← Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
Killing Me Softly Part 1
01:14:48
How four R&B queens—Dionne, Patti, Roberta and Chaka—evolved into chart-toppers through the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s.
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You're listening ad free on Amazon Music.
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Hey there Hit Parade listeners. What you're about to hear is Part one of this episode. Part two will arrive in your podcast feed at the end of the month. Would you like to hear this episode all at once the day it drops? Sign up for Slate Plus. You can try it for a month for just $1 and it supports not only this show, but all of Slate's acclaimed journalism and podcasts. Just go to slate.com hitparadeplus you'll get to hear every Hit Parade episode in full the day it arrives. Plus Hit Parade the Bridge, our bonus episodes with guest interviews, deeper dives on our episode topics and pop chart trivia. Once again to join, that's slate.com hitparadeplus thanks and now please enjoy part one of this hit Parade episode.
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The first time. Ever I saw your face welcome to.
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Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate Magazine about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Melanfi, chart analyst, pop critic and writer of Slate's why Is this Song Number One? Series on today's show. Fifty years ago this week in in March of 1972, this song had just cracked the top 40 and was rising fast. Which was remarkable because three years earlier, when singer Roberta Flack recorded the song, it had been largely ignored. But thanks to its appearance in a Hollywood movie, just three weeks after cracking the top 40, the first time ever I Saw youw Face was the number one song in America.
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Earth Moving My Hand.
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One year later, in March of 1973, Roberta Flack's the First Time Ever I Saw your Face took the Grammy for Record of the Year. That same night that Flack was accepting this Grammy for her first number one hit, she was on top of the Hot 100 with her second number one.
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Hit, Drumming My bed with his fingers, Singing my life with his words Killing me softly with his song Killing me.
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Softly Killing me softly with his song. And by the way, one year after that, in March of 1974, Flack went back to the Grammys podium again to accept Record of the Year. She became the first artist to win that prize two years in a row. By 74, Flack was in good company. A wave of sophisticated black women artists who were commanding the charts. Whether it was Dionne Warwick who topped the Hot 100 that year with Then Came you, Then came you, or the group labelle, a trio in glam rock makeup led by namesake Patti LaBelle with their sexually liberated space funk jam Lady Marmalade. All of these Artists had come of age in the 60s, a decade when black women had to fight to assert themselves in the studio and on the road. Whether it was Patti LaBelle, I'm still waiting. Or dionne warwick. Or roberta flack. Paying their dues in the 60s gave these women clout in the 70s to call more of the shots. The path they created made it possible for a younger generation of black women to blaze their own trail, including a young woman from Chicago who fronted a biracial funk rock band called Rufus. Her name was Chaka Khan.
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You refuse to put anything before your pride.
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These artistic advances in the 70s set these women up for success in the 80s and beyond, Making them chart toppers at the height of cross cultural, multiracial pop. For sure.
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That'S what friends are for.
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Today on Hit Parade, we will consider the legacy of these R B queens, Roberta Flack, Dionne Warwick and Patti LaBelle, as well as younger soul sister Chaka Khan. It's a legacy that frankly could use a little more shine, a better appreciation for how they set the stage for this. And this. And of course, this.
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I heard he sang a good song, I heard he had a style.
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And.
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So I came to see him and listen for a while.
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Before Lauren could sing a good song, before Whitney could declare it's all in Me, before an army of young women could teach us what Voulez vous coucher avec moi means in French, an earlier generation of RB queens found themselves in the eye of a quiet storm and they made their own weather. Most especially that multi Grammy winning pianist and singer who rearranged a folk rock obscurity into one of the most enduring songs in R B history.
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Fingers singing My Life with his words, killing me softly with his song.
