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| Roberta Flack | |
|---|---|
 Flack in 1976 | |
| Background information | |
| Birth name | Roberta Cleopatra Flack |
| Also known as | Rubina Flake[1] |
| Born | February 10, 1937 Black Mountain, North Carolina, U.S. |
| Died | February 24, 2025 (aged 88) New York City, U.S. |
| Genres | |
| Occupations |
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| Instruments |
|
| Years active | 1968–2022 |
| Labels | |
| Spouse | |
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Roberta Flack (born February 10, 1937, Black Mountain, North Carolina, U.S.—died February 24, 2025, Manhattan, New York) was an American rhythm and blues (R&B) singer known for the number-one hits “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” (1972) and “Killing Me Softly with His Song” (1973), and for her duets with soul music singer Donny Hathaway “Where Is the Love” (1972) and “The Closer I Get to You” (1977). Flack excelled at telling stories through her music, which draws on an eclectic variety of jazz, gospel, soul, folk, and classical music influences.
Early life
Flack was raised in Arlington, Virginia, by her father, Laron Flack, who worked as a draftsman and played the piano and the harmonica, and her mother, Irene (née Council) Flack, who was a church pianist and organist. Roberta Flack found early musical inspiration in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. In contrast to the more ecstatic sounds of some southern U.S. churches, the African Methodist congregations favoured long-lined hymns and the cultivation of meaningful quietude in its music, which would later become a cornerstone of Flack’s work. She was musically precocious. “At age three, maybe four, there was me at the keys of that church piano picking out hymns we would sing, like ‘Precious Lord, Take My Hand,’ ” she recalled in a 2023 autobiographical children’s book. When her father brought home an old upright piano that he had repaired, Flack learned to play songs while sitting on her mother’s lap. She started studying piano at age nine and began exploring and absorbing a wide range of jazz, R&B, and popular music.
During her teenage years she trained as a concert pianist, harbouring a special affection for composers Johann Sebastian Bach, Robert Schumann, and Frédéric Chopin. In 1952, at age 15, she obtained a full scholarship to study music at Howard University, where she later met her friend and future duet partner Hathaway. She worked toward a degree in music education while leading her sorority’s vocal ensemble and directing a production of the opera Aida, graduating in 1956. She started graduate studies in music, but, when her father died in 1959, she left school and took teaching jobs in North Carolina and later in Washington, D.C.
Career
Still yearning to perform, she began accompanying opera singers on piano at the prestigious Tivoli Opera House club in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C., in 1962. One evening in December 1967, she was instructed by her boss, who wanted to clear the busy room for new customers, to stop playing the usual opera music and switch to Christmas carols. At first, she just played piano but soon found herself humming and then singing “The Christmas Song.” The audience applauded and asked her to sing another song. Flack declined, but, in an interview with The Washington Post in 1989, she recalled that moment as “my cue that people would listen to me as a singer.” She began performing several nights a week as a singer and pianist in local clubs, and she quit her teaching job to focus on her music career.
Her club performances were attended by top musicians, such as Burt Bacharach, Ramsey Lewis, and Johnny Mathis. In 1968 Flack performed at a benefit for the Inner City Ghetto Children’s Library Fund in Washington, D.C., and gained notice from jazz musician Les McCann, who later wrote in the liner notes of her debut album First Take (1969), “Her voice touched, tapped, trapped, and kicked every emotion I’ve ever known. I laughed, cried, and screamed for more.” McCann arranged for Flack to audition for Atlantic Records producer Joel Dorn, for whom she played more than 40 songs from her extensive repertoire.
First Take was recorded over a period of just 10 hours at Atlantic Studios in New York City with a backing band of top-tier jazz musicians, including bassist Ron Carter, guitarist John (“Bucky”) Pizzarelli, and drummer Ray Lucas. The album weaves textures of soul and folk music, and Flack’s well-selected track list includes a slower take on the traditional gospel song “I Told Jesus,” singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen’s poetic ballad “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye,” and folk singer Ewan MacColl’s 1957 love song “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.”
In 1970 Flack released her sophomore album, Chapter Two, a critically acclaimed recording that includes her interpretations of “Until It’s Time for You to Go,” written by folk singer Buffy Sainte-Marie, and “Just Like a Woman” by singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. Chapter Two was produced by Dorn and R&B pioneer King Curtis and arranged by Hathaway. On her 1971 album Quiet Fire, Flack explores the slower, softer side of soul music with renditions of “Bridge over Troubled Water,” composed by singer-songwriter Paul Simon, and “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” by the songwriting team of Carole King and Gerry Goffin.
In 1971 actor and director Clint Eastwood chose “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” to accompany a love scene in his directorial debut film Play Misty for Me. Atlantic released the song as a single in early 1972, and it spent six weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart before winning a Grammy Award for record of the year in 1973. At the same ceremony, Flack and Hathaway won a Grammy for best pop vocal by a duo for the song “Where Is the Love” from their seminal duet album Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway (1972).
Flack reached the height of her success with the ballad “Killing Me Softly with His Song,” which was composed by songwriters Charles Fox and Norman Gimbel. Before recording the song, she performed it at a 1972 concert, where it received a tremendously positive audience response. Singer-songwriter Marvin Gaye advised her to refrain from performing the song in public again until she recorded it. Released in January 1973, the song reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and it eventually earned Flack another Grammy for record of the year. She was the first performer to win two consecutive Grammy Awards for record of the year, a feat that was not accomplished by any other artist until 2001.
She captured another number-one hit with “Feel Like Makin’ Love” (1974), composed by singer-songwriter Eugene McDaniels. She continued to have chart success in the 1970s with her album Blue Lights in the Basement (1977), which featured the romantic ballad “The Closer I Get to You,” another duet with Hathaway. She became a key figure in the emerging Quiet Storm soul music genre, which embraced romantic lyrics and smooth, slow-tempo, jazz-inspired elements. In 1981 she composed and produced the soundtrack album for comedian Richard Pryor’s film Bustin’ Loose.
