Here's a good one - how to combine birthday celebrations for a revered Diva with a sort-of-ongoing "meme" (#adecadeago - see here, here, here and here)...
It is the 82nd birthday today of the divine Roberta Flack [she shares the celebrations with that "national treasure", classic-era Blue Peter host Peter Purves (who blows out 80 candles!), with Leontyne Price (92) and with Robert Wagner (89); today would also have been the 109th of Joyce Grenfell].
Needless to say, ten years ago I also did a blog post to mark the occasion [there having been a long-standing "mystery" over her date of birth, at the time I had it as being her 70th...], and I did similar a month later for the birthday of Aretha.
It is from the latter rather than the former blog, however, that I have chosen to lift this classic "supergroup" performance [out of which line-up Miss Flack is sadly the only surviving member] - it's long overdue another airing, methinks...
Utter perfection.
Flack Facts:
- In her early career Miss Flack accompanied opera singers at the piano, but was "discovered" a few years later in the early 1970s as a performer at a jazz cabaret club.
- Her big break came when Clint Eastwood chose the song The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face for the soundtrack of his directing debut Play Misty For Me and it became the biggest hit of 1972.
- She was once the neighbour of John Lennon and Yoko Ono when they all lived in The Dakota apartment building in New York.
- She was the first artist to win the Grammy Award for Record of the Year on consecutive occasions – in 1973 for The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face and the following year for Killing Me Softly (With His Song).
- Her Roberta Flack School of Music in the Bronx provides free music education to underprivileged students.
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