August 31, 1974. A handful of friends and I were filing into cavernous Cleveland Muncipal Stadium for an eagerly anticipated “World Series of Rock” concert by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, with The Band and Santana also on the bill…but the weather looked grim. Even though we knew the music was going to be superb, none of us wanted to spend eight hours outdoors in crummy weather.

Grey skies turned darker. Rain started falling when the opening act, a talented singer-songwriter named Jesse Colin Young, took the stage with a modest backing band and sang nine or ten of his jazz-inflected folk rock songs. They gamely played through the raindrops as the stadium crowd of 82,000 began hunkering down for what looked to be a wet afternoon and evening.

But 45 minutes later, as Young began playing the title track of his new album “Light Shine,” something amazing happened. The rain stopped, the clouds began parting, and within a few minutes, the sun shone through. People rose to their feet in gratitude and applauded en masse, and from then on, the weather cooperated.

The fact that the storm ended as Young played “Light Shine” was just a glorious coincidence…or was it? I chose to give this musician credit for saving the day, and I headed out the next morning to buy the album, becoming enough of a fan to see him in concert three more times over the next several years.

This fond concert memory came back to me as I heard the sad news that Young died this week of heart failure at age 83. Although he achieved only modest success on the US pop charts during his career, he touched many lives. As rocker Steve Miller put it, “The world has lost a great troubadour with a huge heart and a beautiful, generous soul. Thank you for all the inspiration, peace, love and happiness you shared with us.”

Young’s biggest commercial success came early when he was the leader of the ’60s band The Youngbloods, who recorded the Chet Powers peace-and-love anthem “Get Together.” Powers had written it in 1963, and it was recorded by The Kingston Trio, We Five and Jefferson Airplane before The Youngbloods put their spin on it in 1967. Their single stalled at #62, but in early 1969, it was used in a “call to brotherhood” radio public service announcement by the National Conference of Christians and Jews. When re-released as a single, it reached #5 on US pop charts and has endured as a classic ever since.

Young said he had an epiphany when he heard singer Buzzy Linhart perform it in a Greenwich Village club in the mid-’60s. “The heavens opened and my life changed,” he recalled in 2021. “I knew that song was my path forward. The lyrics are just to die for. To this day, it gives me a thrill to play it.”

In case you’ve forgotten: “If you hear the song I sing, you will understand, /You hold the key to love and fear all in your trembling hand, /Just one key unlocks them both, it’s there at your command, /Come on, people now, smile on your brother, /Everybody get together, try to love one another right now…”

In his heartfelt obituary in The New York Times this week, writer Jim Farber wrote: “Young’s voice was as sensuous as his words. Blessed with a boyishly high pitch, and with the ability to bend a lyric with the ease that a great dancer uses to navigate a delicate move, he balanced his innocent character with a sophisticated musicality. His phrasing, like his composing, drew from a wealth of genres, including folk, jug band music, psychedelia, R&B and jazz, both traditional and modern.”

Young was born Perry Miller in 1941 in Queens, NY, and showed an aptitude for music he inherited from his mother, a perfect-pitch singer and violinist. He studied piano and classical guitar and was particularly enamored of blues, jazz and folk music during stints at Ohio State University and New York University. He admired the then-thriving folk music scene in Greenwich Village, quitting school to perform full time.

He chose his Western-sounding stage name by combining the names of outlaws Jesse James and Cole Younger, as well as the Formula One designer and engineer Colin Chapman.

In 1964, he won a contract with Capitol, releasing his debut LP, “The Soul of a City Boy,” a collection of acoustic blues and folk. While touring, he met guitarist Jerry Corbitt and formed The Youngbloods, who became the house band at Cafe Au Go Go in the Village for a spell.

Though the Youngbloods’ albums — “The Youngbloods” (1967), “Earth Music” (1968), “Elephant Mountain” (1969), “Good and Dusty” (1971) and “High on a Ridge Top” (1972) — never enjoyed much chart success, several of their songs proved popular on FM stations of the era, particularly in California, which helped precipitate Young’s move to the Marin County area, where he lived much of his life. One of those songs was the harrowing “Darkness, Darkness,” Young’s reflection on what he imagined US soldiers felt in the Vietnam War, which has been covered by a dozen other artists including Richie Havens, Eric Burdon, Mott the Hoople, Golden Earring, and Robert Plant, whose 2002 rendition won a Best Male Rock Performance Grammy.

Young chose to disband The Youngbloods and resume his solo career in 1973, releasing the impressive “Song For Juli” album, which out-charted anything The Youngbloods had done, peaking at #51. It contained mostly country rock originals as well as a jazz-inspired tribute to his Marin home, “Ridgetop.” That LP kicked off a respectable five-album run between 1973-1977: “Light Shine” (1974), “Songbird” (1975), the live “On the Road” (1976) and “Love on the Wing” (1977).