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And that's where your hit parade marches today. The week ending March 3, 1973, when Roberta Flack's arrangement of Killing Me Softly with his song was number one on the Hot 100 and rising to number two on the Soul singles chart. The same night Flack was picking up a Grammy for record of the Year. Flack's sophisticated arrangements, rooted in her classical training, set a high bar for interpretive soul and helped define a new lane for black women in the pop pantheon. How did 70s R B queens Roberta, Dionne, Patty and Shaka carry forward the 60s Innovations of Aretha and Diana to assert soul's place at the Top of the Pops? Here's a hot take for you, something to debate the next time you're among fellow music nerds. I've played USA for Africa's chart topping 198520 charity mega single We Are the World several times on Hit Parade, dating all the way back to our charity Mega Singles episode in our first year, as well as on shows about several artists who sing on that record. But here's my question which I will follow with my own opinion. Who on We Are the World is the best soloist? There certainly are several worthy candidates. Michael Jackson, who co wrote the USA for Africa song with Lionel Richie, takes the first chorus in a heartfelt duet with Diana Ross. Some have argued that on the second chorus, the the one two punch of famed falsetto rocker Steve Perry of Journey and blue eyed soul king Daryl hall is a highlight. And of course many have argued over the years that the all out most memorable vocal, whatever you think of it, is Cyndi Lauper's impassioned ad lib just before the big all voices chorus. I wouldn't necessarily argue with you if that was your favorite part. As I said on our Cyndi Lauper episode of Hit Parade, Lauper is delightfully wacko and totally amazing on We Are the World, but let's roll the tape back a bit. I have long felt Here comes my hot Take that. For all the flash and fireworks of these individual vocal lines, Cindy, Darryl, Steve, Diana, even Michael. The all around best solo vocal in the introductory three minutes of We Are the World comes from Ms. Dionne Warwick.
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Well, send them your heart so they know that someone else and their lives will be stronger and free.
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By the way, at the end of Warwick's line, that's country legend Willie Nelson coming in. Nelson does a fine job doing his twangy Willy thing, but Dion, in addition to generously setting up Nelson's quirky vocal in her very subtle way, she produces a vocal masterclass. Kevin, please go ahead and play that again. Warwick is finding harmonics and little vocal runs that are not intrinsic to the song as written. A song that, by the way, is everybody except Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie were unfamiliar with before showing up to record that night in January 1985. Warwick is not over singing, not even a bit. And her vocal is so heartfelt, empathetic, soulful. Sorry, let's hear that just one more time.
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Well, send them your heart so they know that someone else and their lives will be stronger and free.
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In a song many accuse of being messianic and self serving in the guise of being charitable. A chance for performers to chest thump. Look, I'm fond of We Are the World, but I see their point. Dionne Warwick finds the heart and as the lyric says sends it without hogging the spotlight. It's a trick she would pull off just months later on her own now legendary charity mega single. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Mainly, I want to reinforce this point. The women we'll be discussing today are in many ways taken for granted. They were so reliably good for so long. Many critics and even pop fans don't appreciate the craft that goes into what they do. Mind you, I I am not arguing that all of the women I'll be discussing here are subtle vocalists. Dionne Warwick is, you might say, the Goldilocks of the group. Not too hot, not too cool, always in the pocket. Whereas Ms. Patti LaBelle is, well, not shy about showing off her insane vocal range. One thing the women I've chosen to focus on have in common all remain unrecognized by the Rock and Roll hall of fame. Two of them, Roberta Flack and Patti LaBelle, haven't even been nominated. The other two, Chaka Khan and Dionne Warwick, have been nominated multiple times but remain uninducted. Although as I speak, I am in possession of a Rock hall ballot on which Ms. Warwick is again nominated and you'd better believe I'm voting for her again. There are other black female vocal legends I could have included in this roundup. To be clear, we can never honor legends like Aretha, Diana or Gladys Too much. But I've chosen a quartet of uninducted hall worthy legends to reinforce how vital this generation of master vocalists was to the development of rock and roll and pop and soul. Not to mention, since this is a show about the charts, what hit makers they all were. A couple of them were even cracking the charts as far back as the first 1960s girl group era, when young women were making the charts but not always able to control their own destiny. For Patricia Louise Holt, born in Philadelphia, the weirdness of the music business started early. The future Patti LaBelle, who grew up singing in her church choir and formed her first singing group at just 16, didn't even sing on her group's first hit, This 1962 remake of the 40s Doo Wop Diddy, I Sold My Heart to the Junk man was credited to the Blue Bells, Patti LaBelle's group, but it was really sung by a different group, the Starlets. The Bluebell's name was slapped onto the record by the owner of the label Patty and her girls had just signed to. This is not unlike the story we told you in a prior hit parade a about Darlene Love singing lead on a Phil Spector produced hit that was then credited to the Crystals. These kinds of shenanigans were common to the record biz in the early 60s, especially with girl groups. Nonetheless, the Bluebells, credited I Sold My Heart to the Junkman made it to number 15 in 1962, breaking the blue bells on the charts. Fortunately, by 1963 the four woman bluebells were scoring hits like down the Aisle, the wedding song with Patty's actual voice down the aisle reached number 37 on the Hot 100 and number 14 on the R B chart.
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Or worse, I Take Be Wet.
