The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face
Soul Music
BBC
4.7 • 831 Ratings
🗓️ 25 October 2016
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Memories of first love, first borns and loss are stirred by 'The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face'.
This timeless love song was written by Ewan MacColl for Peggy Seeger, and made famous by Roberta Flack.
Activist and folk musician Peggy Seeger recalls her first meeting with the Scottish folk musician, which would inspire him to write the song, and talks about what the song means to her today. Ewan MacColl's biographer Ben Harker explains why this song is so different from much of his other work.
Julie Young talks about singing the song to her son Reagan, who had severe complex needs following a cardiac arrest as a baby.
Writer Louise Janson speaks about what the song came to mean to her as she set out on the path to becoming a mother on her own.
Writer and academic Jason King tells the story of how Roberta Flack came to cover this ballad, and how it catapulted her to fame.
And Kandace Springs, a singer and pianist from Nashville, Tennessee, records her version of the song and talks about why the song is one of the greatest love songs of all time.
Producer: Mair Bosworth
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in October 2016.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You've downloaded Soul Music on BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:05.7 | Well, I suppose it is a story. |
| 0:09.7 | I could say once upon a time, but I've had lots of once upon a times. |
| 0:14.7 | But this particular one, let me see, March of 1956, |
| 0:25.6 | I was in Copenhagen. |
| 0:38.3 | The first time ever I saw your face I thought the sun rose in your eyes |
| 0:45.3 | and the moon and stars were the gift you gave |
| 0:57.0 | To the dark and empty skies |
| 1:04.0 | My love |
| 1:07.0 | To the dark and empty skies. |
| 1:16.6 | I was in a youth hostel just tried to figure out where I was going next. |
| 1:25.6 | And where I was supposed to be going next was Finland |
| 1:29.3 | with a guy who was going up to the logging camps |
| 1:32.3 | and he wanted me to come with him. |
| 1:35.3 | I suppose I'm... and wash his dirty clothes. |
| 1:40.3 | And this phone call came through from Alan Lomax, |
| 1:43.3 | the main collector of American folk music. |
| 1:48.4 | And he said, Granada Television is doing a performance of Dark of the Moon, |
| 1:54.2 | and they want a female folk singer who also plays the banjo. |
| 1:58.9 | And would you like to come to England? |
| 2:01.1 | Well, I was the original yes girl. |
| 2:03.3 | Sure, why not? |
... |
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