Don McLean's new studio album of original
songs released April 19, 2010.
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America's Legendary Singer-Songwriter
The "Killing Me Softly" story
I heard he sang a good song
I heard he had a style
And so I came to see him
To listen for a while....
Most people would be able to recognise that
verse right away. Anyone within earshot of a
radio or a jukebox over the last few months
couldn’t miss hearing roberta flack’s beautiful
version of it, done with style and taste and
just the right amount of world-weariness. She
does it so well that any listener would think
the song had been written just for her. But, oh,
how wrong they would be!
The words were written by Norman Gimbel and set
to music by Charles Fox, tailored specifically
for the gentle unaffected voice of a young folk
singer from the West Coast named
Lori Leiberman.
And what’s more the feelings described in it
were Lori’s true feelings; the story is hers and
the mood and thoughts were hers too. Even the
first recording of the song was hers, though it
was not until Roberta Flack cut her version that
it became an international hit.
Lori was talking about it the other day. She’s
happy the song has caught on, of course, but
she’ll be less than human if she didn’t wish it
was her version that made it so big.
The song is a strange plaintive one, a ballad in
the dictionary definition of a ballad: ” a
narrative composition in verse of strongly
marked rythym, suitable for singing.” and I
asked Lori how it came about – what or more
specifically who was the inspiration for it, and
her answer was so right. I wondered why I hadn’t
realized it before.
“Don McLean,” she said simply. “I saw him at the
Troubadour in LA last year. (”And there he was
this young boy / A stranger to my eyes”) I had
heard about him from some friends but up to then
all I knew about him really was what others had
told me. But I was moved by his performance, by
the way he developed his numbers, he got right
through to me. (”Strumming my pain with his
fingers / Killing me softly with his sond/
Telling my whole life with his words.”)
Norman Gimbel picked up the story. “Lori is only
20 and she really is a very private person,” he
said. “She told us about this strong experience
she had listening to McLean” (”I felt all
flushed with fever / Embarassed by the crowd / I
felt he had found my letters / And read each one
out loud / I prayed that he would finish / But
he kept just right on…”)
“I had a notion this might make a good song so
the three of us discussed it. We talked it over
several times, just as we did with the rest of
the numbers we wrote for the album and we all
felt it ahad possibilities.”
“Norman had a phrase he liked, ‘killing me
softly with his blues’”, Lori went on to
explain. “But I didn’t feel the word “blues” was
quite what the effect was. It wasn’t
contemporary enough, somehow. We talked about it
a while and finally decided on the word “song”
instead. It seemed right then when we did it.”
It must have been. Capitol Records like it to so
much they released it as a single as well as on
the album. Billboard liked the album so much
they selected Lori as their Star Awards artist.
Don McLean would like to meet her too. He didn’t
know the song described him, and when asked
about it, he said “I’m absolutely amazed. I’ve
heard both Lori’s and Roberta’s version and I
must say I’m very humbled about the whole thing.
You can’t help but feel that way about a song
written and performed as well as this one is.”
Lori you may have picked the wrong man. That
certainly doesn’t sound like someone who’d kill
you, however softly, with his song, now, does
it?
