The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

"The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face"
Single by Roberta Flack
from the album First Take
B-side "Trade Winds"
Released March 7, 1972 (1972-03-07)
Format 45" single
Recorded 1968
Genre
Length
Label Atlantic 2864
Songwriter(s) Ewan MacColl
Producer(s) Joel Dorn
Roberta Flack singles chronology
"Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow"
(1972)		 "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face"
(1972)		 "Where Is the Love"
(1972)

"Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow"
(1972)		 "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face"
(1972)		 "Where Is the Love"
(1972)

"The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" is a 1957 folk song written by British political singer/songwriter Ewan MacColl for Peggy Seeger, who later became his wife. At the time, the couple were lovers, although MacColl was still married to Joan Littlewood. Seeger sang the song when the duo performed in folk clubs around Britain. During the 1960s, it was recorded by various folk singers and became a major international hit for Roberta Flack in 1972, winning Grammy Awards for Record of the Year[1] and Song of the Year. Billboard ranked it as the number one Hot 100 single of the year for 1972.[2]

History

There are two differing accounts of the origin of the song. MacColl said that he wrote the song for Seeger after she asked him to pen a song for a play she was in. He wrote the song and taught it to Seeger over the telephone.[3] Seeger said that MacColl, with whom she had begun an affair in 1957, used to send her tapes to listen to whilst they were apart and that the song was on one of them.[4]

The song entered the pop mainstream when it was released by the Kingston Trio on their 1962 hit album New Frontier and in subsequent years by other pop folk groups such as Peter, Paul and Mary, The Brothers Four, and the Chad Mitchell Trio, and by Gordon Lightfoot on his debut album Lightfoot! (1966).

MacColl made no secret of the fact that he disliked all of the cover versions of the song. His daughter-in-law wrote: "He hated all of them. He had a special section in his record collection for them, entitled 'The Chamber of Horrors'. He said that the Elvis version was like Romeo at the bottom of the Post Office Tower singing up to Juliet. And the other versions, he thought, were travesties: bludgeoning, histrionic, and lacking in grace."[5]

Roberta Flack version

Roberta Flack on "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face"
It's a perfect song. Second only to "Amazing Grace, I think...[6] "It's the kind of song that has two unique & distinct qualities: it tells a story, & it has lyrics that mean something....Because of [its meaningful lyrics] the [song] can be interpreted by a lot of people in a lot of different ways: the love of a mother for a child, for example, or [that of] two lovers."[7]"I wish more songs I had chosen had moved me the way that one did. I've loved [most] every song I've recorded, but that one was pretty special."[6]

The song was popularised by Roberta Flack in 1972 in a version that became a breakout hit for the singer.

Flack knew the song from the Joe & Eddie version which appeared on that folk duo's 1963 album Coast to Coast (as "The First Time"), Flack's friend singer Donal Leace having brought the track to Flack's attention.[8] Having taught the song to the young girls in the glee club at Banneker High School (Washington D.C.), Flack would regularly perform "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" in her set-list at the Pennsylvania Avenue club Mr Henry's where Flack was hired as resident singer in 1968. In February 1969 Flack would record the song for her debut album First Take, her rendition of which was much slower paced than Seeger's original, Flack's take running more than twice the two and a half minute length of Seeger's. Flack would recall that while she made her studio recording of "The First Time..." she felt the loss of her pet cat, Flack having two days earlier returned home to Washington D. C. from Detroit (where she had played her first non-local engagement) to find that her cat had passed away.[7][9]

Flack's slow and sensual version was used by Clint Eastwood in his 1971 directorial film debut: Play Misty for Me to score a love scene featuring Eastwood and actress Donna Mills. Flack would recall how Eastwood, who had heard her version of "The First Time..." on his car radio while driving down the LA Freeway,[10] phoned out of the blue to her Alexandria (Virginia) home: (Roberta Flack quote:)"[Eastwood said:] 'I'd like to use your song in this movie...about a disc jockey [with] a lot of music in it. I'd use it in the only part of the movie where there's absolute love.' I said okay. We discussed the money.[Eastwood would pay $2000 to use Flack's "The First Time..."] He said: 'Anything else?' And I said: 'I want to do it over again. It’s too slow.' He said: "No, its not.'"[11]

Flack in fact has also recalled that during the First Take sessions her producer Joel Dorn had suggested re-recording "The First Time..." with a slightly speeded tempo and lyric edit to trim its running time but Flack had not then been agreeable: (Roberta Flack quote:)"Joel said: 'Okay you don’t care if it's a hit or not?' I said: 'No sir.' Of course he was right for three years, until [after] Clint got it" - as the attention Flack's "The First Time..." garnered ensuant to the November 1971 release of Play Misty For Me did persuade Atlantic Records to issue the track as a single - trimmed by a minute - in February 1972: the track became a smash hit single in the United States, reaching No. 1 for six weeks on both the Billboard Hot 100 and easy listening charts in the spring of 1972, with a No. 4 R&B chart peak.[12] Reaching No. 14 on the UK Singles Chart, Flack's "The First Time..." was No. 1 for three weeks on the singles chart in Canada's RPM magazine.

