Carla Thomas / Let It Be Me

I received a very significant piece of Soul music history in the post today. This is Carla Thomas' 4 disc boxed set Let Me Be Good To You, her 1960 to 1968 work with Stax and Atlantic. This is one of the 95 tracks, Written by Pierre Delanoe in 1955 in French and interpreted by Gilbert Becaud with English lyrics. It was also a big hit for The Everly Brothers. Carla's father Rufus and Otis Redding also appear with Carla in duets.

Roberta Flack Sing’s “Let It Be Me” From Chapter Two on The Flip Wilson ...

Roberta Flack has a voice that is hard to characterise in any of the major genres like Soul, RnB,.Pop, Jazz and so on. Some say it is a subgroup of RnB which they call Quiet Storm.Some have criticised her voice as boring and lifeless but she has a huge following of fans worldwide who call her classy, urbane, smooth, reserved and sophisticated. This includes me. But I'll let skilled musical analyst Fil from Wings of Pegasus on the next clip tell you exactly why we all think that way. Music scholar Jason King says she occupies a complex space in popular music as the nature of her power as a performer to generate rapturous, spellbinding mood music and to plumb the depths of soulful heaviness by way of classically informed techniques is not too easy to classify or or make sense of with the limited tools we have in music criticism. She was born Roberta Cleopatra Flack in 1937 in Black Mountain North Carolina to Laron and Irene Flack and raised in Arlington Virginia. DNA test shows her family origin to be Cameroonian. She started playing piano at 9 and would accompany the choir in her Methodist Church but then go to the Baptist Church to hear Gospel from people like Mahalia Jackson and Sam Cooke. Her skill at piano attracted a full scholarship to Howard University and she became the youngest person ever to enter it at 15. As an undergrad she produced Verdi's Aida and received a standing ovation from the entire Howard Faculty. She switched majors from piano to voice and graduated at 19. Graduate study was unfortunately interrupted by the death of her father and she took a job as a teacher. She continued to keep at singing, in clubs, and was eventually recognised and given a contract with Atlantic Records at 31. She produced 19 albums and received many awards including 14 Grammy nominations with 5 awards, an Honorary Doctorate and in 1999 a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame. She toured widely including South Africa with Nelson Mandela in the audience.She is 85 today but unfortunately wheelchair bound after a stroke in 2018.She is still active in several spheres including Animal Rights. Roberta Flack Sing’s “Let It Be Me” From Chapter Two on The Flip Wilson Show (HQ)