A Goodbye to Two Legends: Roberta Flack and Jerry Butler | Tributes
The older I get, the extra I perceive why the powers that be known as it “soul music.” It’s the sound that wafted by my childhood when my people cleaned the home on the weekend, after they drove to the grocery retailer, and each time I sat on the children’ desk throughout extra cookouts and vacation dinners than I can rely.
Regardless of the adults chosen, it served as background music that someway snuck into my unconscious. Irrespective of the way it bought there, that music labored its manner into my cells by sonic osmosis once I was rising up.
Nay, the music labored its manner into my soul.
Two of the nice suppliers of the music in me, Roberta Flack and Jerry Butler, lately ended their musical journeys right here on Earth. Butler handed on February 20, 2025; Flack left us 4 days later. They have been 85 and 88, respectively. Each deserve a second of reflection and few phrases of tribute.
The Mississippi-born Butler was an unique member of Curtis Mayfield’s group “The Impressions,” co-writing and singing their first hit 1958’s “For Your Treasured Love.” Although he left the group, he and Mayfield collaborated typically—they cowrote Butler’s solo hit “He Will Break Your Coronary heart,” which was launched to me as a child not by Butler, however by Tony Orlando and Daybreak!
Come to think about it, “The Ice Man,” as Butler was identified, wrote a number of songs that I first heard sung by completely different artists. For instance, Isaac Hayes’ tackle Butler’s “I Stand Accused” was on heavy rotation in my Pops’ report participant. “I stand accused of loving you an excessive amount of,” Ike crooned. “And I hope it’s not a criminal offense. As a result of whether it is, I’m responsible.” I adored this track lengthy earlier than I knew what that sort of love was all about.
When Butler sang different folks’s songs, he had simply as nice an impact. His cowl of “Moon River” makes you would like he was sitting on that fireplace escape in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” as a substitute of Audrey Hepburn.
The one Butler track etched in everlasting marker on my soul is his 1968 traditional “Solely the Robust Survive.” And never simply because my Pops wore the grooves off that report. Utilizing that majestic, gravel-inflected voice of his, Butler sings about the very best recommendation his mom ever gave him. Trace: it’s within the title.
Like all nice soul music, Butler’s track makes you are feeling such as you’re again at your Mama’s home.
Since I’m not often a severe man, my first thought once I heard of Flack’s passing was my mom rapidly urgent the subsequent track button on the 8-track participant in my Pops’ automobile. The girl within the audio system was singing about how she felt “like makin’ like to you.” Like most of us, I overheard “baby-makin’ music” lengthy earlier than I knew methods to make infants.
“Makin’ love” was talked about in loads of songs my mom fast-forwarded by, or demanded my Pops flip off, if my ears have been current again within the day. Granted, Flack’s 1974 hit “Really feel Like Makin’ Love” is much from filthy, however it rapidly turned verboten. To at the present time, I can’t hearken to that track with out laughing about how briskly my mom censored it.
Fortunately, Roberta Flack’s spectacular combination of jazz, funk, R&B and soul wasn’t withheld from me fully. The pianist from Black Mountain, North Carolina was allowed to sing one in all her private favorites, “The First Time Ever I Noticed Your Face,” inside my earshot. As a child, I didn’t get the sluggish, aching great thing about the track she recorded three years earlier than it turned a success when Clint Eastwood used it in 1971’s “Play Misty for Me.”
Nonetheless, what I did get, with unforgettable precision, was that voice. Diana Ross’ voice was wispy, a lace curtain caressing your face. Aretha’s voice was the Holy Ghost coming into your physique by your eardrums. Roberta Flack’s voice was a little bit of each–it was ethereal. There was one thing otherworldly about its readability and crispness. It drifted in on some heavenly sound wave and lifted you to a better airplane. And also you felt it vibrating by your soul.
Whether or not Flack was celebrating her love for you or reminding you that “God don’t like ugly,” she took your breath away with ease. Like ‘Re, Flack might additionally flip phrases into syllabic pretzels. I’m not even speaking concerning the run she does in “Killing Me Softly With His Track,”—that “oh, oh, oh” has been slaughtered by extra wannabe singers at marriage ceremony receptions than Frankie Beverly’s tackle the phrase “go” in “Earlier than I Let Go.”
I’m referring to a line she sang in my favourite Donny Hathaway-Roberta Flack duet, “You’re My Heaven.” No person did unhappy love track duets like these two (their blended harmonies on “The place is the Love” rips your coronary heart out), however “Heaven’s” an upbeat, bouncy and danceable ditty celebrating one’s life accomplice. In it, she sings:
“If somebody tries to inform you that I don’t love you, inform them they have to be out of their thoughts.”
I shall always remember the best way she turned the phrase “thoughts” right into a rising, forceful three syllable punctuation mark on the finish of that sentence. Sure, it’s only one phrase, however it makes that assertion definitive.
Since we’re on a film web site, I ought to point out Flack’s pretty rating for one of many many R-rated films I snuck into, Richard Pryor’s 1981 traditional, “Bustin’ Unfastened.” Each time I really feel down, I simply hearken to “The Kids’s Track” from that soundtrack. And since my Mother can not cease me from listening to it, I can blast “Really feel Like Makin’ Love” each time I would like!
RIP to those two legends. Their souls could have departed, however their soulful music stays.