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Pretty early on in a theme that will recur throughout this episode with all of our profiled singers, it became clear that when LaBelle wrapped her voice around a song, any song, it became hers. This included the Bluebells cover of the Broadway Standard turned Jerry and the Pacemaker's anthem You'll Never Walk Alone, a top 40 hit for the Bluebells in 1964. Indeed, interpreting others material was how another of our R and B queens got her start. During this girl group era, only she was a soloist who fused girl group yearning with adult poise. It is easier to define Dionne Warwick by what she isn't rather than what she is, writes all music to critic William Rolman. Although she grew up singing in church, she is not a gospel singer. Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan are clear influences, but she is not a jazz singer. R B is also part of her background, but she is not really a soul singer either, at least not in the sense that Aretha Franklin is. Sophisticated is a word often used to describe Warwick's musical approach, but she is not a singer of standards such as Lena Horne or Nancy Wilson. She could have only emerged out of the brill building environment of post Elvis Presley pre Beatles urban pop in the early 60s, and she remains a unique, unique figure in popular music. Unquote.
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Don't Make Me Over.
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I talked a bit about Dionne Warwick's origin story in our Whitney Houston episode of Hit Parade. That's because Warwick was born into the same family that produced the Drinkered Singers, the gospel vocal troupe led by Whitney's mother and Dion's aunt Sissy Houston. By the time Dion scored her first hit, Don't Make Me Over, a number 21 pop number 5 R B hit in January 1963, she had already met and was already singing music by the two men who would change her life.
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One day married, next day free Broken.
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Hearts this B side by the Drifters called Mexican Divorce was co written by a Brill Building songwriter named Bert Bacharach. The backup vocals on Mexican Divorce were by several affiliates of the drinker singers, Sissy Houston, her friend Doris Troy, Sissy's nieces Dee Dee Warwick and Dionne Warwick, then 21 years old. Burt Bacharach was especially impressed with Dion and introduced her to his regular songwriting partner, lyricist Hal David. Within months, Bacharach and David began writing songs uniquely suited to Dionne Warwick's self assured voice, including Don't Make Me over And later, in 1963, Anyone who Had a Heart, Warwick's first top 10 pop hit.
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Anyone who ever loved could look at me and know that I love you Anyone who ever dreamed.
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In essence, Dionne Warwick became Bacharach and David's muse. They had been scoring hits with other singers, including Perry Como and girl group the Shirelles. But Warwick just seemed to get the tone of their lovelorn, contemplative, jazzy, but not jazz cocktail pop. Moreover, even if, as critic Rollman says, Warwick was not a soul singer per se, she gave the songs soul, turned them into a kind of urbane R and B, the way no other interpreter of Bacharach and David's work could.
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If you see me walking down the street and I start to cry each time we meet.
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Consider Walk on by a number six pop number one R B hit in 1964 and I'm just gonna cop to this One of the all time favorite songs of your hit parade host. Built out of a bossa nova beat and a gentle horn hook that sounds a lot like the Tijuana Brass, Walk on by reads as lounge music, a drink that's stirred, not shaken. But when it arrives at the chorus, Warwick ramps up her vocal and amps up the drama, building toward a cathartic piano crescendo, And the song becomes pure soul girl group ache crossed with grown folks regret. The knock on Dionne Warwick from some quarters was that she was more pop than R B. For example, the Bacharach David Reach Out For Me started as a 1963 single for Soul singer Lou Johnson.
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How I wanna love you.
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But in Johnson's hands, it never really crossed over, peaking on the Hot 100 at number 74. One year later, when Warwick took it on, she added just enough of a glide to Reach out for Me that it became a top 20 pop hit.
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Reach out for me don't you worry, I'll see you through you just have to reach out for me.
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However, this reputation for pop smoothness belied Warwick's code switching skill. Her Reach out for Me was also A number one R B hit. And other Bacharach David songs she made famous, such as 1964's A House is Not a Home, Were reinterpreted decades later by R B luminaries like Luther Vandross, Which reinforces that these songs were given their soulfulness in the first place by Dionne Warwick. Meanwhile, no one was accusing Patti LaBelle of popifying her material. During this same mid-60s period, she and the Bluebells were performing their own acts of transformation. They took the stately ballad I'm Still Waiting, written by Curtis Mayfield for his group the Impressions that I'm still waiting, yeah. And they amped up the yearning, the drama. The Blue Bells version of I'm Still Waiting cracked the R B top 40 in 1966.
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I'm still waiting until and his promise, I haven't Forgot.
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That same year, on the title track of their over the Rainbow LP, a top 20 hit on the R B album chart, Patti and the Bluebells turned the Judy Garland standard into credible R and B for the first time in that song's history.
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Over the Rainbow.
