became a hit. Flack's recording label, Atlantic Records, re-released it as a single, and in 1972 "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" won Grammy Awards for Song of the Year and Record of the Year.
That same year, she also won a Grammy for best pop vocal performance duo for "Where is the Love," a duet with the late Donny Hathaway.
Flack followed her sudden ascension to stardom with more success. In 1973, she released "Killing Me Softly With His Song," which earned Grammys for song of the year and record of the year. It also won Flack an award for best pop vocal performance by a female.
Other well-known songs have followed through the years: "Feel Like Makin' Love" (1974), "The Closer I Get to You," (1978) and "Tonight, I Celebrate My Love" (1983), a duet with Peabo Bryson.
But "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" and "Killing Me Softly With His Song" remain Flack's signature songs, and there is no doubt they will be highlights of her performance Saturday night at the Salem Civic Center.
Flack will perform with the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra as part of its Picnic with the Pops series. Willie Nelson was the last guest in the series in July.
Flack explained once why she believes "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" has endured: "People hear, `First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,' and they say, `Boy, I saw my girlfriend the first time I heard that song. I was driving my car and I looked up and there she was in the next lane, and we've been married 15 years and we have six kids . . . .'
"It's not because I sang it necessarily, but because what they heard related to how their heart beats." The same could hold true for "Killing Me Softly With His Song," as well.
Of course, life didn't begin and end for the 54-year-old Flack with these two songs.
She was born near Asheville, N.C., and raised primarily in Arlington. Music was always a focal point of her childhood.
Her mother was the church organist, and Flack sat beside her often as she played. She took piano lessons herself, and dreamed about being Chopin or Mozart.
Her church hosted many of the great gospel singers of the day, including Mahalia Jackson, Sam Cooke, the Mighty Clouds of Joy, Clara Ward and others. Growing up, Flack saw them all.
"I was strictly about music from my head to my toes," she has said. "All my social interactions with my peers, the adults in my life, special groups like the Girl Scouts or the church groups I belonged to, I was involved in because I was a musician. If a song needed to be played, I could play it. The toughest kids were my friends because I could play doo-wop and teach them four-part harmony."
At 15, she won a piano contest that eventually led to a music scholarship at Howard University in Washington, D.C. She graduated by age 19 with a degree in music education and took a job teaching music, math and English.
She moved back to Washington after a year and continued to teach in public schools for six years. She also taught private piano lessons, worked on her master's degree and logged time at a Washington opera house, accompanying aspiring opera singers.
At the same time, she played the Washington club scene. In 1968, she was finally "discovered" by jazzman Les McCann, and he connected her with Atlantic Records.
Before "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" became a Grammy winner in 1972, Flack already had released four albums, "First Take," "Chapter Two," "Quiet Fire" and "Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway."
Since the Grammy years, she has continued to release albums, but has never matched that level of phenomenon. Often, she has gone long periods - as much as five years - between records.
"In terms of the business end of things, they want you to have an album out every year. Some people can do it. I just can't," she has said.
"It's like asking Picasso to move out of the blue period."
Some of the delays, too, were a result of Flack branching out beyond the pop realm. Between albums she earned a doctorate in linguistics from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
She also toured for a time with Miles Davis on the jazz circuit in Japan and collaborated with a symphony in Japan on a suite of Portuguese music.
In addition, she worked on and planned several other recordings that were never completed, including an album of early R&B standards, tentatively titled, "Miss Melody and the Uptown Harlem Stompers," and an album of Nat King Cole songs.
The Nat King Cole project was understandably scratched when Natalie Cole beat her to it.
However, one remnant of that album, Flack's cover of "Unforgettable," is included on her most recent album, 1991's "Set The Night to Music." Flack also has a new greatest hits album, "Softly With These Songs - The Best of Roberta Flack."
"Set The Night to Music" also features a cover of the old Stylistics hit, "You Make Me Feel Brand New," and guest appearances by Quincy Jones, Patti Austin, reggae artist Maxi Priest and Chaka Kahn's brother, Mark Stevens.
There is one glaring omission, however.
No duets with Clint Eastwood.
Keywords:
PROFILE
by CNB