Softly

 "I heard he sang a good song. I heard he had a style."

Killing Me Softly With His Song

Noting the passing of singer Roberta Flack.

It was impossible to walk down the hallway of a college dormitory in the early 70s and not hear Roberta Flack's clean, sinuous voice. She'd released a number of singles, each wonderful in its own right. Then came the song that made her ubiquitous.

It's not just a great song, with an involved and very music-business back story. It captures a world that escaped many at the time, and continues to be lost in the 60s/70s continuum many people think they know. Somehow, this woman from North Carolina grasped the deeper meaning of this elegant tune, married it to a lush arrangement and brought it to life.

The song was about singer/songwriter Don McClean, of "American Pie" (and so much more) fame. A young woman named Lori went to see McLean at a concert and left spellbound, having written her thoughts on a napkin. She reported all of this to her music collaborators, with whom she wrote a song.

When Roberta Flack recorded it... What a beautiful, expressive way she had with the words, with the melody, with the meaning. She sings with a vibrant vulnerability, at once lamenting and at the same time marveling at the genius of her subject.

He sang as if he knew me, in all my dark despair. And then he looked right through me as if I wasn't there.

 During an era when men were going off to war, when America was still wrestling with questions the 60s did not answer, Roberta Flack took a song about another artist, and made it hers. She took an idea, that there is beauty in the simple act of singing about how a musician can touch someone so deeply, and made it ours.

She had a long and successful career, charting popular songs into the 90's. She was still performing into the Twenty-teens. She passed this week at eighty-eight, another of those timeless icons who cannot be as old as the numbers seem to suggest.

There was a time - it doesn't really seem that long ago - when a young woman sang a simple song in such a compelling way that it never ages. That's the gift of music. That was the gift of Roberta.