I found Young’s music so appealing because it tended toward feel-good melodies and positive topics. “Love of the natural world is as much a theme in my music as romantic love,” he said in 2016. “I got a bigger high out of walking over the ridgetop in Marin and looking out at the national seashore than any drugs I ever did.”

And yet, perhaps my favorite Young track is a pensive 11-minute piece called “Grey Day,” in which he observes how gloomy weather can affect his mood: “It’s a grey day, and the pine trees are dripping in a grey mist, /And I feel like I’m tripping in a grey world, /My reality’s a-slipping, /lost in a fog on a such a grey day…” He snaps out of it with the next tune, the aforementioned “Light Shine,” where he urges us to be beacons of hope: “Come on, be a sunrise, /Let your love light fill your eyes, /Yeah, and let it shine on all night and day, /Moving like a river flow, we can make the feeling grow /If you only shine on, shine on all day…”

He was among the socially conscious artists who participated in the “No Nukes” concert and movement in 1979, adding “Get Together” to the proceedings and subsequent album next to Crosby, Stills and Nash, Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt and The Doobie Brothers.

As times changed in the late ’70s and early ’80s, Young’s music fell out of favor with much of the record-buying public, but when I saw Young perform at a small club in Cleveland Heights in 1986, he held the small but adoring crowd in the palm of his hand. He continued to periodically release new LPs on various labels, including his own Ridgetop Music. Each of the ten albums he put out between 1978 and 2019 has some fine tunes worthy of your attention (some of which I just discovered in the past few days as I reviewed Young’s catalog), and I’ve included some of them among the better-known songs on the Spotify playlist you’ll find at the end of this piece.

I’d like to shine a spotlight on “For My Sisters,” one track from his final LP, 2019’s “Dreamers.” It has lyrics that I suspect many of us feel like singing loudly in these troubling times: “This is a song for resisters and everything we hold dear, /A world where everyone’s welcome, and all our voices are heard, /And though the darkness surrounds us, we feel the love that has bound us, /And we won’t fake it anymore, you can’t fake it anymore, /It’s time to even up the score, don’t mistake it, /We won’t take it anymore…”

Rest in peace, gentle troubadour. Let us hope we soon learn not just to “try and love one another” but to actually do it.

**********************

“She sang reveries as much as exclamations, and yet her stillness electrified the soul. In time, the style she created became known as ‘quiet storm.’ If she was unlike singers who came before her, there were many who would emulate her in her wake.”

This was one of many praiseworthy comments written about singer Roberta Flack over the past few days following her death February 24th at age 88.

Although her first LP came out back in 1969 and I’d been hearing her name for a couple of years, my initial impression of Flack didn’t come until early 1973 when she released the indelible single “Killing Me Softly With His Song.” It may have leaned a bit too much toward middle-of-the-road pop for my rock ‘n’ roll/blues tastes, but it nevertheless grabbed me, thanks to the compelling lyrics and her flawless vocal delivery. Mainstream listeners went wild for it, sending the song to #1 on the US pop charts and in Canada and Australia, and into the Top Ten in six other countries. The following March, Flack’s recording landed the coveted Record of the Year honors as well.

A native of Asheville, NC, Flack proved to be a piano prodigy, playing alongside the choir at her church and going on to earn a scholarship to study classical music at Howard University. For Flack, classical music was the foundation of her practice; even the music at the church her family attended was more Handel and Bach than the high-energy gospel found in Baptist churches. “For the first three decades of my life, I lived in the world of classical music,” Flack said. “There were these wonderful melodies and harmonies that were the vehicles through which I could express myself.”

David Nathan, soul music historian and author, wrote, “Roberta was a towering force as a musician and singer. One of her greatest gifts was her ability to find songs that really expressed emotion. When you listen to Roberta, you hear different elements of her classical training; her approach to a whole diversity of music that was unlike anyone else’s. Listen to some of her greatest recordings, and you hear singing and playing that’s measured and thoughtful, and still has all the emotion in it. She didn’t like it when people categorized her as either R&B, soul or pop. The truth is she was all of it.”

After graduating from Howard, she started a teaching career, and eventually began gigging in clubs in Washington, D.C. As the buzz around her grew, she was signed to Atlantic Records, which released her debut, “First Take,” in 1969. That album showed Flack interpreting an array of different songs, from the classic jazz/blues protest “Compared to What” to what is arguably the definitive version of Leonard Cohen’s sensitive “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye.”

While “First Take” would eventually assume its rightful place as a widely recognized masterpiece, success was not immediate. The first few singles failed to chart, and Flack quickly moved on to her next records, releasing “Chapter Two” in 1970 and “Quiet Fire” in 1971. She also linked up with friend and fellow Howard University student Donny Hathaway for a duets album, with the pair earning minor hits with contemporary pop standards like “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin'” and “You’ve Got a Friend.”