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But the Blue Bells story took an unexpected turn in 1967, when right after their number 36 R B hit, Take Me For A Little While, Founding group member Cindy Birdsong was poached by Motown Records to replace Flo Ballard in the label's top act, the Supremes. The three remaining leaning bluebells, Patti LaBelle, Nona Hendricks and Sarah Dash, were really thrown for a loop by Birdsong's departure. Take Me For A Little While wound up being the Bluebell's last hit of the 1960s as the trio regrouped and eventually renamed themselves simply LaBelle. The wound from Birdsong flying the coupe never really healed. Several years later, in the early 70s, Nona Hendricks would eviscerate Birdsong's departure in a song she wrote for LaBelle called Can I speak to you before you go to Hollywood?
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I don't know if I should but if I could Can I screech to you yeah oh, before you go to a Hollywood.
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So LaBelle, the group were out of the running in the late 60s, but Dionne Warwick was, if anything, hitting her stride again. Her superpower, not unlike Patti LaBelle's, was interpretation. But Warwick was going places no other black female singer could go in the 1960s, when Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote the title tune for the 1966 British film Alfie, sung first by British singer Cilla Black.
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Alfie.
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Is it just for the moment we live?
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What's it all about.
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They really wanted their premier singer, Dionne Warwick, to have a go at it. Consider how improbable this was. This is the title tune for a movie starring Michael Caine, wherein he's talking like this.
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I don't know. It seems to me if they ain't got you one way, they got you another. So what's the answer? That's what I keep asking myself. What's it all about? Know what I mean?
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And yet Dionne Warwick's Alfie was the biggest hit version of all.
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As sure as I've been here there's a heaven above.
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Warwick's Alfie outcharted both Scylla Black's original and a cover by American singer Cher that was recorded to promote the U S release of Alfie. The film Cher couldn't take her Alfie any higher than number 32 on the Hot 100. Dionne Warwick's version reached number 15 in 1960 and even reached number 5 on the R and B chart. So sometimes Warwick got in late on a hit, sometimes early. Dion recorded the first version of Bacharach and David's all time classic I say A Little Prayer, and she got it to 4, pop, 8 R&B in late 1967.
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Will love you forever and ever we never were part of how I'll love you Together Together that's how it must.
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Be of course you might better know I say A Little Prayer in its legendary Aretha Franklin version. The Queen of Souls version did better on the R and B chart, reaching number three in 1968.
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The moment I wake up Before I put on my makeup I say a little prayer for you.
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But Arethas only reached number 10 pop. Yes, Dionne Warwick's Prayer actually outcharted Franklin's on the pop chart. Everybody won a victory in that showdown. There was one other strange twist to Warwick's I say A Little Prayer. Its B side, a song not penned by Burt Bacharach or Hal David, charted on its own and became Dion's biggest hit of the 1960s. A song by Andre and Dori Previn from the pulpy movie drama Valley of the Dolls.
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When did I get. Where did I How was I? I caught in this game.
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Again. As with Alfie, this was an improbable track for Warwick to take on, and yet in her hands it was a smash. Dion's Theme from Valley of the dolls reached number two in February 1968. The late 60s were one long victory lap for Warwick. Though it only reached number 10 on the Hot 100. Her hit from this period that's probably best remembered is her take on the Bacharach David standard Do you know the way to San Jose?
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Do you know the way to San Jose? I've been away so long I may go wrong in my.
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And Dion kept on interpreting Burt's and Howl's songs for other artists. When Herb Alpert scored a 1968 number one with this guy's in love with.
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You, you see this guy, this guy's in love with you.
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Warwick flipped the gender and took this Girl's in Love with youh to number seven on both the pop and RB charts in 1969. You could fairly argue that more than any black female singer of the 60s, Dionne Warwick decoded the interpretation of white artists songs for a multiracial audience, setting an example for other song interpreters. But Dion's was not the only way around this Same Time in 1969, a black singer and pianist from Washington D.C. newly signed to the Atlantic label, took this 1967 Leonard Cohen song, hey, that's no way to say goodbye.
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I love you in the morning Our kisses deep and warm your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden star.
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And she turned it into this, kicking off the 70s before the decade had even begun.
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I'm not looking for another As I wonder in my time Walk me to the corner Our steps will always rise.
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This might sound counterintuitive to say about a singer who didn't become a star until her 30s, but Roberta Cleopatra Flack was something of a prodigy. Born and raised in Black Mountain, North Carolina, Roberta Flack was a classically trained pianist by her early teens. She won a full scholarship to Howard university at age 15. One of the youngest students ever to enroll at the historically Black College in D.C. she graduated at just 19, became a music teacher back in North Carolina, and eventually returned to Washington to teach junior high students and play clubs around D.C. as Flack shifted from classical to more pop repertoire and began to sing, following in the footsteps of, say, Nina Simone, she began to draw packed houses filled with D.C. music fans drawn to her blend of jazz, blues and even gospel.
