A folk song written over the phone became a global hit and lunar soundtrack.
In short: Ewan MacColl wrote this classic in 1957 for Peggy Seeger, teaching it to her over the telephone. Though MacColl despised the later, slower covers, the song eventually became a massive international success for Roberta Flack, even serving as wake-up music for astronauts during the final human mission to the Moon.
The song originated from a request for a hopeful love song for a radio show. MacColl and Seeger were separated by the Atlantic, with Seeger in the United States and MacColl in England, where he remained married to his second wife. Despite the personal nature of the lyrics, Seeger did not initially interpret the song as a declaration of love, performing it from MacColl's perspective instead. While Seeger was the first to perform it live, the earliest recording was released in 1961 by Bonnie Dobson.
Roberta Flack’s definitive 1972 version was a sleeper hit, originally appearing on her 1969 album First Take. The song's popularity surged after Clint Eastwood featured it in his 1971 film Play Misty for Me. Flack, who recorded the track while grieving the loss of her pet cat, resisted pressure from her producer to speed up the tempo or edit the lyrics. Her persistence paid off; the song topped the Billboard Hot 100 for six weeks and won Grammy Awards for Record and Song of the Year.
MacColl famously loathed these commercial interpretations, keeping a 'Chamber of Horrors' section in his record collection for cover versions he considered histrionic and lacking in grace. Despite his disdain, the song’s reach continued to expand. In December 1972, it was played for the crew of Apollo 17 as they orbited the Moon. Later artists, including Celine Dion and Leona Lewis, have continued to chart with the song, with Flack herself publicly praising Dion’s rendition decades later.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face
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