O.C. POP MUSIC REVIEW : Souvenirs: Flack Selling Them Softly

Roberta Flack has been famous for almost 20 years, yet this was the first time ever she showed her face on a T-shirt.

When Flack stopped to display her new, all-cotton wares during her early set Thursday night at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano, it may have marked the first time ever a pop star hawked souvenirs from a stage and seemed charming instead of incredibly crass.

Flack told the audience that she had never been one to put out T-shirts until she came across a recent in-concert photo of herself that she thought captured her enjoyment of music. It was good enough, she figured, to merit being put on the front of her first-ever authorized souvenir shirt. “I would not put any tacky stuff on your skin,” Flack assured everyone in a humorous “trust me” tone.

Even those who didn’t shell out the extra $20 came away with a nicely wrought keepsake of Flack’s talent. The 75-minute show hit a few dull spots in which the music became slick and innocuous and the singing generic. But most of it held interest with good material and arrangements that kept the emphasis on Flack and her strong trio of supporting singers.

The keystone songs of Flack’s career were both rendered lovingly: “Killing Me Softly With His Song” coming early in the set, with some new backing vocal embellishments, and “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” saved as a fervent, still fresh-sounding finale. Flack, much to her credit, did full, well-crafted renditions of every song in her set; no callous grinding of hits into the medley meat that too many veteran singers serve up.

Some of Flack’s freest, most dramatic singing came on a cover of Duke Ellington’s “I Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good,” and a rendition of John Lennon’s “Imagine” avoided staleness and gained emotional impact as Flack reshaped it slightly with fine blues and soul vocal inventions.

Flack’s best work brings a certain pop classicism, a sense of clarity and restraint, to R&B; and soul. She needs strong, meaningful material, so it’s hard to fathom why she bothers with songs like “You Know What It’s Like,” a new number that percolated along tepidly in mimicry of the smooth, cool approach of Sade (but without the sultriness) or Anita Baker (but without the ardor). “Feel Like Makin’ Love” suffered from a similar slickness.

If Flack was charming selling her T-shirts, she was overbearing as she tried to sell herself as a pop mentor and talent scout. She paused to talk about how such leading ladies as Patti Austin, Deniece Williams and Gwen Guthrie got early breaks singing backup for her, then went on to trumpet the potential of her current unit. All of this amounted to an inflated buildup introducing a solo turn by singer-keyboardist-saxophonist Katrice Barnes, who delivered a pleasant but ordinary song that recalled some of Stevie Wonder’s more routine, confectionary material. It’s fine for a star to be proud of her supporting cast, but talking them up at length isn’t necessary when they’re right at hand to show what they’ve got.