The music was composed by Charles Fox, whose other hits include the theme music for the American sit-com The Love Boat and two popular sports shows on TV, with lyrics by his longstanding songwriting partner Norman Gimbel.
But the inspiration came from a young singer they managed called Lori Lieberman, who the married Gimbel, more than twice her age, was sleeping with.
Lori had been so struck by the emotional intensity of a Don McLean concert – and one song in particular (not the tedious and never-ending American Pie, but one called Empty Chairs) – that she took notes on a napkin and turned them into a song with the help of her lyricist manager/boyfriend.
Lieberman then recorded the first version of the song in 1972 but it didn’t chart, and ended up in the hands of Roberta Flack after she heard it on a plane’s in-flight entertainment system and tracked down the songwriters to ask if she could record it herself.
Predictably, when it was a hit – and Lieberman was no longer sleeping with him – Gimbel then tried to cheat her out of the songwriting royalties. In an even nastier and greedier move, Gimbel and Fox tried to write her (and McLean) out of the song’s history altogether in the late Nineties.
They failed because evidence of her contribution was everywhere, not least the fact they themselves had talked about it on several TV shows, and had even written out a ‘script’ about its inspiration at that Don McLean concert for Lieberman to recite when she introduced the song.
Flack, who first rehearsed the song with her band at the Tuff Gong Studios in Jamaica, sang it live for the first time as an encore when she was supporting Marvin Gaye at the Greek Theatre in September 1972. “The audience went crazy,” she said later, “and (afterwards) Marvin put his arm around me and said: ‘Baby, don’t ever do that song again live until you record it.'”
When she did, it topped the charts in the US, earning her two Grammys. It was No.6 in the UK and didn’t top the charts until The Fugees covered it in 1996.