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I said it would be all right, be all right.
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It was while playing these clubs that Roberta Flack attracted the attention of renowned jazz pianist and vocalist Les McCann.
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The president needs to got his war.
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McCann arranged an audition for Flack with Atlantic Records, the storied label that had just recently brought Aretha Franklin to the top of the charts. McCann would later write about Flack. Quote, her voice touched, tapped, trapped and kicked every emotion I've ever known she alone had the voice. McCann knew a thing or two about artists finding their voice. Compared to what? A jaunty protest song of social criticism that McCann first recorded for a 1966 studio album was about to become a crossover hit in a live version that paired him with saxophonist Eddie Harris.
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Baby.
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But Flack had her own more sensual take on Compared to what? Her version was one of the first songs she recorded for Atlantic for her 1969 debut album, First Take.
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But compared to what.
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Flack recorded first take when she was 32 years old, the prodigy had become a late bloomer. And like Flack's career, the album was the ultimate sleeper. Released In June of 69, Flack's debut didn't even crack but Billboard's top LP's chart until January 1970, and then only briefly. Later. In 1970, Flack issued a second album, Chapter Two. It became a word of mouth hit, riding the lower rungs of the album chart for months. Even though Chapter Two spawned no hit songs, listeners appreciated Flack's unique takes on sultry stories.
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This is a song about a very big, strong, black, sexy Southern Baptist minister who thinks that he has his program all together until he runs up against a lady who shows him that he ain't got it together. His name is Reverend Dr. Lee Reverend.
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Lee what what finally changed the trajectory of Flack's career was a team up with another singer, a fellow Howard University alumnus named Donny Hathaway.
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When you're down in trouble you need some love and care.
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Flack and Hathaway were more than half a decade apart in age and did not actually attend Howard together, but they had an easy rapport. Flack had recorded songs by Hathaway on both of her first two albums, and he'd also played piano and sung on those LPs. Atlantic executive Jerry Wexler thought it might make sense sense for them to actually duet. And so as a sort of experiment, in 1971 they recorded a cover of Carole King's emerging standard, soon to be made famous by James Taylor, you've got.
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A friend, Just call out my name and you know where.
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This one off single finally broke Flack on the pop charts. Casey Kasem counted it down.
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American Top 40 now the Top 40 debut tune by the school teacher from Black Mountain, North Carolina, who won a scholarship to Howard University because of her high grades in the public Schools of Washington, D.C. she finished her bachelor's degree in music education when she was only 19. She taught in North Carolina for a while, then went back to teach In Washington's public schools. At night, she worked the nightclubs as an accompanist to other acts. Those are the early chapters in the life of Roberta Flack. She doesn't moonlight anymore. She debuts in the top 40 this week at number 38 in a duet with Donny Hathaway. It's the song that that Carole King wrote, you've Got A Friend.
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Roberta and Donnie's you've Got a Friend peaked at number 29 that summer. By the way, you've Got A Friend really got around in 1971, in addition to appearing on King's own Tapestry album and becoming a number one pop hit for James Taylor and serving as the breakthrough single for Roberta Flack and Donnie Hathaway. Even LaBelle, the rechristened trio led by Patti LaBelle, recorded a cover that year of youf've Got a Friend.
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I come running, running, running, running, running.
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We'll come back to labelle momentarily. As for Roberta Flack, she kept plugging away throughout 1971, recording a full duet album with Donny Hathaway, dropping a third solo LP in late 71 called Quiet Fire that had yet another Carole King cover on it, but will you love me tomorrow? And even appearing live on stage in Ghana at a 1971 concert celebrating the anniversary of the African nation's independence. The show, featuring Flack alongside the likes of the Staple Singers and Ike and Tina Turner, was captured in the 1971 musical documentary Soul to Soul.
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No more Weeping over Me. And before I.
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Going into 1972, this could have been the extent of Roberta Flack's cultural profile. A respected singer in the middle tier of pop, selling enough LPs to justify her career on Atlantic Records, but not exactly a chart topper. And then not unlike the weirdness of Dionne Warwick crossing paths with a Michael Caine Film In 1966, this Hollywood luminary entered Roberta Flack's life.
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But being this is a.44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and will blow your head clean off, you gotta ask yourself the question, do I feel lucky?
