There are two accounts of the origin of the song. Ewan MacColl said that he wrote the song for Peggy Seeger after she asked him to pen a song for the play in which she was performing at the time. He wrote the song and taught it to Seeger over the telephone.[4] Seeger has told a similar story: she started an affair with MacColl in London in 1956 but returned to the U.S. to separate herself from MacColl because he was already married with a child. Seeger worked for a radio show in Los Angeles the following year, and she informed MacColl that the show had asked for a "hopeful love song" because all the folk songs she sang were sad. In one of his phone calls to her from England, MacColl sang the song he had written.[5] MacColl also used to send her tapes to listen to while they were apart and that this song was included on one of them.[6] Seeger said that she did not connect the song as between MacColl and her the way MacColl had written it because she was not "in love" with him at the time and sang the song from his perspective instead.[7] Seeger performed the song in Los Angeles and then in Chicago, but MacColl himself never recorded the song after singing it to her.[5]
While Seeger was the first to perform this song live at folk concerts, she did not release her version until 1962. The earliest recording of the song was made in 1961 byBonnie Dobson and released on her June 1961 debut albumShe's Like a Swallow and Other Folk Songs.[citation needed] Dobson had first heard Seeger perform the song at the Colorado Folk Festival on October 31, 1960 and learned all of the words after hearing other performers sing it at subsequent folk concerts.
MacColl made no secret of the fact that he disliked all of the cover versions of the song. His daughter-in-law wrote: "He hated all of them. He had a special section in his record collection for them, entitled 'The Chamber of Horrors'. He said that theElvis version was like Romeo at the bottom of thePost Office Tower singing up to Juliet. The other versions, he thought, were travesties: bludgeoning, histrionic, and lacking in grace."[8] Peggy Seeger said that she disliked the way Roberta Flack sang the song when it became a hit but has since "come to like it a lot".[7]
Roberta Flack on"The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face"
"It's a perfect song. Second only to 'Amazing Grace', I think....[9] It's the kind of song that has two unique and distinct qualities: it tells a story, and it has lyrics that mean something....Because of [its meaningful lyrics] the [song] can be interpreted by a lot of people in a lot of different ways: the love of a mother for a child, for example, or [that of] two lovers....[10] I wish more songs I had chosen had moved me the way that one did. I've loved [most] every song I've recorded, but that one was pretty special."[9]
The song was popularized byRoberta Flack in a version that became a breakout hit for the singer in 1971–1972. The single had been asleeper hit more than three years after its original 1969 release on her albumFirst Take, in part because it was included in Clint Eastwood's 1971 directorial film debutPlay Misty for Me. Flack's recording ultimately topped theBillboard Year-End Hot 100 singles of 1972 more than three years after it was recorded.
Flack knew the song from theJoe & Eddie version, which had appeared on the folk duo's 1963 albumCoast to Coast (as "The First Time"). Flack's friend, singer Donal Leace, brought the track to Flack's attention.[11] After teaching "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" to the young girls in theglee club atBanneker High School inWashington, D.C., Flack regularly performed the song in her set-list at Mr. Henry's, a club onPennsylvania Avenue where Flack was hired as resident singer in 1968. In February 1969, Flack recorded the song for her debut albumFirst Take. That rendition was much slower-paced than Seeger's original, with Flack's take running more than twice the two-and-a-half-minute length of Seeger's.[citation needed] Flack recalled that when she made her studio recording of "The First Time...", she felt the loss of her pet cat, which had been run over by a car.[10][12]
Flack's slow and sensual version, chosen by Clint Eastwood for his 1971 directorial film debutPlay Misty for Me, underscored a love scene featuring Eastwood and actressDonna Mills. Flack later recalled how Eastwood, who had heard her version of "The First Time..." on his car radio while driving down a freeway in Los Angeles,[13] phoned her at herAlexandria, Virginia home. Flack remembered that Eastwood said, "'I'd like to use your song in this movie...about a disc jockey [with] a lot of music in it. I'd use it in the only part of the movie where there's absolute love." She said okay. "We discussed the money," she added. Eastwood agreed to pay $2,000 to use Flack's version of the song, "and he said, 'Anything else?' And I said: 'I want to do it over again. It's too slow.' He said: 'No, it's not.' "[14]
Flack also recalled that during theFirst Take sessions, her producerJoel Dorn had suggested re-recording "The First Time..." with a slightly faster tempo and lyric edit to trim its running time, but Flack did not agree: "Joel said: 'Okay, you don't care if it's a hit or not?' I said: 'No sir.' Of course he was right for three years, until [after] Clint got it." Flack's version of "The First Time..." exploded in popularity following the November 1971 release ofPlay Misty for Me. This persuadedAtlantic Records to issue the track as a single — trimmed by a minute in length — in February 1972.The single track became a major hit in the United States, reaching No. 1 for six weeks on both theBillboard Hot 100 andeasy listening charts in the spring of 1972, with a No. 4R&B chart peak.[15] Reaching No. 14 on theUK Singles Chart,[16] Flack's "The First Time..." was No. 1 for three weeks on the singles chart in Canada'sRPM magazine.[17]
"The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" was played as wake-up music for the astronauts aboardApollo 17 on flight day 9 (Friday, December 15, 1972), their final day in lunar orbit before returning to Earth. Apollo 17 ended the last human explorations of the Moon. The use of the song was possibly inspired by the Moon's face observed below the spacecraft.[18]
^Quarrington, Paul; Doyle, Roddy (2010).Cigar Box Banjo. Greystone Books. p. 89.ISBN9781553656296. RetrievedAugust 21, 2011.peggy seeger the first time ever i saw your face.
^Picardie, Justine (1995). "The first time ever I saw your face". In De Lisle, Tim (ed.).Lives of the great songs. London: Penguin. pp. 122–26.ISBN978-0-14024957-6.
^Brocken, Michael (2003),The British Folk Revival, 1944–2002, Ashgate, p. 38,ISBN978-0-7546-3282-5: quoting MacColl's daughter-in-law, Justine Picardie.
^abThe Courier-Journal (Louisville, Kentucky) 11 November 1983 "Blues pops singer Roberta Flack should be right at home in Arts Center's classical environs" by Elinor J. Precher p.7-8
^Fries, Colin (March 15, 2015)."Chronology of Wake-Up Calls"(PDF).Nasa.gov.NASA. pp. 6, 7.Archived(PDF) from the original on January 4, 2006. RetrievedSeptember 27, 2018.
