Roberta Flack onstage in Newark, N.J., in 2017.Photo: Paul Zimmerman/WireImage
Legendary singer-songwriter Roberta Flacksuffered a strokein 2016 and recovered from a relatively mild breakthrough bout of COVID-19 in January. Despite the health setbacks, she has big plans for the future.
“The pandemic has kept most of us off the stage for two years,” says Flack, 85, who is still working on regaining her strength following the stroke. “I don’t know what the next two years will hold, but I hope to see my fans in person sometime soon.”
“He painted it green, and it smelled bad, but I played and practiced for untold hours on that piano,” she remembers. “It gave me wings of music that as a 9-year-old girl I needed so badly. I’ve been knocked down so many times, but I kept trying. Keep trying.”
“Through the years, I’ve sung that song thousands of times, and it has taken on different stories in my life, [but] honestly, at the time it was recorded, I sang it about my cat who had just died,” Flack recalls. “I loved that cat so much. That’s the story I was telling in the recording.”
In a way, her magical performance on the single — which won the record and song of the year Grammys, became Billboard’s No. 1 single of 1972 and will turn 50 on March 7 — was an extension of one of Flack’s greatest passions besides music. “I’m a lifelong advocate for music education for all children and for animal welfare,” says Flack, who counts 1973’s “Killing Me Softly with His Song” and 1978’s “The Closer I Get to You” among her other major hits. “At the time I recorded ‘First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,’ I dug deep for the story I would tell when I sang the song.”
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Flack recorded the future classic for her 1969 debut album,First Take, but it went virtually unnoticed until two years later when Clint Eastwood heard it on the radio and gave it prominent placement in his 1971 directorial debutPlay Misty for Me.
In addition to her biggest hit’s golden anniversary in 2022, this year is stacked with celebrations of important milestones for Flack. She turned 85 on Feb. 10, and the following day, her soundtrack album for the 1982 Richard Pryor filmBustin' Loosereceived a digital re-release after being out of print for decades, in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of its release on June 5.
“This is one of the most personally meaningful collections of music that I’ve recorded in my career,” Flack says of the project, which she co-produced, a rare move for a Black woman at the time. “I loved the story of the movie that children living in challenging situations found people who believed in them and helped them to find a better life. My heart and soul is in this music, as I wrote and co-wrote six out of the nine tracks. Each track is deeply personal to me and touches on many different aspects of my life.”
Aside from its musical merit, Flack is proud of the album’s groundbreaking standing as an important accomplishment for a Black woman in what was then mostly a white man’s world. “It was, and to some degree, still is a rare thing for a Black female artist to be asked to produce anything for a major film or a major label,” she continues. “The glass ceiling that existed then, and let’s face it, still exists now, is gradually being pushed through, but it is a very real challenge for women of any color — especially for women of color.”
Flack feels similarly passionate about another movie-related project that had a special birthday this month. On Feb. 8, 1982, she released the single “Making Love,” the love theme to the movie of the same name, which starred Harry Hamlin, Michael Ontkean and Kate Jackson, and told the story of a married man (Ontkean) who falls in love with another guy (Hamlin).
“The movie was groundbreaking, with one of the first depictions of a love scene between two men,” Flack says. “This made many people uncomfortable because it forced them to see that on a big screen.”
“What is now more widely accepted, for the most part, was at the time the movie came out, a radical theme — that two men could have a deep and complex love. Change of this nature is never easy as it means dismantling previously held beliefs. Music is powerful. I have people tell me all the time how hearing this song and seeing that movie changed their lives,” she continues, adding, “I could never be afraid to sing a song about love, whether between a man and woman, two men or two women. Love is love.”
source: people.com
