Roberta Flack - Killing Me Softly (1976 Japanese Atlantic Vinyl LP)

Vinyl: VG+
Sleeve: EX
Obi: EX

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Roberta Flack - Killing Me Softly | Vinyl LP - 1976 Japanese Atlantic Reissue (P-10117A, Warner-Pioneer Corporation)

Flack first heard "Killing Me Softly With His Song" on an in-flight audio programme on a flight from Los Angeles to New York. It was a Lori Lieberman recording of a Charles Fox/Norman Gimbel composition. Quincy Jones, who had been at a Greek Theatre concert where Flack debuted her own arrangement, told her not to perform it again until she recorded it, because the arrangement was too good to risk being copied. She recorded it on November 17, 1972 at Atlantic Studios with Gene Paul engineering. The single topped the Billboard Hot 100 for five weeks, making Flack the first solo artist to win the Grammy for Record of the Year in consecutive years (after "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" the year before). The album, released six months after the single, reached number three on the Billboard 200 and eventually sold over two million copies in the US.

The rest of the album holds up alongside the hit. "Jesse," a Janis Ian ballad with Deodato's string arrangement, was released as the follow-up single and reached number 30. "No Tears (In The End)" features horn arrangements by Pee Wee Ellis, who brought the same tight, punchy approach he developed as James Brown's musical director. "River," another Eugene McDaniels composition (McDaniels also wrote for the Quiet Fire sessions), gets William Eaton's horn arrangement. "Conversation Love" has strings and horns arranged by Don Sebesky, one of the most distinctive arrangers in 1970s jazz. "I'm The Girl" uses a cello arrangement by Kermit Moore. "Suzanne" closes the album at nearly 10 minutes, Flack taking Leonard Cohen's poetry and building a slow, orchestral reading over Deodato's strings that treats the song as a long-form meditation rather than a folk standard. The album is dedicated to Rahsaan Roland Kirk.

This is the 1976 Japanese stereo reissue on Atlantic P-10117A, made by Warner-Pioneer Corporation.