With the appearance of her first album a little less than a year ago, Roberta Flack immediately established herself as worthy to enter the pantheon with the two other truly great black female singers of the Sixties, Aretha and Nina Simone. It is impossible to classify her. She is not a "soul" singer like Aretha, who emphasizes gospel rhythms and blues harmonies. She is not a shouter like Aretha, either. She is not a jazz musician, as Nina Simone essentially is, though, Roberta resembles Nina in her amazing ability to get further inside a song than one thought humanly possible and to bring responses from places inside you that you never knew existed. However, where Nina Simone overpowers one with her strength, bitterness and anger, Roberta Flack underplays everything with a quietness and gentleness. More than any singer I know, she can take a quiet, slow song (and most of hers are) and infuse it with a brooding intensity that is, at times, almost unbearable. With her, Leonard Cohen's "Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye" and Ewan MacColl's "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" become the basis for meditation.

Her weakness is uptempo songs and the weakest song on this album is the first cut, "Compared to What." Her gentleness fails to convey the bitterness and sarcasm of the song. Les McCann's rendition is far superior and truer to the song. But that is the album's only failure. First Take is one of those rare albums that has the power to enlighten the emotional content of one's life. You feel the world differently after listening to it.

Her just released second album, Chapter Two, is successful, but not wholly. Again there is one uptempo cut, and, again, it is the first one, "Reverend Lee." Listening to it, one wishes for Aretha. Roberta Flack is simply not funky enough, which is not to say she isn't funky. She is, but her contribution has been to infuse the lyrical with funk, something one would have heretofore thought impossible. This album is also marred by two sentimental "message" songs—"The Impossible Dream" and "Business Goes On As Usual." The failing is not the messages, but that the songs are simply bad songs and Roberta's soft approach makes them too saccharine for consumption.

The rest of the album, however, is equal to her first one and she gives unequalled performances to songs like, "Do What You Gotta Do," Buffy Ste. Marie's beautiful "Until It's Time To Go," Dylan's "Just Like a Woman" (which she personalizes, changing the "she" to "I"), and the Sweet Inspirations' big hit, "Let It Be Me."

Her singing is characterized by an adherence to the melody line, with occasional embellishments that have adumbration of the Baptist church, but never to the point where the embellishments have taken over, as they do in Aretha's singing. Roberta emphasizes the melody of songs and de-emphasizes rhythm. Where Aretha adapts every song to her particular style, Roberta Flack tries to convey the essence of the song without remaking it. The meaning of the song is everything and everything is made to serve that one end. The result is a kind of purity that is rarely heard in this world.

Like Nina and Aretha, Roberta accompanies herself on piano, but it is difficult to know what her playing is like because of the string and brass orchestra backing her, sometimes for the better, more often for the worst. She takes a solo on only one cut in the two albums, "Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye," and it is merely a succession of chord changes which follow the melody closely, not improvisation. However, it is tasteful and exquisite.

The hallmark of Roberta Flack is an ability to make sure that nothing stands between you and the experience of the song. She is merely the transmitter and puts herself at the service of the song so that you not only hear the music, but become a part of it. If you can stand the intensity and don't mind risking your life, listen. (RS 69)

JULIUS LESTER