Flack has a bunch of classic hits to her name. But I've been less impressed with many of her albums. I think she's suffered from the all too common problem of overproduction, making songs sound too slick and generic. So I think live recordings are a good way to get around that, because they generally have a more organic and raw sound.
I only know of one official live album from her, and that's from 1980, and was still deep into the disco sound of that time. This comes from the Newport Jazz Festival. I'm just guessing, but I think that venue inspired her to highlight some of her more jazzy material, which I appreciate.
This is an excellent soundboard recording. It was so well balanced that for once I didn't even have to boost the volume of the banter between songs (which I seem to almost always need to do for concerts).
Note that one song, the jazz standard "My Funny Valentine," is actually sung by Gabrielle Goodman. Apparently, Flack got a key break in her career by doing a guest spot at the 1970 Newport Jazz Festival, and she wanted to return the favor to someone else. Unfortunately, I looked up Goodman, and she only released three albums and her music career never really took off.
Flack does do most of her big hits along with some more jazzy stuff. However, I was surprised to see that what is probably her signature song, "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face," was not performed. I like that one, so I found an unreleased version she did from a concert a year later and put it at the end as a kind of quasi-bonus track. So if you want just one concert from her that does a good job of summing up her career, this is a good one to have.
This album is an hour and ten minutes long, including that extra song at the end.
01 talk (Roberta Flack)
02 Killing Me Softly with His Song (Roberta Flack)
03 talk (Roberta Flack)
04 You Know What It's Like (Roberta Flack)
05 talk (Roberta Flack)
06 Blue Lights in the Basement (Roberta Flack)
07 talk (Roberta Flack)
08 Oasis (Roberta Flack)
09 talk (Roberta Flack)
10 Feel like Makin' Love (Roberta Flack)
11 talk (Roberta Flack)
12 My Funny Valentine (Gabrielle Goodman & Roberta Flack)
13 talk (Roberta Flack)
14 Where Is the Love (Roberta Flack)
15 talk (Roberta Flack)
16 Prelude to a Kiss (Roberta Flack)
17 talk (Roberta Flack)
18 Mercy Mercy Me [The Ecology] (Roberta Flack)
19 talk (Roberta Flack)
20 In My Life (Roberta Flack)
21 talk (Roberta Flack)
22 The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face (Roberta Flack)
The cover photo is a screenshot taken from a video of this exact concert. As a result, it's a bit low-res.
I forgot to mention that in the course of getting this album ready, I found a version she did of the Al Green hit "Let's Stay Together," in 1972. I put that on the "Freedom Song" stray tracks album, here:
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