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Well, do you punk Clint Eastwood? Yes, that Clint Eastwood, then, coming off his smash, hard boiled 1971 rogue cop film Dirty Harry, was launching what would turn out to be a long and storied side career as a director. Eastwood's debut film was called Play Misty for Me, and he needed a song to soundtrack a long, languid romantic montage between his lead character and actress Donna Mills. On his own, Eastwood happened to hear Flack's more than two year old album first take, and he keyed into a deep cut on the album. Flack's cover of this old folk song.
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The First Time Ever I held you near.
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The first time ever I Saw your Face was penned in 1957 by British folk singer and political activist Ewan McCall. It had been covered by numerous artists, most of them folkies from the Kingston Trio, which you're hearing right now, to the Chad Mitchell Trio, the Brothers Four, and even Peter, Paul and Mary.
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Ever I Saw your Face.
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Roberta Flack eventually heard it when gospel folk duo Joe and Eddie took it on in 1963. But Roberta F. Flack's 1969 version of the First Time Ever I Saw youw Face stood apart even from Joe and Eddie's version and every other version that came before.
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The first time. Ever I saw your Face.
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Flack slowed the song way down where most versions were under three minutes. Flack's album cut ran more than five, and she also sang it at a deliberately languorous pace, suffused with awe for the lover she was serenading. Clint Eastwood was captivated and paid Flack $2,000 for the rights to use her version of the First Time Ever I Saw your Face in Play Misty for Me. Not a huge sum of money, but you might say Flack, even more than Eastwood, got her money's worth. When Play Misty for Me became a modest box office hit, Flax the First Time took off. After years of modest sales, suddenly Flack seemed like an overnight sensation. Atlantic issued the three year old track as a single for the first time, trimming it to about four and a half minutes but doing nothing about Flack's glacial singing speed. The smoldering slowness was the song selling point. In March 1972, the first time ever I Saw your Face entered the Hot 100 and rose quickly. Just before it cracked the top 40, Flack's First Take album re entered the Billboard Top LP's chart for the first time in two years. By April, First Take soared to number 22, higher than any Roberta Flack album had before. Two weeks later, the single was number one on the Hot 100 and First Take was in the album chart top 10. Finally, for the week ending April 29, 1972, with the first time ever I saw your Face Face. In its third week at number one, it stayed there for six. First Take also reached the top on the album chart, making Roberta Flack amazingly the first black female soloist with a number one album, an achievement that had eluded even Aretha Franklin and Diana Ross.
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And I knew our Joy.
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B
Suddenly Flack was one of the top singers in the country and she had coattails. Her duet album Roberta Flack and Donnie Hathaway arrived just as First Take was reaching number one. Within weeks, the duet album rose to number three, giving Donny Hathaway his first hit LP and Flack two simultaneous top ten LPs. Flack's and Hathaway's smoothly soulful single from the album Where Is the Love? Reached number three pop number one R and B. The key to Flack's breakthrough had been reimagining a white folk song in her own classical piano meets spiritual soul idiom. Before 1972 was even over, she had pulled off the same trick, this time reimagining a folk song that that was about a folk singer. Laurie Lieberman was a folk and soft rock singer who teamed with a pair of male songwriters to produce her music. When she saw a performance performance at the Troubadour in Los Angeles of rising folk rocker Don McLean of American Pie fame, Lieberman shared with her songwriting partners how knocked out she was by McLean's performance. Those songwriters, Norman Gimbel and Charles Fox, turned Lieberman's impressions of McLean into a song about a guitar guitarist strumming her pain with his fingers, singing her life with his words and killing her softly with his song. Laurie Lieberman's version of Killing Me Softly with his song was not a hit, but Roberta Flack happened to catch it on the audio channel on a Cross Country Country TWA flight in 1972. I thought it had an awfully good title, Flack told Fred Bronson, author of the Billboard Book of Number One Hits. By the time I got to New York, I knew I had to do that song. And with my classical background, I knew I'd be able to add something to it. Unquote.
- [55:11]
C
Killing Me Softly with his.
- [55:17]
B
Flack's Killing Me Softly with His Song. By the way, that's the full title. Unlike the Fugees version, which is known as Just Killing Me Softly was greeted warmly everywhere, Flack played it performing it as a guest at a Marvin Gaye concert in late 1972. Gay to told Flack backstage not to perform that song again until she had recorded it. So sure was he that it was.
- [55:49]
C
A smash, but he just kept right on.
- [56:00]
B
When Flax Killing Me Softly with his song officially on arrived in January 1973, it stormed up the Hot 100, reaching number one in just five weeks. And as I noted at the top of our show, it was on top of the chart in March of 73. The same week Flack was accepting Record of the year for 1972 for the first time ever I saw your face.
