I don't want no tears in the end
Roberta Flack - Killing Me Softly
I thought I'd play a bit of Roberta Flack to mark her death earlier this week and discovered this LP, released in 1973, which I'd picked up somewhere and forgotten about.
For an album with an all-star cast of jazz players and arrangers, and dedicated to Rahsaan Roland Kirk, it's a remarkably low-key, MOR affair. There's nothing here that'll frighten the horses. Which is a shame, because she was at her best (IMHO) when she was in a less languorous mood.
The title track is still so much better than its better-known cover version, and her version of Leonard Cohen's Suzanne really works.
My copy has a slightly pointless die cut sleeve where a piano is overlayed on the cover in two flaps. I have one flap missing.
