This morning, as my playlist shuffled in the background, Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye rose up through the speakers. The moment those first notes played, I nearly cried. That song has always been a doorway for me—back to the very first time I heard Roberta Flack’s voice. It’s the reason I’m writing this now.
I was only seven or eight years old, still a little girl whose songbook was filled with the Motown Sound, when Roberta first found me. I remember the moment as if it were wrapped in velvet and tucked away in my memory, waiting for me to open it again and again.
It happened at my sister’s boyfriend’s (later her husband) mother’s house. He had a sister close to my age, and I would sometimes sleep over so we could play together. But the most precious part of those visits came when my BIL carved out time just for me. He would sit me down, place a record in his careful hands—always holding it by the edges—and lower the needle onto the shiny black vinyl with the kind of reverence usually reserved for prayer.
“Jody, listen to this and tell me what you think,” he said.
The song was Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye.
From the first notes, something stirred in me that I didn’t yet have words for. Roberta Flack’s voice was tender and powerful, fragile yet unshakable—an ebony-toned beauty that floated into the room and wrapped itself around me. I remember wanting to cry, though I didn’t know why. At seven years old, I didn’t yet understand that music could reach into the soul and press on places too deep for language. But I felt it.
That day, I became an immediate fan. I saved my lunch money for the next month just to buy my own copy of that album—a copy I still have today. And when my friends and I formed our little girl group, Taffy (because every girl was in a group back then), we covered Roberta Flack’s songs: The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face. Trying Times. Songs that felt older than us, wiser than us, but somehow fit in our young voices. Our lead singer, Pamela (Scott) Hart, has since gone on to become an accomplished jazz vocalist and song stylist—check her out at www.pamelahart.com. Even as children, Roberta’s songs gave us something real to hold onto.
Today, Roberta Flack’s hauntingly transcendent voice reminds me of the very energy I encounter in the realm of spirit and magick—the place where I now spend so much of my life. Her sound feels like the veil between worlds, thin and shimmering, where the earthly and the divine overlap. When I hear her sing, I think of the way a candle flame bends toward unseen winds, or how Reiki energy pulses through the palms, invisible yet undeniable.
That was over fifty-five years ago. My brother-in-law, the one who first placed that record in my hands and opened my ears to a whole new world, has since passed on. But each time I hear Roberta Flack—especially the songs from that very first LP—I think of him, of those nights, and of the gift he gave me.
Her voice still makes me cry. But now I understand why. She sings the truth of our human hearts: the tender ache of love and loss, the beauty of resilience, the poetry of Black womanhood in full bloom. Roberta Flack’s voice was my first lesson in how music can hold sorrow and joy in the same breath.
And I will always be grateful for the man who knew, even then, to tell a little Black girl: “Listen. This is something rare and beautiful."
Tell me—do you remember the first time you heard a voice that changed you forever?