- [56:35]
C
Like to thank the world.
- [56:40]
B
And Flack wasn't even done taking the Grammy stage. Killing Me Softly would win this same prize. 1973's Record of the Year in March of 1974, Roberta Flack had expanded what was possible for Black female artists in popular music, competing effectively on the charts with the likes of the Rolling Stones, Jethro Tull and Elton John, which made it a good time for other 60s veterans to try crossing over in the 70s. For their part, the rechristened Lebel had already been widening their repertoire. Their 1972 album Moonshadow was named after a Cat Stevens song that the trio covered to memorable effect. In this period, LaBelle also toured with British rockers the Whole, another band they reinterpreted. Pete Townsend, bandleader of the, who was a fan of LaBelle's take on his group's Won't Get Fooled Again. By the time of 1973's acclaimed Pressure Cookin album, LaBelle had fully rebooted their image as glam rockers tricked out in space suits, feathers and giant collars like Ziggy Stardust Gone Soul. The album's centerpiece song was a mashup of covers of the Thunderclap Newman rocker Something in the Air with Gil Scott Heron's the Revolution will not be telecommunicated.
- [58:44]
C
Revolution will be no rerun. The revolution is going to be live right now.
- [59:01]
B
Meanwhile, in her own way, Dionne Warwick was also attempting a reboot. She kind of had to when her longtime mentors, songwriting duo Burt Bacharach and Hal David, split up just after the start of the 70s, Warwick had to sue them to resolve her contract with the Super Smooth pair. So Dion needed a total makeover for a few years. In what might be read as a proto Prince move, she even added an E to the end of her last name. And on her 1973 LP just being myself, Warwick W A R W I C K E came as close as she ever would to rocking out. Warwick's career reboot would not be complete until she teamed with a producer closer to the cutting edge of 70s pop, Philadelphia's Tom Bell. A progenitor of the Philly soul sound, Bell had rebooted Detroit's the Spinners and scored a string of hits like the number three pop number one R&B smash I'll be around. When Dionne Warwick invited the Spinners to open her tour in the summer of 1974 Tom Bell had the idea to pair Warwick with lead spinner Philippe Wynn on a song that would showcase their fiery vocals. Then came you, a quintessential Tom Bell Philly soul production. Was that so? Though the Spinners were on a roll by 74, Warwick hadn't been in the top 10 in more than four years. Accordingly, then came you took a while to catch on. More than three months to climb the hotel 100 when it hit number one in October 1974 and number two on the R B chart. Then came you changed everybody's fortunes. It was the first number one pop hit for the Spinners, Warwick and producer Tom Bell. Just weeks before Warwick topped the hot 100 with her spinners duet, Roberta Flack was back on top with her third straight number one hit. It hadn't come easy. Flack wound up producing the record herself when her previous producer Joel Dorn, left for another label and the LP took her more than eight months to produce. Maybe that explains why the album's title track, Feel Like Making Love, feels so intimate. As much a vibe as a song, Feel Like Making Love was Flack in her purest silver, silky soul Mode. Unlike her two previous Hot 100 smashes, which came close but did not top Billboard's soul singles chart, Feel Like Making Love was both a pop and R B smash. Commanding the soul chart for more than a month, Flack was, as a follow up hit indicated, feeling that glow.
- [63:29]
C
I think you should know that I feel it that.
- [63:35]
B
But what about Lebel? They had to travel further afield than either Flack or Warwick to make their way to the top of the charts. It was at long last a team up with legendary New Orleans producer Alan Toussaint that did the trick. Toussaint was on set, something of a role in the early 70s, having produced fellow NOLA luminary Dr. John. And written the first hit for the Poynter Sisters, the New Orleans funk jam yes We Can Can. The song that Alan Toussaint produced for labelle, can be heard as a kind of hybrid of both of these modes. Gut bucket funk like Dr. John, danceable soul like the Pointer Sisters. But crazily enough, it was written by two men who'd only visited New Orleans four Seasons, veteran Bob Gaudio and LA songwriter Kenny Nolan. They wanted to capture the lasciviousness of the sex workers on Bourbon street, but their first recording of this song, played by studio disco group the 11th Hour, was not prom. In Alan Toussaint's hands. However, this cheesy, lewd and culturally appropriative record sounded somehow authentic, like it had belonged in New Orleans all along.
- [65:41]
C
Yeah.
