The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

Probably the best of the Big Bombastic Ballads of the 70's ranking up there with My Way, It's Impossible, The Impossible Dream and Bridge Over Troubled Water. Seldom heard but worth finding.

A beautiful rendition of a song Robert Flack made famous. RCA really goofed on this one. Elvis recorded it in 1971 and it was held for a year before it was released. In that time Ms Flack's version was released and hit #1 for 6 wekkes (Spring of 72). If they had released it as a single instead of "It's Only Love" and properly promoted it, Elvis would have had a big hit. This song should have been on the LP "Elvis Now" instead of songs like "Sylvia", "Hey Jude" and "I Was Born About 10,000 Years Ago".

fantastic song but Elvis' version of 1971 just doesn't do it for me. Too fast and too bombastic. I prefer his live version from 1976 inspite of the angry end; his approach of this song is much more simple here, just like the unbeatable versions of this song from Roberta Flack and Johnny Cash.

Like the song, but not Elvis' version of it. In fact I dislike it. Would never have been a hit. Once you hear Roberta Flack, this is like another song all together. Roberta wins by a mile.

Terrible arrangement. I don't like it either and don't get me started on the dreadful duet!

It really is a terrible arrangement. I think Elvis could have done a fantastic version of this, and maybe there is a really great live version out there somewhere, but the studio version we all know is not very good at all. There was a terrible TV movie years ago called "Elvis and the Beauty Queen" about Elvis and Linda Thompson. Don Johnson (shockingly) played Elvis and Stephanie Zimbalist played Linda. In the movie, Elvis performs "First Time Ever..." on stage and it is a better version than the real Elvis version. Not sure who they had doing the vocal for the movie (an Elvis sound-alike) but it was a better arrangement. It's a shame. I wonder if someone could strip away everything but Elvis' voice and create the right arrangement.

The Roberta Flack version was brilliant but I also really enjoy the Elvis version. I like the voice soaring during the chorus reminiscent of The Wonder of You, and for me it is a 5 star production. There are a couple of interesting recordings of this song where he does duets with Temple Riser and Ginger Holladay.

This is such a beautiful song and the only Elvis versions of it that I like are the August 16, 1974 rehearsal and the live on stage versions from 1973 all the way until 1976 due to the extra verse added and his many great live on stage renditions of it in that 1973-1976 time span.

The author said that if he wanted a laugh, he could always listen to Elvis singing The first time. I kinda like it, but a more bare arrangment like Peter, Paul and Mary's would perhaps have been better.

This song was certainly a flop in the eyes (and ears) of the public and of RCA. It was deleted from their catalog in March of 1973 (just 11 months after it was released)... and replaced with the single "An American Trilogy/Until It's Time For You To Go" of the Gold Standard Series. "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" become available again in the U.S. when it was issued on the 8-Lp set "Elvis Aron Presley" in 1980.

I agree when you hear Roberta Flack sing the song it is like another song, it becomes a song I don't want to hear. As far as the author Ewan MacColl not liking Elvis' version, let's remember this man wrote a song praising Joseph Stalin and claimed the Soviet Union wasn't communist enough for him. Maybe Elvis just symbolized the things that Mr. MacColl hated; America, democracy and freedom. It should also be noted that he didn't like any cover versions (including Ms. Flack's) of the song and only liked the original version (he wrote the song in 1957 for his then lover, later wife, Peggy Seeger). His comment about Elvis singing the song was that it sounded like Romeo standing at the bottom of the Post Office Tower (BT Tower in London) singing up to Juliet (an attempt to be clever in stating it was too bombastic). I stand by what I said in my original post and while Elvis' version is dated ("Rags To Riches" and many of the 71-72 Elvis singles do seem dated compared to his other works), it would have cracked the top 40 (if not top 20) and EL top 10 if it had been released in place of "It's Only Love" in 71. Let's remember Flack's version only gained its audience by being included in the movie "Play Misty For Me".