Roberta Flack

Who's That Diva? You've heard her biggest hits. But there's at least one you should really listen to.

In today's Song of the Day, my office-mate Stephen Thompson celebrates a wistful little Laura Gibson tune, not least for what the Portland Cello Project does by adding its "army of cellos" to what had been a bare-bones original.

"There's something about the instrument's soft, rich tone that supplies a sort of intravenous warmth, adding shading and texture without overwhelming the arrangement," Stephen writes.

Which made me think: Best chart-topping string arrangement ever?

My answer, plus where to submit yours, after the jump...

You'll have your favorite, I expect — and Bob Boilen is collecting them over at the All Songs blog, so get thee hence and submit yours — but for my money you can't beat Roberta Flack's "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face." (From the debut album, please: It's a bargain at the iTunes store.)

I know, I know: You think you know this song -- it was No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 back in the day, after all -- but I'm tempted to say you don't.

Instead, you know the commercials it's been in, the movies in which it's been played under love scenes. Or maybe you remember the melody, 'cause you heard it on a car radio with the windows down and the road noise roaring.

Unh-uh. I'm telling you: A good stereo, or at least a decent set of headphones, and a quiet room — dark, if you can manage it. (That's how an audiophile buddy blew my mind with this track, a few years back.) You will not believe how spare, how clean, how elegant and how achingly simple this arrangement is.

Now, I'm not sure it technically qualifies for the Boilen cello list, if only because the stuff I love is mostly Ron Carter bowing that liquid bass, starting after the first four bars of Verse 2.

(Though I'm pretty sure I hear some higher strings sneaking in, right around the lyric "that was there at my command" and swirling around a bit in Verse 3. Might be a cello in there somewhere.)

Don't care much about the technicalities, though, 'cause what happens in those 5 minutes and 22 seconds is just ... rapturous.

So: What gets you the way that song gets me?

-- Trey Graham

categories: Music

2:04 - August 28, 2008

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