On the Charts 54 Years Ago, Roberta Flack Kicked off the Year’s Longest Run at No. 1 (Thanks to Clint Eastwood)

April 15, 2026 2:00 pm

Roberta Flack’s music career spanned both decades and genres, with soulful hits including “Killing Me Softly With His Song” and “Feel Like Makin’ Love”. On this day (April 15) in 1972, the soul singer-songwriter found herself atop the U.S. singles chart with “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”.

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Roberta Flack’s First Hit Made This Hollywood Star Drive “Off the Side of the Freeway”

It would hold that spot for six weeks, the longest run at No. 1 for any song released in 1972. While Roberta Flack had initially released “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” on her 1969 album First Take, the song didn’t become a hit until after actor-director Clint Eastwood used it in his 1971 directorial debut, Play Misty For Me.

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“The story is that he was driving down the Los Angeles freeway, and he heard the song,” Flack said in the recent documentary OWN Spotlight: Roberta. “He said the song just totally hypnotized him. And he found himself driving off the side of the freeway.”

The Dirty Harry star called Flack personally, seeking permission to use “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” in his film. She initially declined, insisting on a do-over because the song was too long. Eastwood pushed back. “I want every note, every breath,” he told her.

Released in October 1971, Play Misty for Me put both “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” and Flack on the map. It also won Grammy Awards for both Record and Song of the Year. Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, and Celine Dion have since put their own spin on the slow-burn ballad.

It Wasn’t About Romance For Flack

Written in 1957 by British folk singer-songwriter Ewan MacColl, “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” has quite the tempestuous backstory.

MacColl wrote the song for his third wife, fellow folk artist Peggy Seeger. The two had begun an affair the previous year, but Seeger ended things since MacColl was married with a child.

“When it became a huge hit for Roberta Flack I didn’t like the way she sang it, but I’ve come to like it a lot,” Seeger, now 90, told the Guardian last year.

Despite the song’s origin, Flack was channeling a different kind of heartbreak when she recorded “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”.

“Through the years, I’ve sung that song thousands of times, and it has taken on different stories in my life, [but] honestly, at the time it was recorded, I sang it about my cat who had just died,” she said. “I loved that cat so much. That’s the story I was telling in the recording.”

Featured image by NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images