Flack continued to record and tour during the first two decades of the 21st century. She hosted a national radio show, Brunch with Roberta Flack, from 1995 to 1998. She was honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1999. She founded the Roberta Flack School of Music in New York City in 2005, which offers educational initiatives to underserved students, and established the Roberta Flack Foundation in 2010, which supports musical education and various social causes. She received a lifetime achievement award at the 2020 Grammy Awards ceremony. In 2022 her publicist announced that Flack had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and could no longer sing. She authored the autobiographical children’s book The Green Piano: How Little Me Found Music (2023) with writer Tonya Bolden and illustrator Hayden Goodman.
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Roberta Cleopatra Flack (February 10, 1937 – February 24, 2025) was an American singer and pianist known for her emotive, genre-blending ballads that spanned R&B, jazz, folk, and pop and contributed to the birth of quiet storm. Her commercial success included the Billboard Hot 100 chart-topping singles "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face", "Killing Me Softly with His Song", and "Feel Like Makin' Love". She became the first artist to win the Grammy Award for Record of the Year in consecutive years.
Flack frequently collaborated with Donny Hathaway, with whom she recorded several hit duets, including "Where Is the Love" and "The Closer I Get to You". As one of the defining voices of 1970s popular music, she remained active in the industry, later finding success with duets such as "Tonight, I Celebrate My Love" with Peabo Bryson (1983) and "Set the Night to Music" with Maxi Priest (1991). Across her decades-long career, she interpreted works by songwriters such as Leonard Cohen and members of the Beatles.[2] In 2020, Flack received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.[3]
Early life and education
[edit]Flack was born on February 10, 1937,[4][a] in Black Mountain, North Carolina, to parents Laron Flack, a U.S. Veterans Administration draftsman,[6] and Irene (née Council) Flack[4][7] a high-school cook and church organist.[8] Her family moved to Richmond, Virginia,[8] before settling in Arlington, Virginia, when she was five years old.
Growing up in a large, musical family, she often accompanied the choir of Lomax African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church by playing hymns and spirituals on piano, but she also enjoyed going to the "Baptist church down the street" to listen to contemporary gospel music including songs performed by Mahalia Jackson and Sam Cooke.[9]
When Flack was nine, she took an interest in playing the piano.[7] During her early teens, Flack excelled at classical piano, finishing second in a statewide competition for Black students aged 13,[8] and earning a full music scholarship to Howard University.[10]
Flack entered Howard at the age of 15, making her one of the youngest students ever to enroll there. She eventually changed her major from piano to voice and became an assistant conductor of the university choir. Her direction of a production of Giuseppe Verdi's opera Aida received a standing ovation from the Howard University faculty.[11]
Flack became a student teacher at a school near Chevy Chase, Maryland. She graduated from Howard University at 19 and began graduate studies in music there, but the sudden death of her father forced her to take a job teaching music and English at a small, segregated high school in Farmville, North Carolina,[12] for which she was paid $2,800 a year.[13]
Career
[edit]Early career
[edit]Before becoming a professional singer-songwriter, Flack returned to Washington, D.C., and taught at Banneker, Browne, and Rabaut Junior High Schools.[14][15][16][17] She also taught private piano lessons out of her home on Euclid Street, NW, in the city. During that time, her music career began to take shape on evenings and weekends in nightclubs.[18]
At the Tivoli Theater, she accompanied opera singers at the piano. During intermissions, she would sing blues, folk, and pop standards in a back room, accompanying herself on the piano. Later she performed several nights a week at the 1520 Club, again providing her own piano accompaniment. About this time her voice teacher, Frederick "Wilkie" Wilkerson, told her that he saw a brighter future for her in pop music than in the classics. Flack modified her repertoire accordingly and her reputation spread. In 1968, she began singing professionally when she was hired to perform regularly at Mr. Henry's Restaurant, located on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.[19][20][21]
1970s
[edit]
In the 1970s, Flack sang and played jazz in a Washington, D.C. nightclub. American jazz pianist and vocalist Les McCann attended one of these sessions,[7] and later wrote in the liner notes of what would be her first album First Take: "Her voice touched, tapped, trapped, and kicked every emotion I've ever known. I laughed, cried, and screamed for more... she alone had the voice." Very quickly, he arranged an audition for her with Atlantic Records, during which she played 42 songs in three hours for producer Joel Dorn. In November 1968, she recorded 39 song demos in less than 10 hours. Three months later, Atlantic reportedly recorded Flack's debut album, First Take, in a mere 10 hours.[22]
In 1971, Flack participated in the legendary Soul to Soul concert film by Denis Sanders, which was headlined by Wilson Pickett along with Ike & Tina Turner, Santana, The Staple Singers, Les McCann, Eddie Harris, The Voices of East Harlem, and others. The U.S. delegation of musical artists featured in the film was invited to perform for the 14th anniversary of the March 6 Independence Day of Ghana.[23][24] The film was digitally reissued on DVD and CD in 2004 but Flack declined permission for her image and recording to be included for unknown reasons. Her a cappella performance of the traditional spiritual "Oh Freedom", retitled "Freedom Song" on the original Soul to Soul LP soundtrack, is only available in the VHS version of the film.[25]
Flack's cover version of "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" hit No. 76 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1972. Her Atlantic recordings did not sell particularly well, until actor/director Clint Eastwood chose a song from First Take, "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" written by Ewan MacColl, for the soundtrack of his directorial debut Play Misty for Me; it became the biggest hit of the year for 1972, spending six consecutive weeks at No. 1 and earning Flack a million-selling gold disc.[26] "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" finished the year as Billboard's top song of 1972. The First Take album also went to No. 1 and eventually sold 1.9 million copies in the United States. Eastwood, who paid $2,000 for the use of the song in the film,[27] remained an admirer and friend of Flack's ever after. It was awarded the Grammy Award for Record of the Year in 1973. In 1983, she recorded the end music to the Dirty Harry film Sudden Impact, at Eastwood's request.[22]
