First Take is the debut album by the American soul singer Roberta Flack. It was released on June 20, 1969, by Atlantic Records. After a track from this album, "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face", was included by Clint Eastwood in his 1971 film Play Misty for Me, and the song became a number-one hit in the United States, causing the album to reach number one on the Billboard album chart and Billboard R&B album chart; furthermore, the single topped the chart for the Billboard Year-End Hot 100 singles of 1972, possibly the only sleeper hit to accomplish this. In the 2020 edition of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list, the album was ranked number 451.[5]
In 2019, Flack's website[6] announced that First Take would be remastered and re-released as a limited deluxe edition of only 3,000 copies commemorating the album's fiftieth anniversary. The set includes one vinyl LP and two compact discs: one CD is the remastered album and the other contains "rare and unreleased recordings". The set was released on July 24, 2020.
A great album and the release that made Roberta Flack a major soul and R&B artist in the early '70s. She had a soft, compelling, alluring voice, and was able to convincingly switch gears and also convey anger, regret, hurt, or despair. Those who thought Flack was a one-hit wonder, or didn't think she could make the transition from doing mostly jazz to other styles, were convinced otherwise.
Quiet Fire is the third studio album by American singer-songwriter Roberta Flack, released in November 1971 by Atlantic Records.[1] It was recorded at Atlantic Recording Studios, Regent Studios, and The Hit Factory in New York City.[2] The album peaked at number 18 on the Billboard Top LPs & Tape, and its single "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow" charted at number 76 on the Hot 100.[3]
At the 15th Annual Grammy Awards, the album secured Roberta Flack a nomination for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female. However, the award went to Helen Reddy for I Am Woman.
The 1972 Atlantic release Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway is a million-selling duet album by Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway produced by Joel Dorn and Arif Mardin.
Flack and Hathaway were both solo artists on the Atlantic roster who'd enjoyed critical acclaim, but Flack had enjoyed limited commercial success. Both had attended Howard University, although Flack's attendance there pre-dated Hathaway's. The singers' careers had overlapped, however: Flack had included Hathaway compositions on her First Take and Chapter Two albums, with the latter also featuring Hathaway as pianist, arranger and background vocalist. It was Jerry Wexler who suggested that a joint venture might consolidate Flack and Hathaway's popularity.
The first single from Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway was a version of "You've Got a Friend" recorded before the single release of the James Taylor version. Both tracks debuted on the Hot 100 almost simultaneously - Taylor version debuted on June 5, 1971, whereas Flack/Hathaway version debuted the following week (June 12, 1971) — marking Flack's first chart appearance — and, although Taylor's version reached #1, the Flack/Hathaway duet ascended as high as #29 and was a top ten R&B hit at #8. (The B-side, "Gone Away," was a Chapter Two track written by Hathaway.)
The second single from the duets album was a remake of "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" that became a #30 R&B hit, peaking on the Hot 100 at #71.
It was the album's third single "Where Is the Love" — released in April 1972, almost a year after the album itself — that would be the smash hit, largely due to Flack having had her solo career breakthrough with "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face". "Where is the Love" hit #5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and won for the duo a Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals at the 15th Annual Grammy Awards in 1973.
Although Hathaway had enjoyed more solo success than had Flack prior to their teaming up, his subsequent solo career was desultory, with no high-profile success prior to his re-teaming with Flack for "The Closer I Get to You" in 1978. Hathaway had recorded two songs for a second duet album with Flack — that became the Roberta Flack Featuring Donny Hathaway album — at the time of his death on January 13, 1979.
Killing Me Softly is a studio album by American singer-songwriter Roberta Flack, released on August 1, 1973, by Atlantic Records.[3] She recorded the album with producer Joel Dorn for 18 months.[4] The album was dedicated to Rahsaan Roland Kirk.[5]
Killing Me Softly reached number three on the Billboard Top LPs & Tape and number two on the Soul LPs chart.[6] The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified the album gold on August 27, 1973, and double platinum on January 30, 2006, denoting shipments of two million copies in the United States.[3] It was nominated for a Grammy Award for Album of the Year, which it lost to Stevie Wonder's 1973 album Innervisions. The album's title track was released as a single and topped the Billboard Hot 100.[6] It won the 1974 Grammy Award for Record of the Year.
Released in 1975, Feel Like Makin' Love is Roberta Flack's fifth solo album and sixth overall, when counting her duet album with Donny Hathaway, Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway from 1972. It was the first album produced by Flack herself, under the pseudonym Rubina Flake.
