100 Greatest Songs of the 60’s #19 Roberta Flack – The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

Released: 1969

All classic songs should have a story, and this one is no different. English by birth but Scottish in parentage, the prolific folk archivist and singer Ewan MacColl decided to woo Peggy Seeger by writing something especially for her, a trick that worked as they were married eighteen months after meeting.

The song in question was The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, and became something of a standard, recorded in homage by the likes of Gordon Lightfoot and Peter, Paul and Mary. Roberta Flack had a background in jazz before being discovered in Washington D.C. by coffee shop owner Henry Yaffe, who designed a purpose built club in which to showcase her talents. Flack would regularly perform MacColl’s devotional there, including it on her debut album First Take…and for a while, that was that.

So what does all this have to do with Clint Eastwood? Well, directing his first film Play Misty For Me Eastwood had got in touch with Flack in person with a request to feature her still then relatively obscure tune on it – and three years after on from being laid down it topped the charts and made her a star. It’s quite the story. But then again, it’s quite the song.