CDA: Roberta Flack

My brother Howard just alerted me to the death of the great Roberta Flack, who died today at the age of 88. She was an amazing singer and songwriter, a truly unique and irreplaceable artist. Her two most essential songs are "Killing Me Softly" and "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face."

"Where is the Love?" doesn't hold up next to those two other songs but I always liked it. Here she is singing it not with Donny Hathaway (her partner on the single) but with Three Dog Night!

And I'll close with her cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye." Howard describes it as "a big Radiodrome 'hit.' " Radiodrome was Howard's revelatory weekly show at KUSF. He formed a lot of minds on that show, people heard things they'd never heard before (like this song) and even if they didn't like it, they were changed just a little bit.

This song is at the intersection of pop and classical, like many of Flack's songs. Priceless.