Flack was the first to win the Grammy Award for Record of the Year two consecutive times. "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" won at the 1973 Grammys and "Killing Me Softly with His Song" won at the 1974 Grammys. She remains the only solo artist to have accomplished this feat.
Early life
Flack lived with a musical family, born in Black Mountain, North Carolina to parents Laron LeRoy (October 11, 1911 – July 12, 1959) and Irene Flack (September 28, 1911 – January 17, 1981) a church organist, on February 10 of either 1937 or 1939 (sources differ) and raised in Arlington, Virginia. She first discovered the work of African American musical artists when she heard Mahalia Jackson and Sam Cooke sing in a predominantly African-American Baptist church.
Roberta Flack is Roberta Flack's self-titled album. It represents her eighth album overall and was released in 1978. Its premiere single, "If Ever I See You Again" was #1 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart for three consecutive weeks. It was also a Top 20 Pop hit.
Track listing
"What a Woman Really Means" (Ralph MacDonald, William Salter)
Flack and Hathaway were both solo artists on the Atlantic roster who'd enjoyed critical acclaim, but Flack had enjoyed limited commercial success. Both were graduates of Howard University, although Flack's attendance there pre-dated Hathaway's, the two singers' careers had overlapped: 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 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 dated 29 May 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.)
Donny Edward Hathaway (October 1, 1945 – January 13, 1979) was an American jazz, blues, soul, and gospel vocalist and musician. Hathaway contracted with Atlantic Records in 1969 and with his first single for the Atco label, "The Ghetto, Part I" in early 1970, Rolling Stone magazine "marked him as a major new force in soul music." His collaborations with Roberta Flack scored high on the charts and won him the Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals for the duet, "Where Is the Love" in 1973. At the height of his career Hathaway was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and was known to not take his prescribed medication regularly enough to properly control his symptoms. On January 13, 1979, Hathaway's body was found outside the luxury hotel Essex House in New York City; his death was ruled a suicide.
Early career
Hathaway, the son of Drusella Huntley, was born in Chicago but raised with his grandmother, Martha Pitts, also known as Martha Crumwell, in the Carr Squarehousing project of St. Louis. Hathaway began singing in a church choir with his grandmother, a professional gospel singer, at the age of three. He graduated from Vashon High School in 1963. He then studied music on a fine arts scholarship at Howard University in Washington, D.C., where he was a classmate and close friend of Roberta Flack and a member of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. He also formed a jazz trio to work around the local area with drummer Ric Powell while there, but during 1967 left Howard without a degree, after receiving job offers in the music business.
The majority of songs featured on the collection were covers of pop, gospel and soul songs that were released around the same time. The most prominent of the covers were Hathaway's rendition of Leon Russell's "A Song for You" and a gospel-inflected cover of Gladys Knight & the Pips' "Giving Up", written by Van McCoy. This was the second of three solo studio albums that Hathaway released during his lifetime before his suicide in 1979. Atlantic producer Jerry Wexler took over most of the production duties, with Hathaway producing one track, the self-penned "Take A Love Song".
Intro: This is a little song about a couple that was in love And they had to break up And they ran into each other on the street one day And here's the conversation 1rst Verse: Hello friend, how has it been Ain't it wonderful, you've got a friend Though we've changed in our andeavours I found we still some things in commun Ain't it strange but wonderful That we...we're still...friends 2nd Verse: Through our hearts, we've never parted But through our living We're friends, through friendship all And the way we are when we're together Let's us know that we still, love one another Ain't that strange, but wonderful That we...we're still friends, yeah (...) It ain't strange but wonderful That we...we're still friends Ending: Hello friend How has it been Ain't it wonderful You you got a friend yeah
Vandross’s remarkable career is back in the spotlight in the new documentary, “Luther... The young singer had already worked as a backup singer for Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway, yet Vandross hadn’t quite broken through yet ... Bowie wasn’t having it ... .
Fox31 Denver
31 Dec 2024
Fox31 Denver
31 Dec 2024