#116: Jesse by Roberta Flack

City: Montreal, PQ
Radio Station: CHOM
Peak Month: November 1973
Peak Position in Montreal ~ #3
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #30
YouTube: “Jesse”
Lyrics: “Jesse”

Roberta Flack was born in Black Mountain, North Carolina, in 1937. Her family moved to Arlington, Virginia, when she was five. Growing up in a large, musical family, she often accompanied the choir of Lomax African Methodist-Episcopal Zion Church by playing hymns and spirituals on piano. She also attended a Baptist in her neighborhood to listen to contemporary gospel music including songs performed by Mahalia Jackson and Sam Cooke. When Flack was nine, she began to play the piano. Into her teens, she excelled at classical piano, finishing second in a statewide competition for Black 13-year-old students. In connection with the competition, she won a full music scholarship to Howard University.

When she was fifteen, Roberta Flack entered Howard, becoming one of the youngest students ever to enroll there. She shifted her major from piano to voice. Meanwhile, she became an assistant conductor of the university choir. Flack became a student teacher at a school near Chevy Chase, Maryland. When she was 19-years-old, she graduated from Howard University. She started graduate studies. However, the sudden death of her father forced her to take a job teaching music and English at a small, segregated high school in Farmville, North Carolina.

She later taught private piano and voice lessons in Washington D.C. On weekends and evening at the Tivoli Theater, she accompanied opera singers at the piano. During intermissions, she would sing blues, folk, and pop standards in a back room, accompanying herself on the piano. Later she performed several nights a week at the 1520 Club, again providing her own piano accompaniment. In 1968, she began singing professionally when she was hired to perform regularly at Mr. Henry’s Restaurant, located on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.

In November 1968, she recorded 39 song demos in less than 10 hours. Three months later, Atlantic recorded Flack’s debut album First Take. 

On March 6, 1971, she appeared at the Soul to Soul concert in Accra, Ghana. This was Independence Day in Ghana. Flack shared the stage with Wilson Pickett, Ike & Tina Turner, the Staple Singers, Les McCann and Eddie Harris, Santana, and The Voices of East Harlem. The live concert was made into the documentary Soul to Soul. 

1971 poster for Soul to Soul documentary

In 1971, Flack released an album of duets titled Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway. With Hathaway, the duo released covers of the Carole King song “You’ve Got A Friend” (which was also a number-one hit for James Taylor who won Best Male Pop Vocal Performance at the Grammy Awards) and “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” (a number-one hit for the Righteous Brothers in 1965). Flack and Hathaway’s cover of “You’ve Got A Friend” cracked the Top Ten on the Billboard Best Selling Soul Singles chart in 1971.

From the concert, Flack’s cover version of the Carole King-Gerry Goffin tune “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” (a number-one hit for The Shirelles in January-February 1961) reached #76 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1972.

Meanwhile, Clint Eastwood chose a track from First Take to be featured in his thriller Play Misty For Me. The song he chose was “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”.

“The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” became the number-one song for the year in 1972. It also won a Grammy Award for Record of the Year. In Canada, “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” peaked at number-one in Hamilton (ON), Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver, Victoria, and Windsor (ON). On the strength of the single, First Take climbed the Billboard 200 Album chart to number-one.

In 1972, Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway released “Where Is The Love?” The single reached #5 on the Billboard Hot 100,  #2 in Windsor (ON), #3 in Calgary, and #8 in Toronto. The song won a Grammy Award in 1973 for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals.

In 1973, Flack released “Killing Me Softly With His Song”. It topped the pop charts in Calgary, Hamilton (ON), Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver, Windsor (ON) and Winnipeg (MB). “Killing Me Softly With His Song” became Roberta Flack’s biggest international hit single. It reached number-one in Australia, Canada and the USA, #3 in the Netherlands, #4 in Argentina and Norway, #6 in the UK, #10 in Ireland and #19 in Austria. The song won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year. It also earned Roberta Flack a second Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Performance – Female. Her album, Killing Me Softly, was nominated for Album of the Year. However, it lost out to the Stevie Wonder album Innervisions. 

