Roberta Flack - PBS Soundstage, Park West, Chicago, IL, 3-30-1981

A couple of weeks ago (as I write this in mid-March 2025), soul singer Roberta Flack passed away. To be specific, she died on February 24, 2025, at the age of 88. I thought about posting an album for her in tribute, but I couldn't think of anything unreleased that I wanted in my music collection. Then I got on this kick of finding and posting episodes of the "PBS Soundstage" TV show, and I discovered that since her death, someone posted her Soundstage episode on a file sharing site in high quality. So here it is, a concert from 1981.

At the time of this concert, Flack's last studio album, "Roberta Flack Featuring Donny Hathaway," had come out a year earlier, in March 1980. She played a few songs from that album, including one written by Stevie Wonder, "You Are My Heaven," and another one co-written by him, "Don't Make Me Wait Too Long." But mostly she played older hits.

When it comes to posting concerts, I like including what actually happened at the concert, not things overdubbed later or scenes from other locations added in. Unfortunately, sometimes the Soundstage show did either or both of those things. The first song, "You Stopped Loving Me," has "[Edit]" in the title because there was a narrator's voice over part of the song. As I usually do, I got rid of that using the UVR5 audio editing program. There also were a couple of sections, each lasting a few minutes, in which Flack was interviewed. I removed those entirely. While interesting, in my opinion they didn't fit well being spliced into the middle of a concert.

This album is 54 minutes long.

01 You Stopped Loving Me [Edit] (Roberta Flack)
02 talk (Roberta Flack)
03 If Only for One Night (Roberta Flack)
04 Killing Me Softly with His Song (Roberta Flack)
05 Don't Make Me Wait Too Long (Roberta Flack)
06 Just When I Needed You (Roberta Flack)
07 Feel like Makin' Love (Roberta Flack)
08 You Are My Heaven (Roberta Flack)
09 Disguises (Roberta Flack)
10 Reverend Lee (Roberta Flack)
11 The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face (Roberta Flack)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/wMm36Gyx

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/qvSUmszDhmcuC5S/file

The cover photo is from a concert at the Park West Theatre in Chicago in 1981. I assume it's from this exact concert, though it's possible she played that venue more than once.