“The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” is a 1957 folk song written by British political singer/songwriter Ewan MacColl for Peggy Seeger, who was later to become his wife. At the time the couple were lovers, although MacColl was married to someone else. MacColl and Seeger included the song in their repertoire when performing in folk clubs around Britain. During the 1960s, it was recorded by various folk singers and became a major international hit for Roberta Flack in 1972.
There are two conflicting accounts of the origin of the song. MacColl claimed her wrote the song for Seeger after she asked him to pen a song for a play she was in. He wrote the song and taught it to Seeger over the telephone. Peggy Seeger claimed that MacColl, with whom she’d begun an affair in 1957, used to send her tapes to listen to whilst they were apart. ‘The first time ever was on one of these.
The song entered the pop mainstream when it was released by The Kingston Trio on its 1962 hit album New Frontier and in 1966 by the The Brothers Four Subsequent recorded versions included those by The Smothers Brothers, Peter, Paul and Mary, The Chad Mitchell Trio, and others.
Ewan MacColl himself made no secret of the fact that he disliked all of the cover versions of the song. His daughter-in-law wrote: “He hated all of them. He had a special section in his record collection for them, entitled ‘The Chamber of Horrors.’ He said that the Elvis version was like Romeo at the bottom of the Post Office Tower singing up to Juliet. And the other versions, he thought, were travesties: bludgeoning, histrionic, and lacking in grace.”
The song was popularized by Roberta Flack in 1972 in a version that became a breakout hit for the singer. The song first appeared on Flack’s 1969 album First Take. Flack’s rendition was much slower than the original as an early solo recording by Seeger ran two and a half minutes long whereas Flack’s is more than twice that length.
This slower, more sensual version was used by Clint Eastwood in his 1971 directorial debut Play Misty for Me during a lovemaking scene. With the new exposure, Atlantic Records cut the song down to four minutes and released it to radio. It became an extremely successful single in the United States where it reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and Easy Listening charts in April 1972 for six week runs on each. It reached #14 on the UK Singles Chart.

By Roberta Flack

Lyrics