Killing Me Softly at Gurganus Hall

Some memories fade with time, but every now and then a song comes along that can take you back to a single moment in your life as clearly as if it happened yesterday.
 
Have you ever had that experience? A song comes on the radio and suddenly you know exactly where you were the first time you heard it. You remember the room, the people around you, maybe even what you were doing at the time. Music has a remarkable way of doing that—one familiar melody can transport you decades in an instant.

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One such song for me is Killing Me Softly (With His Song) by Roberta Flack.
 
Now, Roberta Flack certainly deserves every bit of respect she receives. She is an extraordinary singer, and the song became a classic for good reason. But every once in a while you hear someone with such a strong and beautiful voice that you find yourself wondering if their version might be even more memorable than the original.
 
For me, that voice belonged to Cheryl Wylde.
 
When I hear Killing Me Softly, I don’t picture Roberta Flack coming through the speakers of the eight-track player in my old Volkswagen Beetle during my college days. Instead, my mind goes straight back to Gurganus Hall at York College in the fall of 1973.

At the time, I was part of the drama group at York College—by which I mean I studied drama in the theatre department, not that my life itself was particularly dramatic. Many of us would gather in the theatre building, Gurganus Hall, where drama students tended to spend a lot of their free time. We would talk, tell stories, laugh, and quite often end up singing together.
 
One of our friends, Tim Mingle, was one of the most talented musicians I have ever known. To me, anyone who can sit down at a piano and play by ear borders on the miraculous. Tim would sit at the piano and effortlessly pick out tune after tune as we called them out.

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When we asked him what songs he knew, he would simply shrug and say, “Just start singing and I’ll try to play along.” I didn’t believe that for a minute—until I saw him do it again and again.
One evening someone suggested Killing Me Softly. As Tim began to play, Cheryl Wylde, a freshman drama major at the time, leaned over the piano and started to sing.
 
The room changed instantly.
 
The joking and chatter stopped. Conversations faded away. Everyone simply stood there and listened. Cheryl’s voice filled the room with a beautiful, effortless rendition of the song, and for those few minutes the rest of us were just the audience.
 
It remains, to this day, the most memorable version of that song I’ve ever heard.  So whenever Killing Me Softly comes on my music devices, I don’t think about an eight-track player or even Roberta Flack’s famous recording. My mind goes straight back to a group of drama students gathered in Gurganus Hall—and to Cheryl Wylde leaning over a piano and singing her heart out.
 
And every time I hear that song, for just a moment, I’m back at York College again.