"The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" is a 1957 folk song written by British political singer-songwriter Ewan MacColl for Peggy Seeger, who later became his third wife.

[3] Seeger has told the same story[4] and also said that MacColl, with whom she had begun an affair in 1957, used to send her tapes to listen to while they were apart and that the song was on one of them.

The song entered the pop mainstream the following year when it was released by the Kingston Trio on their 1962 hit album New Frontier and in subsequent years by other pop folk groups such as Peter, Paul and Mary, the Brothers Four, Joe and Eddie, the Chad Mitchell Trio, and by Gordon Lightfoot on his debut album Lightfoot!

He said that the Elvis version was like Romeo at the bottom of the Post Office Tower singing up to Juliet.

"[6] The song was popularised by Roberta Flack in a version that became a breakout hit for the singer in 1971/1972, albeit as a sleeper hit more than three years after its original 1969 release on her album First Take, due to being included in Clint Eastwood's 1971 directorial film debut Play Misty for Me, ultimately topping the Billboard Year-End Hot 100 singles of 1972 more than three years after it was recorded.

[9] Having taught the song to the young girls in the glee club at Banneker High School (Washington D.C.), Flack would regularly perform "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" in her set-list at the Pennsylvania Avenue club ("Mr Henry's") where Flack was hired as resident singer in 1968.

[citation needed] Flack would recall that when she made her studio recording of "The First Time...", she felt the loss of her pet cat, which had been run over by a car.

Flack would recall how Eastwood, who had heard her version of "The First Time..." on his car radio while driving down the LA Freeway,[11] phoned out of the blue to her Alexandria (Virginia) home: (Roberta Flack quote:)"[Eastwood said:] 'I'd like to use your song in this movie...about a disc jockey [with] a lot of music in it.

Flack's version of "The First Time..." exploded in popularity following the November 1971 release of Play Misty For Me.