The album's title cut had been issued as a single in June 1974 affording Flack her third #1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100, after which success Atlantic Records signed Flack to a new five year contract - reportedly the most lucrative ever signed by a female recording artist. The Feel Like Makin' Love album had reportedly by September 1974 already accrued enough advance orders from retail outlets to guarantee gold status upon the album's release, which was expected in November 1974.[3]
In fact, the album would not be ready for release until March 1975 having taken fourteen months to record. Although Flack had self-produced the "Feel Like Makin' Love" single, she had begun recording the album with her regular producer Joel Dorn: unhappy when Flack recruited "Feel Like Makin' Love" co-writer Gene McDaniels as an additional producer, Dorn had withdrawn from Flack's album (Dorn would, in fact, end his seven-year association with Atlantic Records) and after Flack and McDaniels proved unable to establish an agreeable working relationship Flack was left to produce her album alone.[4][5]
Although Flack had worked closely with Joel Dorn in the recording of her previous albums the singer found the task of producing an entire album by herself an arduous challenge: (Roberta Flack quote:)"I made a lot of mistakes. It was a very hard time for me. There were days when I just cried and cried. But you press on. You press on."[4] Upon the belated release of the Feel Like Makin' Love album Flack admitted that Atlantic Records were discontented with the time and expense spent on the album: (Roberta Flack quote:)"the [high price tag] is misleading. Some material I recorded will be used on my next two albums [which] I will be able to finish...very quickly and [cost efficiently]"[5] - in fact Flack's next album: Blue Lights in the Basement, would not be ready for release until December 1977 - thirty-three months after the release of the Feel Like Makin' Love album. Despite its reported heavy advance orders, Feel Like Makin' Love would become Flack's first album to not be certified gold.
Blue Lights in the Basement is the sixth studio album by American singer Roberta Flack, released by Atlantic on December 13, 1977. The album was a commercial success, peaking at number eight on the US Billboard 200, becoming her third top-ten album on the chart and reaching number five on the R&B albums chart. On February 27, 1978, the album received a Gold certification by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for shipments over 500,000 copies.[2]
The album features the single "The Closer I Get to You", a duet with best friend and fellow soul musician Donny Hathaway, which became the biggest hit from the album, peaking at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100, and reaching #1 on the Hot Soul Singles chart. The collaboration with Hathaway would be one of his final singles released in his lifetime before his death in 1979.
The Blue Lights in the Basement track "After You" (a song released originally by Diana Ross in 1976) would be the first of several Michael Masser compositions Flack would record (with the 1983 Peabo Bryson duet "Tonight, I Celebrate My Love" becoming a million-seller): in 2008 Flack would cite "After You" as one of her favorite recordings.
I'm the One is an album by Roberta Flack released in May 1982 which reached #59 on the album chart in Billboard whose R&B album chart afforded the album a #16 peak.
The Burt Bacharach/Carole Bayer Sager-produced "Making Love", which appeared in the film of the same name and in the spring of 1982 had afforded Flack her final solo Top 40 hit (#13 on the Billboard Hot 100), was included on the I'm the One album along with eight new tracks co-produced by William Eaton, Ralph MacDonald, William Salter and Flack herself.
The track "I'm the One," given parallel single release with the album, peaked at #42 on the Hot 100 where it marked Flack's final solo appearance, although she'd return to the Hot 100 in 1983 with the duets "Tonight, I Celebrate My Love" (#16) and "You're Looking Like Love to Me" (#58) (both with Peabo Bryson) and again in 1991 with "Set the Night to Music" (with Maxi Priest/ #6).
A third single from the I'm the One album: "In the Name of Love", reached #24 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart.
Roberta is Roberta Flack's fourteenth album, released in 1994. It consists of cover versions of jazz and soul standards. It was also her final album for Atlantic Records after twenty five years with the label since her debut.
The Christmas Album is Roberta Flack's first holiday album and was released in 1997. The song, "As Long as There's Christmas" (a duet with Peabo Bryson), was from the direct-to-video Disney film, Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas. The album was reissued by Punahele Productions under the title Holiday in 2003; this version omitted "As Long as There's Christmas".
Let It Be Roberta: Roberta Flack Sings the Beatles
The Beatles' song catalog is one of the best-known and revered bodies of work in the whole of modern music, and the depth, variety, and timelessness of the songs this once-in-a-lifetime band produced make that catalog both a marvel and a treasure. Everyone knows these songs, and everyone knows them in the original Beatles versions. Those versions are there, shining in stone, and even when they show up in remixes like in the recent LOVE mashup, the original recordings echo unshakably in the mind. Roberta Flack knows this. On Let It Be Roberta: Roberta Flack Sings the Beatles, she tackles 12 of the group's songs -- 11 written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney and one written by George Harrison -- and she knows full well that she's dealing with the ghosts of the original versions. She knows, and she addresses it by reconfiguring the 12 songs she's chosen to sing into fascinating new shapes and arrangements, not exactly escaping the original versions, but giving them a fresh new direction by jazzy shifts in the melodies, and pinning them to inventive and very contemporary rhythms and recording techniques. Flack doesn't treat songs like "In My Life," "We Can Work It Out," and "I Should Have Known Better" like they're made of museum glass, and because of it, she stretches them into interesting new corners. Not everything works -- Flack singing "Come Together" could never have been a good idea -- but what does work, and that's most of what's here, brings these Beatles songs delightfully into the 21st century. Even though the ghosts of the original versions still echo here, they support rather than derail what Flack does with them.
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