In 1972, Flack began recording regularly with Donny Hathaway, scoring hits such as the Grammy-winning "Where Is the Love" (1972) and later "The Closer I Get to You" (1978), both million-selling gold singles.[26] Flack and Hathaway recorded several duets together, including two LPs, until Hathaway's 1979 death.[28] After his death, Flack released their final LP as Roberta Flack Featuring Donny Hathaway.[29]
On her own Flack scored her second No. 1 hit in 1973, "Killing Me Softly with His Song" written by Charles Fox, Norman Gimbel l, and Lori Lieberman.[30] It was awarded both Record of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female at the 1974 Grammy Awards. Its parent album was Flack's biggest-selling disc, eventually earning double platinum certification. In 1974, Flack released "Feel Like Makin' Love", which became her third and final No. 1 hit to date on the Hot 100; she produced the single and her 1975 album of the same name under the pseudonym Rubina Flake.[1] In 1974, Flack sang the lead on a Sherman Brothers song called "Freedom", which featured prominently at the opening and closing of the movie Huckleberry Finn.[31] In the same year, she performed "When We Grow Up" with a teenage Michael Jackson on the television special Free to Be... You and Me,[32] and a year later in 1975 performed two Johnny Marks songs, "To Love And Be Loved" and "When Autumn Comes", for the animated Christmas special The Tiny Tree.[33][34]
1980–1991
[edit]
Flack had a 1982 hit single with "Making Love", written by Burt Bacharach (the title track of the 1982 film of the same name), which reached No. 13. She began working with Peabo Bryson, charting as high as No. 2 on the UK charts with "Tonight, I Celebrate My Love" in 1983.[18]
In 1986, Flack sang the theme song entitled "Together Through the Years" for the NBC television series Valerie, later known as The Hogan Family. The song was used throughout the show's six seasons. In 1987, Flack supplied the voice of Michael Jackson's mother in the 18-minute short film for "Bad".[35] Oasis was released in 1988 and failed to make an impact with pop audiences, though the title track reached No. 1 on the R&B chart and a remix of "Uh-Uh Ooh-Ooh Look Out (Here It Comes)" topped the dance chart in 1989, after failing to chart on the Billboard Hot 100.[36][37]
In 1991, Flack found herself again in the US Top 10 with a cover of the Diane Warren-penned song "Set the Night to Music", performed as a duet with Maxi Priest that peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts and No. 2 AC.[38][39]
Later career
[edit]
In 1999, a star with Flack's name was placed on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.[10] In the same year, she gave a concert tour in South Africa. During her tour of the country, she performed "Killing Me Softly" for President Nelson Mandela at his home in Johannesburg.[40] In 2010, she appeared on the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards, singing a duet of "Where Is The Love" with Maxwell.[41]
Flack influenced the subgenre of contemporary R&B called quiet storm, and interpreted songs by songwriters such as Leonard Cohen and members of the Beatles.[42]
In February 2012, Flack released Let It Be Roberta, an album of Beatles covers including "Hey Jude" and "Let It Be". It was her first recording in eight years.[43] Flack knew John Lennon and Yoko Ono, as both parties lived in The Dakota apartment building in New York City and had apartments next door to each other. Flack said that she had been asked to do a second album of Beatles covers.[44] In 2013, she was reported to be involved in an interpretative album of the Beatles' classics.[45]
At the age of 80, Flack recorded "Running" for the closing credits song of the 2018 feature documentary 3100: Run and Become with music and lyrics by Michael A. Levine.[46]
Critical reputation
[edit]In 1971, The Village Voice critic Robert Christgau reported that "Flack is generally regarded as the most significant new black woman singer since Aretha Franklin, and at moments she sounds kind, intelligent, and very likable. But she often exhibits the gratuitous gentility you'd expect of someone who says 'between you and I'." Reviewing her body of work from the 1970s, he later argued that the singer "has nothing whatsoever to do with rock and roll or rhythm and blues and almost nothing to do with soul", comparing her middle-of-the-road aesthetic to Barry Manilow but with better taste, which he believed does not necessarily guarantee more enduring music: "In the long run, pop lies are improved by vulgarity."[9]
Writer and music critic Ann Powers argued in a 2020 piece for NPR that "Flack's presence looms over both R&B and indie "bedroom" pop as if she were one of the astral beings in Ava DuVernay's version of A Wrinkle In Time."[42] Jason King argued that she occupies a complex place in popular music, as "the nature of her power as a performer—to generate rapturous, spellbinding mood music and to plumb the depths of soulful heaviness by way of classically-informed technique—is not too easy to claim or make sense with the limited tools that we have in music criticism."[42]
Flack's minimalist, classically trained approach to her songs was seen by a number of critics as lacking in grit and uncharacteristic of soul music. According to music scholar Jason King, her work was regularly described with the adjectives "boring", "depressing", "lifeless", "studied", and "calculated";[9] in contrast, AllMusic's Steve Huey said it has been called "classy, urbane, reserved, smooth, and sophisticated".[47]
Personal life
[edit]Flack was a member of the Artist Empowerment Coalition, which advocates for artists to have the right to control their creative properties. She was also a spokeswoman for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA); her appearance in commercials for the ASPCA featured "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face". The Hyde Leadership Charter School in the Bronx, NYC, (now called Leaders In Our Neighborhood Charter School) ran an after-school music program called "The Roberta Flack School of Music" to provide free music education to underprivileged students in partnership with Flack, who founded the school.[48] Flack was also an advocate for gay rights, stating that "Love is love. Between a man and a woman, between two men, between two women. Love is universal, like music."[8]
From 1966 to 1972, she was married to Steve Novosel. Flack was the aunt of professional ice skater Rory Flack.[49][50] She was also the godmother of musician Bernard Wright, who died in an accident on May 19, 2022. For 40 years, Flack had an apartment in The Dakota building in New York City that was right next door to the apartment of Yoko Ono and John Lennon, their son Sean grew up calling her "Aunt Roberta".[51] She also counted among her friends the activists Jesse Jackson and Angela Davis.[3]
