Genre
Soul, jazz, and folk. First Take is built on Flack's idiosyncratic fusion of these three traditions, moving between intimate jazz ballads, blues-inflected soul, and folk-derived material, all unified by her extraordinary interpretive command of the piano and voice.
Release
Released on June 20, 1969, by Atlantic Records.
Production
Produced by Joel Dorn, who had signed Flack to the label after she performed 42 songs from her nightclub repertoire for him in a single three-hour audition. The album was recorded in approximately ten hours at Atlantic Recording Studios, New York City. Horn and string arrangements were by William Fischer; the rhythm section included Ron Carter on bass and Ray Lucas on drums.
Reception
First Take sold modestly on its initial release but gained extraordinary momentum in 1972 when the track "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" was used in the Clint Eastwood film Play Misty for Me, propelling it to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and earning Flack the Grammy Award for Record of the Year. The album was subsequently re-evaluated as a landmark debut. Rolling Stone's Julius Lester described it as one of those rare albums with the power to alter the listener's emotional life. In the 2020 Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list it was ranked 451st.
Roberta Flack
Roberta Cleopatra Flack (February 10, 1937 – February 24, 2025) was an American singer and pianist born in Black Mountain, North Carolina. A classically trained musician who studied at Howard University on a full scholarship, she worked as a music teacher in Washington, D.C., before her nightclub performances brought her to the attention of Atlantic Records. Her career reached its commercial peak in the early 1970s, when she became the first artist to win the Grammy Award for Record of the Year in consecutive years — for "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" (1973) and "Killing Me Softly with His Song" (1974). She achieved three number-one Billboard Hot 100 singles and was a defining voice of the quiet storm genre.
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