But Flack’s real breakthrough came when Clint Eastwood used her meditative version of British folksinger Ewan MacColl’s “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” — originally recorded for “First Take” — in “Play Misty For Me,” his 1971 thriller about a jazz radio DJ. The song shot to #1, with the album eventually reaching #1 as well in April 1972, nearly three years after its original release.

Flack’s version of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” would go on to win the Grammy for Record of the Year in 1973, and she and Hathaway won a Best Duo Pop Vocal Performance for “Where Is the Love” that year as well.

In the summer of 1972, Flack said she first heard “Killing Me Softly With His Song” on an airplane when the original version by the relatively unknown singer Lori Lieberman was featured on the in-flight audio program. “The title, of course, smacked me in the face,” Flack recalled in the 1990s. “I immediately pulled out some scratch paper, played the song at least eight to ten times jotting down the melody that I heard. When I landed, I immediately had my manager contact the songwriters. Two days later, I had the music, and recorded it shortly thereafter.”

(A bit of trivia: Most people probably aren’t aware that “his song” — the one that’s referred to in the title — is “Empty Chairs” by Don McLean, which Lieberman had heard the singer perform at a club in 1972. She was so moved by it that she grabbed a cocktail napkin and scribbled, “He’s killing me softly with this song.” She passed that along to her manager/producer duo, Norman Gimbel and Charles Fox, who fleshed it out into the completed piece.)

When it won Flack’s second consecutive Record of the Year Grammy, it was the only time an artist had won back-to-back Grammys in that important category (until U2 duplicated the feat in 2001-2002).

Also on the “Killing Me Softly” album was her rendition of Janis Ian’s song “Jesse,” which stalled at #30 on pop charts but reached #3 on the adult contemporary chart. Said Ian, “One day, I learned that Roberta had fallen in love with my demo of “Jesse” and wanted to record it. She said it was a no-brainer that she’d record it but it might take a while. I cannot begin to tell you what that meant to me. It was released on the heels ‘Killing Me Softly,’ and suddenly I was worthy of respect again. I owe her more than I can possibly say.”

Flack scored her third #1 single the following year with the sunny “Feel Like Makin’ Love.” With Hathaway again in 1978, she recorded the romantic ballad “The Closer I Get to You,” written by two of Miles Davis’s sidemen, James Mtume and Reggie Lucas, reaching #2 on pop charts.

While Flack helped pioneer the “quiet storm” genre, her versatility as a performer and interpreter incorporated elements of folk, rock, jazz, R&B, show tunes, and soul. “My music is inspired thought by thought, and feeling by feeling, not note by note,” she once said. “I tell my own story in each song as honestly as I can in the hope that each person can hear it and feel their own story within those feelings.”

Not every critic embraced Flack’s music. Notoriously prickly Village Voice critic Robert Christgau once wrote, “Flack has nothing whatsoever to do with rock and roll or rhythm and blues, and almost nothing to do with soul. Her middle-of-the-road aesthetic is like Barry Manilow but with better taste.”

But Rolling Stone writer Mikal Gilmore took a different view. “Her influence has never stopped reverberating. Flack was a woman who sang in a measured voice, but her measurements moved times and events as much as they moved hearts.” Critic Steve Huey called Flack’s music “classy, urbane, reserved, smooth, and sophisticated. She generated rapturous, spellbinding mood music that plumbed the depths of soulful heaviness by way of classically-informed technique.”

In the 1980s and 1990s, Flack’s chart successes began to wane but still included such notable tracks as “Tonight, I Celebrate My Love” with Peabo Bryson, 1988’s “Oasis” and 1991’s “Set the Night to Music. Flack released her last full-length record, “Let It Be Roberta” — a collection of her renditions of Beatles songs — in 2012. She was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2020. “It was overwhelming,” she said. “When I met those artists and so many others in person and heard from them that they were inspired by my music, I felt understood.”

Flack was also deeply involved in political movements of the post-Civil Rights era. She befriended Angela Davis and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and she sang at Bob Dylan’s 1975 benefit concert for boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, who’d been wrongfully convicted of murder. She was also a staunch supporter of gay rights, and was an active member of the Artist Empowerment Coalition, which advocates for artists to have the right to control their creative properties. Her involvement in ASPCA included an appearance in a commercial showing animal faces with “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” playing behind them

She lent her name and financial backing to The Hyde Leadership Charter School in the Bronx, which ran an after-school music program called “The Roberta Flack School of Music” to provide free music education to underprivileged students.

In 2022, Flack was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and lost her ability to sing. The disease, her rep said at the time, “has made it impossible to sing and not easy to speak.”

John Lennon’s son Sean publicly mourned the singer, pointing out that she lived for a while in The Dakota in Manhattan down the hall from their late father. “We’d call her Aunt Roberta,” said Sean. “She was a close family friend, incredibly kind and uniquely talented. I’m so grateful to have known her.”

Rest In Peace, Roberta.

*********************