According to DNA analysis, Flack was of Cameroonian descent.[52]
Illness and death
[edit]In 2018, Flack was appearing onstage at the Apollo Theater at a benefit for the Jazz Foundation of America. She became ill, left the stage, and was rushed to the Harlem Hospital Center.[53] In a statement, her manager announced that Flack had a stroke a few years prior and still was not feeling well, but was "doing fine" and being kept overnight for medical observation.[54]
In late 2022, it was announced by a spokesperson that Flack had been diagnosed with ALS and had retired from performing,[55] due to the disease making it "impossible to sing".[56]
Flack died of cardiac arrest on February 24, 2025,[57] on her way to a hospital in Manhattan. She was 88 years old.[58][59][4]
Accolades
[edit]On May 11, 2017, Roberta Flack received an honorary Doctorate degree in the Arts from Long Island University.[60] She was inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame in 2009.[61] In 2021, Flack was one of the first inductees into the Women Songwriters Hall of Fame.[62]
On March 12, 2022, Flack was honored with the DAR Women in American History Award and a restored fire callbox in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington D.C. commemorating her early-career connection to nearby Mr. Henry's neighborhood bar.[63]
On January 24, 2023, the PBS series American Masters opened its 37th season with an hour-long look at her career.[64] On May 13, 2023, Flack received an honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music.[65]
Grammy Awards
[edit]The Grammy Awards are awarded annually by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. Flack received four awards from thirteen nominations.[66]
| Year | Nominee / work | Award | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1972 | "You've Got a Friend" (with Donny Hathaway) | Best R&B Vocal Performance by a Group | Nominated |
| 1973 | "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" | Record of the Year | Won |
| "Where Is the Love" (with Donny Hathaway) | Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Duo, Group or Chorus | Won | |
| Quiet Fire | Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female | Nominated | |
| 1974 | Killing Me Softly | Album of the Year | Nominated |
| "Killing Me Softly with His Song" | Record of the Year | Won | |
| Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female | Won | ||
| 1975 | "Feel Like Makin' Love" | Record of the Year | Nominated |
| Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female | Nominated | ||
| 1979 | "The Closer I Get to You" (with Donny Hathaway) | Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group | Nominated |
| 1981 | Roberta Flack Featuring Donny Hathaway | Best R&B Vocal Performance, Female | Nominated |
| "Back Together Again" (with Donny Hathaway) | Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal | Nominated | |
| 1995 | Roberta | Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance | Nominated |
| 2020 | Roberta Flack | Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award | Won |
American Music Awards
[edit]The American Music Awards is an annual awards ceremony created by Dick Clark in 1973. Flack won the award for Best Soul/R&B Female Artist at the inaugural show in 1974.[67][68]
| Year | Nominee / work | Award | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1974 | Favorite Female Artist (Pop/Rock) | Nominated[69] | |
| Favorite Female Artist (Soul/R&B) | Won[68] | ||
| "Killing Me Softly with His Song" | Favorite Single (Pop/Rock) | Nominated[69] | |
| 1975 | Favorite Female Artist (Soul/R&B) | Nominated[70] | |
| "Feel Like Makin' Love" | Favorite Single (Soul/R&B) | Nominated[70] | |
| 1979 | Favorite Female Artist (Soul/R&B) | Nominated[71] |
Discography
[edit]- First Take (1969)
- Chapter Two (1970)
- Quiet Fire (1971)
- Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway (with Donny Hathaway) (1972)
- Killing Me Softly (1973)
- Feel Like Makin' Love (1975)
- Blue Lights in the Basement (1977)
- Roberta Flack (1978)
- Roberta Flack Featuring Donny Hathaway (1980)
- I'm the One (1982)
- Born to Love (1983) (with Peabo Bryson) (1983)
- Oasis (1988)
- Set the Night to Music (1991)
- Stop the World (1992)
- Roberta (1994)
- The Christmas Album (1997)
- Let It Be Roberta (2012)
Source:[72]
Notes
[edit]Citations
[edit]- ^ a b "Music: What Ever Happened to Rubina Flake?". TIME. May 12, 1975. Archived from the original on May 3, 2015. Retrieved August 22, 2015.
- ^ Powers, Ann (February 10, 2020). "Why Is Roberta Flack's Influence On Pop So Undervalued?". NPR. Archived from the original on November 1, 2021. Retrieved November 1, 2021.
- ^ a b Italie, Hillel (February 24, 2025). "Roberta Flack, Grammy-Winning Singer, Dies at 88". TIME. Associated Press. Retrieved February 24, 2025.
- ^ a b c Russonello, Giovanni (February 24, 2025). "Roberta Flack, Virtuoso Singer-Pianist Who Ruled the Charts, Dies at 88". The New York Times.
- ^ Betts, Graham (2014). "Roberta Flack & Quincy Jones". Motown Encyclopedia. AC Publishing. ISBN 978-1-311-44154-6. Archived from the original on May 3, 2021. Retrieved October 16, 2020.
- ^ Wansley, Joyce (October 9, 1978). "After Three Years on Tilt, Roberta Flack Is Finally Lighting Up the Charts Again". People. Archived from the original on November 29, 2018. Retrieved November 28, 2018.
- ^ a b c "Roberta Flack page". Soulwalking.co.uk. Archived from the original on October 9, 2012. Retrieved November 11, 2012.
- ^ a b c d Russonello, Giovanni (February 24, 2025). "Roberta Flack, Virtuoso Singer-Pianist Behind 'Killing Me Softly,' Dies at 88". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved February 25, 2025.
- ^ a b c Weisbard, Eric, ed. (2007). Listen Again: A Momentary History of Pop Music. Duke University Press. p. 183. ISBN 978-0822340416.
- ^ a b "Roberta Flack Biography". robertaflack.com. Roberta Flack. Archived from the original on January 22, 2010. Retrieved November 11, 2012.
- ^ "Roberta Flack biography and career timeline". Pbs.org. January 17, 2023. Retrieved February 24, 2025.
- ^ "Roberta Flack, Best-Of Edition". News & Notes. Interviewed by Ed Gordon. NPR. April 21, 2006. Archived from the original on June 20, 2017. Retrieved June 9, 2017.
- ^ Rosenthal, Jack (March 29, 1970). "Roberta's a Capital Find". The New York Times. Retrieved February 25, 2025.
- ^ Kawashima, Dale (August 10, 2020). "Legendary Artist Roberta Flack Talks About Her Classic Hits 'The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,' 'Killing Me Softly' And 'Where Is The Love'". SongwriterUniverse. Retrieved February 25, 2025.
- ^ Cross, Reuben (February 24, 2025). "'The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face': the song that defined Roberta Flack". Far Out. Retrieved February 25, 2025.
