Roberta Flack – Lost Takes
(Arc Records 004. Double LP. Vinyl review by Phil Johnson)  

First time on vinyl for these nine demo tracks recorded six months before Flack’s 1969 million-selling debut album on Atlantic, ‘First Takes’. What’s immediately apparent (once you overcome the DJ’s nightmare and adjust the speed on your turntable to 45 rpm for the first of two 180g discs) is how complete a package the great singer and pianist, then 21 years old and a recent student of Howard University in Washington DC, already was.

It would also be clear to Atlantic – who had been tipped to her talents by the singer and pianist Les McCann, who had seen her perform in DC – where her commercial strengths lay. The bouncy show tunes and supper club fare (‘On the Street Where You Live’; ‘This Could be the Start of Something’), while showing off her swinging vocal skills, remain essentially generic; but when the tempo slows to a crawl, and that Nina Simone and Shirley Horn-influenced symbiosis of voice and keys begins to work its magic, it’s an immediate knock-out.

Her dead slow treatment of ’Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out’, opening solo before being joined by her band of Marshall Hawkins on bass and Bernard Sweeney on drums, is real head-turning stuff. Between that, and the lullaby ‘Hush-A-Bye’, which follows, you can see where ’The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’ – the stand-out single from ‘First Take’ – is coming from.

‘Frankie and Johnny’, which opens the second of the two LPs, is another knock-out, where we get a more obviously soulful Roberta, with a half-rapped vocal and a steadily rising sense of intensity. After that it’s ice following fire again, with the beautiful calm and collected ‘The House Song’ (co-written by Noel Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul and Mary, who also co-wrote ‘The Song is Love’, the album’s penultimate track) before a terrific version of ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’ turns the heat up again.  

In case you’d be happy never to hear another version of ‘To Sir With Love’ (actually a decent tune, written by Don Black and Mark London for the film of the same name and a big hit for Lulu, later covered brilliantly by Al Green), Roberta’s version is another thoroughgoing reinvention: it’s dead slow again, the pressure on the keys getting heavier by the second as it progresses to a grand finale, casting the song as a deeply mournful lament while showcasing those absolutely stunning pipes. An equally thorough reinvention of King Floyd’s ‘Groove Me’ closes the show as soulfully as you could wish for, perhaps reinforcing the sense that despite her great success Roberta Flack couldn’t help but be over-shadowed by the unparalleled intensity of Aretha Franklin, with Atlantic realising her potential as the anti-Aretha, and emphasising her cool and classical ice-queen side.

The version of ‘Afro Blue’ – the existence of which first attracted Arc label boss Gilles Peterson to the potential for a vinyl reissue – with Mongo Santamaria’s tune (later covered by John Coltrane) given lyrics by Oscar Brown, is slightly diminished by bass and drums solos, but ‘It’s Way Past Suppertime’ – written by Roberta’s champion Les McCann, the superb soul-jazz figure who has just died, at 88 – is another cool and classical success. Overall, the tracks – recorded on November 19 and 20, 1968 at RCA Studios in New York City, and produced by Joel Dorn of Atlantic, who was a key associate of Les McCann – sound absolutely great. And Roberta Flack, now 86, and who announced in 2022 she will not sing again, is revealed to have been a true star from the very get-go. Insightful sleeve notes by Harmony Holiday add context to the music.

LINK: Lost Takes from Bandcamp

from https://londonjazznews.com