As well, in 1973 Roberta Flack received a Grammy Award nomination in the Best Pop Vocal Performance – Female category for her album Quiet Fire.

A followup single release to “Killing Me Softly With His Song” was “Jesse”.

“Jesse” was a track from the album Killing Me Softly. “Jesse” is a song written by Janis Ian. Born in 1951 as Janis Eddy Fink, she was raised by liberal-Jewish atheist parents in Farmingdale, New Jersey. They insisted she start to learn to play the piano from the age of two. By her teens, she was also learning to play the organ, harmonica, guitar and French horn. In 1964, at the age of 13 she legally changed her name to Janis Ian. “Ian” was her brother Eric’s middle name. In 1965 she wrote “Society’s Child” which reached #14 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was a social commentary about the obstacles to an interracial dating relationship in 1960s America. At first regarded as a one-hit-wonder, Janis Ian recorded a number-one charting album in 1975  – her seventh studio album – titled Between the Lines. A successful Top Ten hit, “At Seventeen”, kept her in the spotlight. The single earned her a Grammy Award in 1976 for Best Pop Vocal Performance – Female. In 1976, her single “Love Is Blind” became a number-one hit in Japan. And late in 1979, her single “Fly Too High” reached number-one in South Africa, and was a Top Five hit in Belgium, the Netherlands and New Zealand. In 2022 she released her twenty-third studio album.

Janis Ian at age 15

Janis Ian wrote “Jesse” in the mid-sixties. She told Songfacts.com, “”I was 14 or 15 when I started that song. Originally Jesse was going to be about a Vietnam War vet coming home. But then that was limiting.” She wanted to leave the lyrics open enough that it could be about anyone who is absent for some reason, and is missed by their partner. In the song, a woman is fixes her hair. Despite Jesse’s absence, she tells him in her loneliness “no, I’m not scared.” She tells herself that she’ll “sleep unaware.” Yet, there is a sense she is anxious that he might not come home. In Jesse’s absence, she laments “there’s a hole in the bed where we slept. Now it’s growing cold.” He has been gone for quite some time. She describes how “the floors and the boards (are) recalling your steps…” Moreover, “all the pictures are fading, and shading in grey.” Still, each day she sets a place for him at the dining table at noon. And she keeps a light on the stairs. There is no sense in the song that Jesse is able to call her every week while working out of town. Janis Ian tweaked the lyrics to open the possibility that Jesse is not a soldier in the Vietnam War. However, it seems the Jesse in the song is not able to be in touch in with his sweetheart back home any regular way. This adds to the suspense of what his circumstance is that is keeping him from home – especially if it isn’t because he’s been drafted.

Janis Ian knows her way around the songwriting business, and will sometimes make the names in her songs gender-neutral so that either a man or woman could record them. This can give the song twice the chance of getting cut. Janis Ian told Songfacts she had a clear gender in mind for this song. “Jesse was always male. Jesse with an ‘e’ has traditionally been male. It’s the ‘ie’ Jessies that are female.”

“Jesse” climbed to #3 in Montreal, Sharon (PA), Junction City (KS), and New Orleans, #5 in Columbus (OH), Colorado Springs (CO), and St. Louis, #6 in Palm Springs (CA), and Eugene (OR), #7 in Erie (PA), Dayton (OH), and Oshkosh (OH), #8 in Missoula (MT), and Monroe (LA), and #9 in Nashville, and Harrisburg (PA).

In 1974, Roberta Flack released “Feel Like Makin’ Love”. It became her third number-one single on the pop charts in the USA. It also topped the pop charts in Windsor (ON), #2 in Toronto, and #3 in Hamilton (ON). The single received two Grammy Award nominations. One was for Favorite Female Artist (Soul/R&B), and the second for Favorite Single (Soul/R&B).

