The First Time....

on coming in close... and going out closer....

Roberta Flack passed away today. I wanted to say a few words about her work. “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” released in 1969, was a massive hit, her first—and in my opinion, greatest. Roberta’s performance felt somehow as if she were classically trained. Her enunciation was perfect, her delivery slow and even, the end of ‘first’ had a little uh after it. She commanded we pay attention,

and she did it by simply being the most beautiful thing in the room. Written about ten years earlier by English folk singer Ewan MacColl, the song, the lyric was a love potion of remarkable simplicity and tenderness, like some ancient Celtic poem. But it was Roberta who reminded us of our own dignity in loving. She made that lyric ours. Our story. Our lovers. Her voice did that.

Her next hit was “Killing Me Softly.” It was an odd refrain…obviously (‘killing me?) and people who heard it for the first time were surprised to read it had been written about Don McLean. He had written “American Pie,” one of those ‘new direction’ songs that popped up during the 70s. It was an epic story with a rousing chorus. Our history, up to then, Forest Gump before the joggers and AIDS. Then there was Don’s beautiful “Starry Starry Night” about the sad, Dutch painter, Vincent Van Gogh. Many of us under 22 would possibly be introduced to this painter for the first time through Don’s song. Sure we had heard about the guy who cut off his ear. We saw the raging sun and the sky that would not cease speaking and moving and…we could feel the painting but we did not really know the name of him, it, them. It was a good song but the song about the song was even more intriguing. Right? The singer made the song come to life. Roberta Flack.

Boy, sometimes I miss the 1970s. I mean, not my part in them. But from a distance, yes, from a distance. Many good writers and singers. We were a river.

She sang, “and there he was, this young boy. A stranger to my eyes. Strumming my pain, singing my life, killing me softly.” It is a rare thing when a musician does honor to another by writing a song about them, or even mentioning their name. There was nothing, nothing remotely pandering about the composition. And, again, something so dignified in Roberta’s delivery made the listener head full on into the experience.

I delivered myself to her apartment last year, full on, into the experience. She was diagnosed with ALS long time ago. Her manager caught Russ Titleman and Carla Parisi and myself as we were heading into the Grammy awards during the deluge of 2024. We stopped and chatted, me holding up my $2000 dress so I wouldn’t trip over it and so the gutter river would not wash me away into downtown LA.

“She would love you to come,” Suzanne said. “Will you come? When?” Carla and Russ went to see her soon as they returned to New York. I got there a few months later on tour.

Roberta was a bit elderly for sure. But her eyes watched me most intently. We had met a couple times, once in the studio. I can see her sitting near a piano and I am standing, talking to her. I feel like there was a man there too, a black man. They were working on a new record. I told her then how much ‘First Time…” meant to me. She nodded, she was appreciative for sure but always that reserve, and that dignity.

In her apartment she had photographs of her career. A keyboard was over by the windows. Alicia Keys had been by, played some music for Roberta. “Oh she’s been here more than once”. My respect soared for the quiet, youthful brilliant singer-songwriter who came to visit a woman many had simply forgotten about. I played a song. I cannot remember what it was, something on the piano. Probably “On Saturday Afternoons in 1963.” That seemed like something she might like.

But I was nearly overwhelmed. She was very impaired, and it was emotional being with her. My brother, his accident, the months with him in the ICU before he could talk or move… It brought it back for me. I stood near her and maybe I touched her but I did not want to presume. I am sure I touched her. We all want to be touched.

“She knows you are here.” I kept playing.

“She likes it.”

I hope so. I must say that she had a team of women who loved her very much, who worked hard, who did all they could to bring others into the fold—the fold of remembering, of serving, of keeping the past, of celebrating life whatever form it decides to make of itself. Celebrating the artist, the musician, the woman laying in that bed and living all day every day right up until the day she does not. She may be laughing her head off. Crying. watching with a crooked smile. Like all of us. Until the day we don’t.

Because, really, who can say they know what anyone else is feeling or thinking? We create many masks so that others will be…at ease, so they won’t see the ‘real’ complicated feelings. But who really knows us? We are lucky to have people who give us an opportunity to be our best selves. By being brave, being kind, being gentle, we reflect on our lives and say to ourselves, I have done good. That was enough.

I don’t think Roberta Flack was by any means a Hallmark greeting card kinda girl. Don’t mistake her gentle music and her precision for…weakness. She was strong, she was successful, She did not suffer fools. Roberta is probably closest to Nina Simone in her education (a scholarship to Howard University at the age of 15—apparently she skipped two grades), her tenacity, and ultimately her public reach. These two women made their own paths into artistry.

“The First Time…” seemed to place Roberta’s career smack in the middle of the burgeoning folky mutation into pop music. She was there in every kitchen with the morning coffee. That’s the kind of thing that changes the culture, quietly, from the inside out. Roberta Flack made music that crossed many cultural barriers, and she made it look easy. Because of her, I learned about the music scene in DC. I played at the club she had played at in those early days—one of my first club dates there.

Spirit, that’s what it takes to get the messages across. I loved her strong black woman aura, persona, whatever. She made me want to be..like her. No, to be her. I looked over her shoulder to the past of her, there in back of her, and I said,“Who is back there? What brought you here? How did you make it? Who was your teacher, where is that school?”

As I studied her posture on her First Take album cover I thought, this is an educated, confident woman who has captured the imagination of the entire country. I want to be like that. I want to be a strong, black woman. I want to build a community of my own. For those of us who are outsiders, any mask is possible.

Her musical message was quiet and intimate. But her life did not die off when she was laid low by illness. In her dotage she continued to inspire people to come in close. I bent over her and hugged her very gently.

I’ll see you in another life now, baby. And our joy will last til the end of time.