Roberta Flack
The First Time, Ever I Saw Your Face - 1972
The Definitive Version
My mom and I used to load up our car Saturday night with anything we thought we could sell in the early seventies, then go get in line at the Heart Drive In Theatre approach lanes at 4 am and wait until 8 when they opened the gates. We'd pay four dollars for a car to be sellers at the weekend Swap and Shop. We'd spread our junk out on a blanket and wait in the chilly mornings, trying to woo passersby to buy our pitiful stuff. We were pretty poor so this was an important way to try to get some extra cash, it was alot quicker than a garage sale and you could do it any given weekend.
In the cavernous parking lot of the theater with the curved rows of humped up gravel and the big blank screen, a pole sticking out of the ground with two speakers on it for every parking space, the proprietor would play top forty music through the pole speakers. Tinny, but with all the echos and hundreds of speakers, it had a haunting ethereal sound coming from everywhere. One song stands out above all the rest from this time period as being evocative and otherwordly to me - hearing it in that environment. Roberta Flack and her megahit The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.
Well, I've set the stage, now you can imagine how the song sounds to me and always will.
Worshipful, sad, poignant, hopeful, wistful, and full of Spirit.
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