Best known these days as a soul chanteuse, a peerless purveyor of ballads such as ‘First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’ and ‘Killing Me Softly’ (not to mention her majestic collaborations with Donny Hathaway), Flack began her career demonstrating serious jazz chops. From the opening track – a superb cover of ‘Compared To What’ – of her 1968 debut First Take, listeners were introduced to an impressive and hugely promising pianistic/vocal talent. If you enjoyed that album, you’ll love Lost Takes, which collects demo tracks recorded with Marshall Hawkins and Bernard Sweetney before that album’s release; these tunes first appeared (on CD and streaming only) on the ‘deluxe’ edition of First Take. Here they’re presented – with stunning sound on two 45rpm discs.

Highlight of the set is the 10-minute ‘Afro Blue’: Flack’s debt – pianistically and vocally – to Nina Simone is clear, but she’s very much her own woman. Her voice simply soars; as Les McCann, who discovered her singing in a Washington, DC nightclub said: “Her voice touched and kicked every emotion I’ve ever known.”

Her playing is just as good, full of celestial passion but tempered by a virtuosic skill and control remarkable for a 21-year-old. Other head-turners include a soulful, slow-burning ‘Frankie and Johnny’ and a beauteous ‘The House Song’.

McCann, and later Atlantic Records, who signed Flack on his recommendation, saw her artistic and commercial potential. The upbeat show tunes (‘On the Street Where You Live’, ‘This Could Be the Start of Something’) and straightahead ballads (a striking ‘To Sir With Love’) demonstrate her interprative skills, but also her marketability to a 1970s jazz-soul crossover audience. Lost Takes straddles that genre divide perfectly, and it’s a total knockout.