Why was there so little fanfare after David Johansen’s death?

We were twice transported back to the early 1970s this weekend, our memories snagged on the deaths of Roberta Flack and David Johansen. One of the two was afforded quite a send off by the media, the other wasn’t. I think they got it the wrong way around.

Flack, who died aged 88 on 24 February, was a soul/pop crossover artist with a luxurious contralto range and a canny judge of what made a hit record. She had two big solo hits in the UK with “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”, written by Ewan MacColl and “Killing Me Softly With His Song”, a Gimbel/Fox/Lori Lieberman confection written after Lieberman had witnessed a Don McLean concert and, incredibly, seemed to have enjoyed it.

Flack had another hit stateside, as they say, with Eugene McDaniels “Feel Like Making Love”, which didn’t quite make the top thirty over here. Perhaps her finest interpretation was with the exquisite Janis Ian song “Jesse”, a B-side over here. A partnership with Donny Hathaway brought her a couple of further successes. How should we rate her? She possessed a beautiful voice, undoubtedly and was fairly successful in ploughing that soul/pop crossover furrow – although less so than many of her contemporaries, such as Gladys Knight and the mid-period Diana Ross. She fancied herself a songwriter, but her album contributions slowed to a trickle and then dried up.

Instead she went for the tried and trusted talented middle of the road writers – Jimmy Webb, Gimbel and Fox, Simon and Garfunkel – and these afforded her success. Her interpretations sometimes had a beauty, but even by the standards of 1972 were perhaps rather bland. Robert Christgau remarked of one album that she “always makes you wonder whether she’s going to fall asleep before you do”. He had a point.