- ^ Armstrong, Jenice (October 5, 1989). "Principal takes Junior High even higher". The Washington Post. Retrieved February 25, 2025.
- ^ Siler, Brenda C. (February 7, 2024). "Music Took Roberta Flack from D.C. Classrooms to Mr. Henry's to Worldwide Stages". The Washington Informer. Retrieved February 25, 2025.
- ^ a b Beaumont-Thomas, Ben; Bugel, Safi (February 24, 2025). "Roberta Flack, soul and R&B icon behind Killing Me Softly, dies aged 88". The Guardian. Retrieved February 24, 2025.
- ^ Whiting, Amanda (June 13, 2017). "Roberta Flack Still Goes to the Capitol Hill Bar Where She Got Her Big Break". Washingtonian.
- ^ Brown, Joe (September 27, 1987). "Flack's Song of Thanks". The Washington Post.
- ^ Arlington Public Library (September 27, 1987). "Roberta Flack's Arlington Roots". The Washington Post.
- ^ a b Steve Huey (February 10, 1939). "Roberta Flack | Biography". AllMusic. Archived from the original on June 17, 2019. Retrieved May 23, 2014.
- ^ "Soul to Soul (film review)". Time Out London. Archived from the original on March 29, 2017. Retrieved March 29, 2017.
- ^ Thompson, Howard (August 19, 1971). "Rousing 'Soul to Soul'". The New York Times.
- ^ Soul to Soul World Catalog Search Results. OCLC 840123917.
- ^ a b Murrells, Joseph (1978). The Book of Golden Discs (2nd ed.). London: Barrie and Jenkins Ltd. p. 312. ISBN 0-214-20512-6.
- ^ McGilligan, Patrick (1999). Clint: The Life and Legend. Harper Collins. p. 194. ISBN 0-00-638354-8.
- ^ Ruggieri, Melissa (February 24, 2025). "Roberta Flack, Grammy-winning singer of hit 'Killing Me Softly,' dies at 88". Usatoday.com. Retrieved February 24, 2025.
- ^ Sisario, Ben (February 24, 2025). "Roberta Flack's 11 Essential Songs". The New York Times. Retrieved February 24, 2025.
- ^ Pond, Steve (June 12, 1997). "Singer's Career Was Softly Killed By Bad Luck And Insecurity". Deseret News. p. C5. Archived from the original on March 14, 2022. Retrieved November 18, 2020.
- ^ Rasmussen, R. Kent (September 22, 2020). "MGM's Huckleberry Finn Musical That Never Reached the Screen, Part 2". Mark Twain Journal. 58 (2): 129–202. Retrieved February 24, 2025 – via go.gale.com.
- ^ Bishop, Katie (November 15, 2012). "Hearing 'Free To Be... You And Me' For The Very First Time". Soundcheck. Retrieved February 24, 2025.
- ^ "Bell System Family Theatre: The Tiny Tree (TV)". Paleycenter.org. Retrieved February 24, 2025.
- ^ "DePatie-Freleng's 'The Tiny Tree' (1975)". Cartoonresearch.com. December 24, 2014.
- ^ "Bad by Michael Jackson". Songfacts. Songfacts, LLC. Archived from the original on November 8, 2020. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
- ^ Whitburn, Joel (2004). Top R&B/Hip-Hop Singles: 1942-2004. Record Research. p. 207.
- ^ Whitburn, Joel (2004). Hot Dance/Disco: 1974-2003. Record Research. p. 100.
- ^ "Roberta Flack | Biography, Music & News". Billboard.com. Retrieved February 24, 2025.
- ^ "Roberta Flack | Biography, Music & News". Billboard.com. Retrieved February 24, 2025.
- ^ "BBC News | Entertainment | Roberta sings softly for Mandela". News.bbc.co.uk. July 29, 1999. Retrieved February 24, 2025.
- ^ Liss, Sarah (January 31, 2010). "Gaga for Grammys: Lil' Wayne's pants, Pink's stunts and other highlights from music's biggest night". Cbc.ca. Retrieved February 24, 2025.
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On Feb. 7, the Grammy Award winner released her first project in eight years: Let It Be Roberta: Roberta Flack Sings the Beatles.
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- ^ Mitchell, Gail (October 26, 2018). "Roberta Flack Returns With New Song 'Running': Premiere". Billboard. Archived from the original on November 1, 2019. Retrieved January 23, 2020.
- ^ Huey, Steve (n.d.). "Roberta Flack". AllMusic. Archived from the original on April 19, 2017. Retrieved March 18, 2017.
- ^ "Roberta Flack School of Music". Robertaflack.com. Archived from the original on October 5, 2010. Retrieved November 11, 2012.
- ^ Jacobson, Robert. "Roberta Flack – Biography". encyclopedia.com. Archived from the original on February 17, 2015. Retrieved January 14, 2015.
- ^ DeCurtis, Anthony (March 23, 1997). "Two Seasoned Voices, Together Raised for a Cause". The New York Times. Archived from the original on February 14, 2017. Retrieved January 14, 2015.
- ^ DeSantis, Rachel (November 16, 2022). "Sean Lennon Recalls Growing Up Next Door to 'Aunt' Roberta Flack: 'Coolest Neighbor in the World'". People Magazine. Retrieved February 24, 2025.
- ^ "Growing Interest in DNA-Based Genetic Testing Among African American with Historic Election of President Elect Barack Obama". Prweb.com. November 27, 2008. Archived from the original on August 1, 2015. Retrieved November 11, 2012.
- ^ Haring, Bruce (April 20, 2018). "Roberta Flack Falls Ill At Apollo Theater, Rushed To Hospital". Deadline Hollywood. Archived from the original on April 21, 2018. Retrieved April 21, 2018.
- ^ Fernandez, Alexia (April 21, 2018). "Singer Roberta Flack Rushed to the Hospital After She Fell Ill at the Apollo Theater". People. Archived from the original on April 21, 2018. Retrieved April 21, 2018.
- ^ "Roberta Flack is unable to sing after ALS diagnosis". November 14, 2022 – via www.bbc.co.uk.
