First Take (album)

First Take is the debut album by the American soul singer Roberta Flack. It was released on June 20, 1969, by Atlantic Records. After a track from this album, "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face", was included by Clint Eastwood in his 1971 film Play Misty for Me, and the song became a number-one hit in the United States, causing the album to reach number one on the Billboard album chart and Billboard R&B album chart; furthermore, the single topped the chart for the Billboard Year-End Hot 100 singles of 1972, possibly the only sleeper hit to accomplish this. In the 2020 edition of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list, the album was ranked number 451.

In 2019, Flack's website announced that First Take would be remastered and re-released as a limited deluxe edition of only 3,000 copies commemorating the album's fiftieth anniversary. The set includes one vinyl LP and two compact discs: one CD is the remastered album and the other contains "rare and unreleased recordings". The set was released on July 24, 2020.

Personnel

 * Roberta Flack – piano, vocals
 * Bucky Pizzarelli – guitars
 * Ron Carter – bass
 * Ray Lucas – drums, percussion
 * Seldon Powell, Frank Wess – saxophone
 * Charles McCracken, George Ricci – cello
 * Benny Powell – trombone
 * Jimmy Nottingham, Joe Newman – trumpet
 * Emanuel Green, Gene Orloff – violin
 * Alfred Brown, Selwart Clarke, Theodore Israel – viola
 * William S. Fischer – horn & string arrangements, string conducting
 * Technical
 * William Arlt – recording engineer
 * Bob Liftin – remixing engineer
 * Stanislaw Zagorski – design
 * Ken Heinen – photography