- [65:52]
B
Toussaint produced lady marmalade for LaBelle's acclaimed 1974 album Nightbirds, the peak LP of their glam soul phase. After all of their years rebooting folk, funk, rock and glam in their image, they made Lady Marmalade their own. Most especially its sexy French refrain, a chorus that means do you want to sleep with me? This was like a schoolyard titter, a radio in joke among mid-70s pop fans. Deluded, delivered by three fearless women anchored by the rafter raising vocals of Patti LaBelle. After a three month climb in late 74 and early 75, Lady Marmalade took the top of both the RB and pop charts in February and March of 1975. After a decade and a half of striving, LaBelle had finally arrived. Against the backdrop of these three careers, Flacks, Warwick's and LeBell's, it's interesting to compare how a younger act one without a long 60s history did with the artistic freedom and commercial clout black women were now enjoying on the charts. If this were a science experiment, you might say our control group was this band whose lead singer was a decade or more younger than her soul sister forebears and felt free to front a rock band from the jump.
- [67:49]
C
Whatever's thrilling you is killing me.
- [67:53]
B
Chicago band Rufus was not originally devised to showcase the singer Yvette Marie Stevens, who after a Stint in the 60s as a teenage radical with the Black Panthers, changed her name to the Yoruba derived Chaka Khan. The band Rufus grew out of a biracial rock group called the American Breed that had scored one big top five hit in 1968 called Bend Me. Shape me, shape me Any way you.
- [68:29]
C
Want me Long as you love me, it's all right.
- [68:33]
B
Chaka Khan joined Rufus when they were still called Ask Rufus and just before they recorded their 1973 self titled debut album. Rufus could easily have been an FM radio style album rock band. On certain tracks, multi instrumentalist Ron Stockart, the de facto bandleader, sang Lee. But Chaka Khan, all of 19 was the sound of Rufus's future. It didn't hurt that she had both photogenic looks and a powerful voice. But when Rufus shifted toward funk, as on a cover of Stevie Wonder's maybe youe Baby, Khan assumed the mantle of frontwoman, comfortably leading the band like she was born to do it. Even before their second album album, Ron Stockart would exit Rufus. Stevie Wonder then at the height of his hit making powers was so impressed with Rufus's cover of his maybe youe Baby and especially with Shaka Khan. For their next album, he offered them a song he'd originally written for himself, Tell Me Something Good. Wonder even showed up in the studio to help guide Khan on how she should sing the song playing off its signature talk box.
- [70:29]
C
Tell me that you love me, yeah.
- [70:36]
B
Tell me something good reached number three on both the pop and R B charts in 1974. It was the last major hit credited only to Rufus. From then on, Khan got top billing as Rufus featuring Chaka Khan. They scored their first R and B number one with you Got the Love, on which Khan displayed the lung power of a Patti LaBelle.
- [71:10]
C
I wouldn't pay.
- [71:14]
B
On the 1975 pop and R&B top 10 hit once you Get Started, Khan had the sass and poise of of Dionne Warwick. And on the lilting Sweet thing, a number one R&B number five pop smash. In early 76, Khan had the soulful smoothness of Roberta Florida Flack. By 1975 and early 76, all four of our R B queens were doing quite well. Flack's feel like making Love album was still on the charts, reinforcing her status as a crossover titan.
- [72:14]
C
I can see the sun.
- [72:22]
B
Labelle coming off of Lady Marmalade were at last a repeat chart presence, returning to the r b top 10 and skirting the pop top 40 with what can I do for you? And Dionne Warwick, her career rebooted by Tom Bell, had generated another album with the producer and was back in the R B top five with Once you hit the Road. But the late 70s would throw the ultimate curveball as dance music took over the charts and all four of these ladies took different paths to try to stay ahead of the spinning disco ball. When we come back, Roberta, Patty, Dionne and Shock all have different strategies for the disco era. When they come out the other side into the 80s, none of their careers would look or sound the same. Non Slate plus listeners will hear the rest of this episode at the end of the month. For now, I hope you've been enjoying this episode of Hit Parade. Our show was written, edited and and narrated by Chris Melanfy. That's me. My producer is Kevin Bendis and we also had help from Rosemary Belson. Alicia Montgomery is the executive producer of Slate Podcasts. Check out their roster of shows@slate.com podcasts. You can subscribe to Hit Parade wherever you get your podcasts, in addition to finding it in the Slate Culture feed. If you're subscribing on Apple Podcasts. Please rate and review us while you're there. It helps other listeners find the show. Thanks for listening and I look forward to leading the hit parade back your way. We'll see you for part two at the end of the month. Until then, keep on marching on the one I'm Chris Melanfy.