- ^ "Roberta Flack has ALS, now 'impossible to sing,' rep says". Associated Press. November 14, 2022. Retrieved November 14, 2022.
- ^ "Statement on the Death of Roberta Flack". National Museum of African American History and Culture. Retrieved February 27, 2025.
- ^ Morris, Chris (February 24, 2025). "Roberta Flack, '70s R&B Vocalist Known for 'Killing Me Softly,' Dies at 88". Variety. Retrieved February 24, 2025.
- ^ Italie, Hillel (February 24, 2025). "Roberta Flack, Grammy-winning singer with an intimate style, dies at 88". AP News. Retrieved February 24, 2025.
- ^ "Roberta Flack Inspires Graduates at LIU Brooklyn Commencement". Long Island University. May 12, 2017. Archived from the original on January 1, 2020. Retrieved January 1, 2020.
- ^ "2009 Inductees". North Carolina Music Hall of Fame. Archived from the original on March 22, 2019. Retrieved September 10, 2012.
- ^ Diop, Arimeta (June 29, 2021). "The Women Songwriters Hall of Fame Has Honored Its First Class of Inductees". Vanity Fair.
- ^ Janezich, Larry (March 13, 2022). "Legendary Song Artist Roberta Flack Honored in Capitol Hill Ceremony – Photo Essay". Capitol Hill Corner. Archived from the original on March 13, 2022. Retrieved March 13, 2022.
- ^ "Roberta Flack Timeline − Season 37 Episode 1". American Masters (PBS). January 17, 2023. Retrieved March 13, 2024.
- ^ Browley, Jasmine (April 24, 2024). "Usher And Roberta Flack Now Have Doctorate Degrees". essence.com. Essence.
- ^ "Roberta Flack". Grammy Awards. Archived from the original on March 14, 2022. Retrieved November 11, 2012.
- ^ "Roberta Flack". Swannanoa Valley Museum & History Center. Retrieved February 24, 2025.
- ^ a b Roberta Flack Wins Soul/R&B Female Artist - AMA 1974. American Music Awards. 1974 – via YouTube.
- ^ a b "American music awards Tuesday". The Press Democrat. February 15, 1974. p. 13. Retrieved February 26, 2025 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ a b "American Music Awards: Rich Grabs 6 Nominations". Billboard. February 8, 1975. p. 41. Retrieved February 26, 2025 – via Google Books.
- ^ "Music award nominees". The Press Democrat. January 2, 1979. p. 3D. Retrieved February 26, 2025 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ "Robert Flack Discography". RobertaFlack.com. Retrieved February 26, 2025.
General and cited references
[edit]- Bryan, Sarah; Beverly Patterson (2013). "Roberta Flack". African American Trails of Eastern North Carolina. North Carolina Arts Council. p. 92. ISBN 978-1469610795.
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Roberta Flack, the magnetic singer and pianist whose intimate blend of soul, jazz and folk made her one of the most popular artists of the 1970s, died on Monday in Manhattan. She was 88.
She died en route to a hospital, according to Suzanne Koga, her manager and friend. The cause was cardiac arrest, she said. Ms. Flack revealed in 2022 that she’d been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, which left her unable to perform.
After spending almost 10 years as a Washington, D.C., schoolteacher and performing nights downtown, Ms. Flack zoomed to worldwide stardom in 1972, after her version of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” was featured in a Clint Eastwood film.
The song had been released three years earlier, on her debut album for Atlantic Records, but came out as a single only after the film was released. Within weeks it was at No. 1 on the Billboard chart — a perch she would reclaim two more times, with “Killing Me Softly With His Song” (1973) and “Feel Like Makin’ Love” (1974).
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In both 1973 and ’74, she won Grammy Awards for record of the year, and in both years the composers of her hits won for song of the year. In 1973, she and Donny Hathaway shared the award for best pop vocal performance by a duo, group or chorus, for “Where Is the Love.” A year later, she won in the pop vocal performance, female category for “Killing Me Softly.”
Ms. Flack’s steady, powerful voice could convey tenderness, pride, conviction or longing, but hardly ever despair. Most of her best-known albums included at least a few funk and soul tracks, driven by a slapping backbeat and rich with observational social commentary. But her biggest hits were always something else: slow folk ballads (“The First Time”) or mellifluous anthems (“Killing Me Softly”) or plush love songs (“Feel Like Makin’ Love”).
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“Roberta Flack underplays everything with a quietness and gentleness,” the writer and folklorist Julius Lester once observed in a Rolling Stone review. “More than any singer I know, she can take a quiet, slow song (and most of hers are) and infuse it with a brooding intensity that is, at times, almost unbearable.”
Mr. Lester heard in Ms. Flack an “amazing ability to get further inside a song than one thought humanly possible and to bring responses from places inside you that you never knew existed.”
Roberta Flack, ‘Killing Me Softly’ Singer, Dies at 88
As a Grammy Award-winning singer and pianist, Roberta Flack topped the charts as one of the most popular artists of the 1970s.
Singing: “Killing me softly with his song, killing me softly.” When I recorded “Killing Me Softly” in 1972, I had the same kind of goosebumps. When I sang it, performed it, recorded it, thought about it as I, as I do now when I hear the Fugees sing it.
Critics often struggled to describe the understated strength of her voice, and the breadth of her stylistic range. In its poise, its interiority and conviction, its lack of sentimentality or overstatement, her singing seemed to press the reset button on any standard expectations of a pop star. She placed equal priority on passion and clear communication — like an instructor speaking to an inquisitive student, or a lover pledging devotion.
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“I’ve been told I sound like Nina Simone, Nancy Wilson, Odetta, Barbra Streisand, Dionne Warwick, even Mahalia Jackson,” Ms. Flack told The New York Times in 1970. “If everybody said I sounded like one person, I’d worry. But when they say I sound like them all, I know I’ve got my own style.”
Preternaturally gifted and bookish, Ms. Flack entered college at 15 and graduated while still a teenager. But her musical career blossomed slowly; by the time she found the spotlight, she was well into her 30s and had only recently quit teaching junior high school.
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At a small Capitol Hill club called Mr. Henry’s, she had spent years developing an eclectic repertoire of about 600 songs and a riveting, unpretentious stage presence. Even when her fame exploded and her beauty shone on the international stage, Ms. Flack never became larger than life or shed the persona of an earnest, wise-beyond-her-years schoolteacher.
