"The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" is a 1957 folk song written by British singer and writer Ewan MacColl for Peggy Seeger, who later became his third wife. At the time, MacColl was still married to his second wife, Jean Newlove. During the 1960s, the song was recorded by several folk and pop music performers, including the Kingston Trio, We Five, The Chad Mitchell Trio, Gordon Lightfoot, and Peter, Paul and Mary. In 1972, the song became very popular worldwide when Roberta Flack recorded it. It won Grammy Awards for Record of the Year and Song of the Year. Billboard listed it as the top song of 1972 on the Hot 100 chart. Country music artist Johnny Cash also recorded the song for his 2002 album American IV: The Man Comes Around.
History
The song was written by Ewan MacColl after Peggy Seeger asked him to create a song for a show she was performing in. He wrote the song quickly and taught it to her over the telephone. Peggy Seeger later shared more details about the situation. In 1956, she began a romantic relationship with MacColl in London but returned to the United States to end the physical connection because MacColl was already married and had a child. Despite this, they stayed in touch by phone, and MacColl sent her tapes to listen to while they were apart. The next year, when Seeger was working on a radio show in Los Angeles, she told MacColl that the show needed a "hopeful love song" because the folk songs she sang were often sad. During one of his phone calls from England, MacColl sang the song he had written to Seeger. Although the song was about their relationship, Seeger said she did not feel it was about love at the time and performed it from MacColl’s perspective instead. She sang the song in Los Angeles and Chicago, but MacColl never recorded it after teaching it to her.
Peggy Seeger was the first to perform the song at live folk concerts, but she did not release her version until 1962. The earliest recording of the song was made in 1961 by Bonnie Dobson and included on her debut album, She's Like a Swallow and Other Folk Songs. Dobson first heard Seeger perform the song at the Colorado Folk Festival in October 1960 and learned the lyrics after hearing other performers sing it at later concerts.
Ewan MacColl openly expressed his dislike for all the cover versions of the song. His daughter-in-law wrote that he hated all of them and kept them in a special section of his record collection called "The Chamber of Horrors." He described the Elvis version as "Romeo at the bottom of the Post Office Tower singing up to Juliet" and called other versions "travesties" that were loud, dramatic, and lacked grace. Peggy Seeger initially disliked how Roberta Flack sang the song when it became popular but later said she came to appreciate it more over time.
Roberta Flack version
The song became famous when Roberta Flack recorded it in 1971–1972. It had been released on her 1969 album First Take, but it did not become popular at first. Later, the song gained attention because it was used in Clint Eastwood’s 1971 movie Play Misty for Me. Flack’s version of the song eventually reached the top of the Billboard Year-End Hot 100 singles list for 1972, more than three years after she recorded it.
Flack first heard the song from Joe & Eddie’s version, which was on their 1963 album Coast to Coast (titled "The First Time"). Her friend, singer Donal Leace, told her about the song. Flack taught the song to girls in the glee club at Banneker High School in Washington, D.C. She later performed it regularly at Mr. Henry’s, a club on Pennsylvania Avenue where she worked as a singer starting in 1968. In February 1969, Flack recorded the song for her debut album First Take. Her version was much slower than the original and lasted more than twice as long as the original recording. Flack said she felt sad about her pet cat, which had been hit by a car, when she made the recording.
Flack’s slow and romantic version of the song was used in Play Misty for Me, where it played during a love scene with Eastwood and actress Donna Mills. Eastwood heard Flack’s version on his car radio while driving in Los Angeles and called her. He asked her to let him use the song in his movie. He offered to pay $2,000, and Flack agreed. She later said she wanted to re-record the song because it was too slow, but Eastwood said it was just right.
During the First Take recording sessions, Flack’s producer, Joel Dorn, suggested changing the song’s tempo and lyrics to make it shorter. Flack refused, saying she did not care if it became a hit. Three years later, after the movie Play Misty for Me was released in November 1971, the song became very popular. Atlantic Records released the song as a single in February 1972, slightly shorter than Flack’s original recording. The single reached No. 1 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and easy listening charts in the spring of 1972. It also reached No. 4 on the R&B chart and No. 14 on the UK Singles Chart. In Canada, it was No. 1 for three weeks.
The song "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" was played as wake-up music for astronauts on Apollo 17 on December 15, 1972, their final day in lunar orbit before returning to Earth. Apollo 17 was the last mission to the Moon. The use of the song may have been inspired by the view of the Moon’s surface from the spacecraft.