The song was also played as the wake-up music on flight day 9 to the astronauts aboard Apollo 17, on their last day in Lunar orbit (Friday, 12/15/1972) before returning to earth, thus ending the first manned exploration of the Moon. The use of the song was most likely a reference to the "face" of the moon below the spacecraft.[13]

In 2014, two films featured the song: Flack's version was heard twice in the superhero film X-Men: Days of Future Past, set largely in 1973, while a "cover" of it was performed by one of the protagonists in The Inbetweeners 2 for comic effect.

Flack's version was used as the outro in episode 88 of the television series Mad Men in 2015; in 2016 the same version was featured in the finale episode of the HBO series The Night Of and played in the background of Episode 3 of the FX Cable TV Miniseries The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story.

Other recorded versions

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Record of the Year - The 15th Annual Grammy Awards (1972)". The Recording Academy. 1972. Retrieved May 15, 2018.
  2. ↑ Billboard Year-End Hot 100 singles of 1972
  3. ↑ Quarrington, Paul; Doyle, Roddy (2010). Cigar Box Banjo. Greystone Books. p. 89. ISBN 9781553656296. Retrieved August 21, 2011.
  4. ↑ Picardie, Justine (1995). "The first time ever I saw your face". In De Lisle, Tim. Lives of the great songs. London: Penguin. pp. 122–26. ISBN 978-0-14024957-6.
  5. ↑ Brocken, Michael (2003), The British Folk Revival, 1944–2002, Ashgate, p. 38, ISBN 978-0-7546-3282-5 : quoting MacColl's daughter-in-law, Justine Picardie.
  6. 1 2 The Telegraph 16 July 2015 "Roberta Flack: 'Now's a good time to love music'" by Sarah Carson @www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/rockandpopmusic/11717262/Roberta-Flack-Nows-a-good-time-to-love-music.html
  7. 1 2 The Courier-Journal (Louisville, Kentucky) 11 November 1983 "Blues pops singer Roberta Flack should be right at home in Arts Center's classical environs" by Elinor J. Precher p.7-8
  8. ↑ https://www.superseventies.com/1972_8singles.html
  9. ↑ https://www.wisconsingazette.com/entertainment/roberta-flack-takes-on-the-beatles-canon/article_ff42790a-0b52-5ad8-8aa2-0a33a65e97fb.html
  10. ↑ https://www.tampabay.com/features/music/feel-the-love-with-roberta-flack/1212632
  11. ↑ de Yampert, Rick (January 20, 2012). "Roberta Flack serenades Daytona". The Daytona Beach News-Journal. GateHouse Media. Retrieved September 10, 2018.
  12. ↑ Whitburn, Joel (2002). Top Adult Contemporary: 1961-2001. Record Research. p. 93.
  13. ↑ Fries, Colin (March 15, 2015). "Chronology of Wake-Up Calls" (PDF). nasa.gov. NASA. pp. 6, 7. Archived (PDF) from the original on January 4, 2006. Retrieved September 27, 2018.
  • Superseventies.com - with quotes from Roberta Flack and information on the song's background
  1. ↑ "The Billboard Hot 100 - 1963". Billboard. Archived from the original on October 20, 2006. Retrieved October 17, 2018.
  2. ↑ Kowal, Barry. "Billboard (USA) Magazine's (Magazine Chart) Top 100 Singles of 1963", Hits of All Decades. September 20, 2017. Retrieved October 17, 2018.
  3. ↑ [Fred (2003). The Billboard Book of Number 1 Hits. New York: Billboard Books. p. 138. ISBN 0823076776. Retrieved 20 October 2018.]
  4. ↑ "Top Records of 1963", Billboard, Section II, December 28, 1963. p. 30. Retrieved February 17, 2018.
  5. ↑ Kowal, Barry. Billboard Magazine's (USA) Top 100 Single Recordings of 1963, Hits of All Decades. August 27, 2017. Retrieved October 19, 2018.
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