A virtuoso classical pianist who often sang from the piano bench, Ms. Flack described her approach as something like disrobing before the audience. “I want everybody to see me as I am,” she told The National Observer in 1970. “Your voice cracks? OK, darlin’, you go right on and keep giving it what you’ve got left, and the audience ignores it and goes right along with you. I’ve found out the way to get myself through to people is just to unzip myself and let everything hang out.”
Ms. Flack belonged to a broad and continuing tradition of singer-pianists — Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin, Alicia Keys — whose music is equally rooted in the blues, the Black church and Western classical music, and who have consistently challenged the strictures imposed by commercial genre.
She saw no need to choose between a broad, accessible repertoire and a proud Afrocentrism, steeped in both 1960s radicalism and her own religious upbringing. As the scholar Jason King wrote, “Perhaps no other mainstream musical artist of the 1970s more complexly brought Black nationalism into discourse with European classical aesthetics.”
From her inaugural album’s first track — “Compared to What,” a shot of sharp social commentary written by her longtime collaborator Eugene McDaniels — Ms. Flack frequently sang songs of social frustration and racial solidarity.
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One of her most tender and affecting performances came alongside Donny Hathaway on “Be Real Black for Me,” a song of love and mutual admiration that they had written with Charles Mann. (It was later famously sampled by the rapper Scarface on his 2002 single “On My Block.”)
In performance, she and Mr. Hathaway recast “Somewhere,” the Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim Broadway hit, as a declaration of Black solidarity and resolution. “Someday, somehow/We’ll find a new way of living/We’ll find a way of forgiving,” they sang, their voices closely entwined. In one rendition caught on film, she pauses halfway through the first verse to inform her audience: “I want you to know, this has absolutely nothing to do with ‘West Side Story.’ I hope I won’t have to explain it to you.”
And from her early days performing at Mr. Henry’s, a gay-friendly cabaret, Ms. Flack was also a staunch advocate of gay rights. She sang “Ballad of the Sad Young Men” on her debut album, and in performance she often introduced it as a story of young gay barflies seeking belonging.
She sang the theme song to “Making Love,” a 1982 film about a man grappling with his sexual identity. “I was so glad when that song charted,” Ms. Flack said in an interview with Hotspots magazine. “People who did not know that the song was about love between two men loved that song. I would talk about it in my shows, and about how love is love. Between a man and a woman, between two men, between two women. Love is universal, like music. I always say, ‘Love is a song.’”
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Royalty in Waiting
Roberta Cleopatra Flack was born on Feb. 10, 1937, in Black Mountain, N.C., the second oldest of five siblings. In her early childhood, the family moved to Virginia, first to Richmond and then to Arlington, a segregated suburb of Washington. Her father, Laron Flack, worked as a draftsman in the Veterans Administration; her mother, Irene (Council) Flack, was a cook at a high school who also taught music and played the organ at Arlington’s A.M.E. Zion Church.
“I grew up playing piano for the choir: Handel, Bach, Verdi, Mozart and all those great, wonderful, intricately written Negro spirituals,” Ms. Flack remembered in a 1991 interview with The Chicago Tribune. But she would also sneak down the road to the local Baptist church, savoring its rawer forms of musical worship. From time to time, she caught gospel stars like Mahalia Jackson and Sam Cooke performing there.
Ms. Flack always identified with her family’s Southern history. “I like to say that two preachers came from Black Mountain. Billy Graham and I,” she was quoted as saying in a 1971 Ebony article. “He’s preaching in his way and I’m preaching my way.”
Ms. Flack has no immediate survivors. A seven-year marriage to the bassist Steve Novosel (which violated the law in Virginia, where interracial marriage was still illegal when she married Mr. Novosel, who is white) ended in divorce, as did a later marriage.
At 13, Ms. Flack won second place in a statewide competition for Black students after performing a Scarlatti sonata; she was convinced that she had deserved the main prize and that the judges were thrown off by the sight of a Black girl playing classical music with such command. Just two years later, she entered Howard University on a full scholarship. She became the first undergraduate vocal student to give a public recital in classical vocal literature, and she conducted a student production of “Aida” that drew a standing ovation from Howard’s music faculty.
But a dean warned that the opportunities in classical orchestras would be scarce for a Black woman, advising Ms. Flack to pursue a teaching career. Upon graduating, she started working toward a master’s degree in music education.
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After her father’s death, needing to support herself, she dropped out and took a job at a grade school in Farmville, N.C., where she taught English and music to children in a deeply impoverished community — an experience that left a lasting impression. “There was no piano in my classroom, but I went from room to room with a pitch pipe and autoharp, teaching them music,” she told Ebony.
After a year, she returned to Washington and began teaching at junior high schools in the city while establishing herself on the nightclub circuit. At the upscale Tivoli restaurant, Ms. Flack accompanied opera singers on piano as they promenaded across the room. During intermissions, she sometimes retired to a piano in the back room where she sang blues, folk and pop songs for the staff.
Soon came gigs under her own name at the 1520 Club and Mr. Henry’s, which was known for attracting a racially diverse clientele and for welcoming openly gay and lesbian patrons. The restaurant outfitted its upstairs specifically for Ms. Flack, with a stage and rows of pew-style seating.
She was soon the talk of D.C. “I was trying to develop my skill, to read music, interpret it, rearrange it,” she told the BBC for a documentary, “Killing Me Softly: The Roberta Flack Story.” “I felt I could do everything, and I felt comfortable enough to know that if I had a chance I could show anybody.”
Stars like Burt Bacharach and Johnny Mathis made a point of going to Mr. Henry’s when they were in town. One night, Liberace came and sat in, playing a piano duet with Ms. Flack. And, celebrity guests or not, what were supposed to be two- or three-set nights would often stretch on much longer. “I just couldn’t get up from the piano,” she said.
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When the star soul-jazz pianist and vocalist Les McCann heard her in 1968 at the nearby Bohemian Caverns, he was floored. “Her voice touched, tapped, trapped and kicked over every emotion I’ve ever known,” he later wrote in the liner notes to her debut album. “I laughed, cried and screamed for more.”