In 1978, Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway had their first number-one hit titled “The Closer I Get To You”. It peaked in Windsor (ON), #2 in Toronto, #3 in Saskatoon (SK), and Winnipeg (MB), #6 in Hamilton (ON), #9 in Ottawa, and #10 in Vancouver. The song was nominated for a Grammy Award in the category for Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group.

For the 1981 album, Roberta Flack Featuring Donny Hathaway, she received a Grammy Award nomination for Best R&B Vocal Performance – Female. And for the track “Back Together Again”, the duo received a Grammy Award nomination in the Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal category.

In 1982, Roberta Flack released “Making Love” which was a #13 pop hit on the Billboard Hot 100. In Canada, it peaked at #4 in Edmonton (AB).

In 1983, Flack teamed up with Beabo Bryson to record “Tonight, I Celebrate My Love”. It climbed to #2 in Ottawa, #3 in Toronto, #4 in Edmonton (AB), and Winnipeg (MB), #5 in Kitchener (ON), #7 in Regina (SK), #8 in Hamilton (ON), and #10 in Calgary. On the Billboard Hot 100, the song stalled at #16.

In 1988, she had a number-one hit on the Black Singles Chart in the USA with “Oasis”. However, the single did not chart on the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart. In 1989, Roberta Flack had a number-one dance hit in the USA titled “Uh-Uh Ooh-Ooh Look Out (Here It Comes)”. It too failed to chart on the Billboard Hot 100. Her last appearance on the Billboard Hot 100 was in a duet with Maxi Priest titled “Set the Night to Music”. It was a number-one Adult Contemporary hit in Canada in 1992, and a #6 pop hit in the USA. As well, it reached #8 on the CKLG pop chart in Vancouver.

Her 1993 album, Breaking Silence, featured Janis Ian coming out as a lesbian. She made the choice to go public out of concern for suicide rates among gay and lesbian teenagers. She hoped that stable role models such as herself could turn things around for the better.

In 1995, her studio album Roberta earned her a Grammy Award nomination in the category for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance. In 1996, Flack had her final number-one hit with a dance re-mix of “Killing Me Softly with His Song”. It climbed to #1 on the Hot Dance Club Play chart. In 1999, she received a Hollywood Walk of Fame star.

In 2003 she co-authored with Mike Resnick Stars: Original Stories Based on the Songs of Janis Ian.

In 2012, she released an album of tracks covering songs by the Beatles titled Let It Be Roberta. It was her fourteenth solo studio album, and seventeenth album (including two with Donny Hathaway, and one with Peabo Bryson. Flack had an apartment in The Dakota at 1 West 72nd Street, near Central Park. She lived in an apartment next door to John Lennon and Yoko Ono, prior to Lennon’s murder on December 8, 1980.

At a concert in Harlem in 2018, she was unable to complete her set. Her manager told the audience that Ms. Flack had suffered a stroke a few years prior. In 2020, Roberta Flack received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2022 she was diagnosed with ALS and stopped performing, as she was unable to sing. Flack died on February 24, 2025, at the age of 88. Her manager, Suzanne Koga, stated she died from cardiac arrest on her way to the hospital in Manhattan.

February 27, 2025
Ray McGinnis

References:
Dale Kawashima, “Legendary Artist Roberta Flack Talks About Her Classic Hits “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” ‘Killing Me Softly” And “Where Is The Love”, SongwriterUniverse.com, August 10, 2020.
Daniel Johnson, “Roberta Flack Dies at 88 After Suffering Cardiac Arrest,” Black Enterprise.com, February 24, 2025.
Amanda Whiting, “Roberta Flack Still Goes to the Capitol Hill Bar Where She Got Her Big Break,” Washingtonian, June 13, 2017.
“Janis Ian still makes people uneasy,” Chicago Tribune, August 23, 2021.
Audra Heinrichs, “Janis Ian is a Living, Breathing Trailblazer. Let’s Listen to Her,” Rolling Stone, February 10, 2025.

CHOM 97.7-FM Montreal Top Ten | November 17, 1973