Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway ~ Where Is The Love 1972 Soul Purrfection Version

Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway got their first R&B #1 with a song that was written for the 5th Dimension. Their first single was together was "You've Got A Friend" but by poor timing, James Taylor released his version the same day and he crushed them, all the way to #1.

Flack and Hathaway were well known to radio fans for their chemistry ridden vocal performances, they knew how to sing to each other and not be in a contest. They then decided to record an album of duets and were looking for one more song when "Where Is The Love" was brought to them by the writers.

The song came about during a contentious debate as to whether the 5th Dimension was a white group or a black group. The writers felt that they could write for both, get a hit and maintain their R&B base and wrote "Where Is The Love" but never got the chance to take it to them.

Once they got into the studio and had the music tracks laid down, the two were brought into the studio to work their vocal magic for producer Arif Marden, who would later go on to propel the Bee Gees 70's comeback.

Flack was telling Dick Clark that "I don't think since Tammi Terrell and Marvin Gaye had there been two people who were more suited for each other musically. While Donny and I went into the studio, we had not spent hours deciding what we were going to do, what we were going to sing. What we did come up with the keys because our voices were very similar in terms of register and range. Donny had a wonderful tenor voice, but he could also sing some notes that were otherworldly and very high and I had this ability particularly then to those wonderful sounding low notes as well as the natural high ones."