Mr. McCann arranged for her to audition for Atlantic Records. In a three-hour tryout for the company’s Joel Dorn, she performed more than 40 songs out of her vast repertoire. He signed her immediately.
Reporting from Washington for The Times in 1970, Jack Rosenthal described Ms. Flack as royalty in waiting. Around the city, he wrote, “her conquest has been so complete that, for months, mention of her name has inevitably raised the question, ‘When’s Roberta going to make it nationally?’”
Critics warmly received her albums “First Take” (1969), “Chapter Two” (1970) and “Quiet Fire” (1971), and she attracted ears in the jazz world, but Ms. Flack lacked a hit single until Mr. Eastwood chose to give “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” — an achingly slow ballad written by the folk singer Ewan MacColl — a starring role in his 1971 psychological thriller, “Play Misty for Me.” For five otherwise wordless minutes, the entire song plays through as Mr. Eastwood and Donna Mills stroll across a windy beach, past crashing waves and into the forest.
The song had originally appeared on “First Take,” but Atlantic rushed it out as a single in 1972 and it sped to No. 1. All of a sudden, Ms. Flack was a superstar.
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A Signature Song
“Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway,” an album of duets with her old friend from Howard University that many critics consider a creative high-water mark, also became a hit. It reached No. 3 on Billboard’s album chart on the strength of their buoyant renditions of Carole King’s “You’ve Got a Friend” and “Where Is the Love,” written for the duo by Ralph MacDonald and William Salter.
She received the 1972 Trendsetter Award from Billboard, “for moving jazz into the pop market with her soft, delicate vocal style.” And she won major Grammys in each of the next two years.
One day in 1972, Ms. Flack heard Lori Lieberman’s “Killing Me Softly” playing on an American Airlines flight. She immediately latched onto the tune’s spinning-wheel melody, delicately balanced between major and minor, and its mysterious lyrics. Ms. Lieberman had sent a demo of the song to Helen Reddy, a major pop star at the time, but she was turned off by the title and the tape languished on her desk.
On the airplane, Ms. Flack jotted down the melody as she played Ms. Lieberman’s version over and over on her headphones. When she first performed it at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles, while opening for Marvin Gaye, the audience erupted at the end. Quincy Jones, who was there, counseled her to keep the song to herself until she’d recorded it.
It was released in January 1973 as a single and became ubiquitous on AM radio stations across the country. It would be Ms. Flack’s signature song for the rest of her life.
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In 1975, the year she moved in next door to John Lennon and Yoko Ono in the Dakota building in New York City, Ms. Flack released “Feel Like Makin’ Love,” her first self-produced album and another smash hit. With its feathery, electrified sound and prowling beat, the title track (written by Mr. McDaniels) came to be recognized as an early example of quiet storm, an R&B subgenre that conquered airwaves in the 1980s.
“The thing that engulfs me in music is the pulse. If I can find that heartbeat, I can live in there — in that music,” she told an interviewer in 2012. “I think that’s the same for everyone. I also think that that’s what makes a song a hit.”
Her subsequent albums, “Blue Lights in the Basement” (1977), “Roberta Flack” (1978) and “Roberta Flack Featuring Donny Hathaway” (1979), tacked further toward the dance floor, with a smoother and bouncier style. Together with “Feel Like Makin’ Love,” this streak of self-produced or co-produced recordings put Ms. Flack’s talents as an arranger and bandleader on full display. (She used a pseudonym, Rubina Flake, for her production work.) “Oasis,” a later-career highlight from 1988, was also a Flack production. During these years, while battling intermittent bouts of tonsillitis, she pursued a doctorate in education at the University of Massachusetts, though she never completed it.
Ms. Flack recorded the soundtrack to the 1981 Richard Pryor film “Bustin’ Loose.” By the middle of the decade her recorded output had slowed, though she still performed often. She became a mentor to younger vocalists, including Luther Vandross and Peabo Bryson, both of whom sang alongside Ms. Flack before stepping straight into solo careers, largely thanks to her support.
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She frequently worked benefit concerts into her touring schedule, and from 2006 to 2011 she funded and helped direct a program known as the Roberta Flack School of Music at the Hyde Leadership Charter School in the Bronx. She also served for many years as a spokesperson for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and allowed the organization to use “The First Time” royalty-free in TV commercials.
Throughout her life, Ms. Flack maintained an interest in spirituality and the occult, an orientation she credited to the influence of her grandmother, who had been a healer.
Ms. Flack was honored in 2018 with a lifetime achievement award from the Jazz Foundation of America, and two years later with a Grammy for lifetime achievement.
Into her latest years, Ms. Flack savored the memory of school-teaching days and club nights in Washington. When asked in 2017 if she ever went back to Mr. Henry’s, which still hosts live music, she didn’t miss a beat: “I was there recently. I love the crab cakes.”
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Roberta Flack’s 11 Essential Songs
One of the supreme voices of the 1970s and a master of revelatory reinterpretation has died at 88.
At a New York concert in 1997, Roberta Flack referred to her voice as a “blessed instrument.” For generations of listeners it was just that, a spellbinding force that could be cool, or luxurious, or swell with suggestive power, often in the same song.
Flack, who died on Monday at 88, began her career as a schoolteacher with a solid grounding in both classical music and Black church singing. She ended up one of the supreme voices of the 1970s, scoring multiple No. 1 hits that established her as a star of interpretive pop-soul, capable of stunning radio listeners and critics alike.
She was a master of the revelatory reinvention. Her first hit, “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” was originally a folk ballad by Ewan MacColl. Peggy Seeger’s 1957 recording of it is a brisk, warbling take with arpeggiated acoustic guitar — a classic example of the kind of carefree-songbird tunes from the early folk revival. In Flack’s hands it is slow, stirring eroticism, with a controlled range of vocal dynamics that moves from whisper-delicate to a kind of power that feels like a carnal memory.
She did it again in 1973 with “Killing Me Softly With His Song” — originally by Lori Lieberman, another folkie — which Flack transformed into a hypnotic meditation. Two decades later, Lauryn Hill and the Fugees shifted its shape again with their own remake.
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With those tracks, Flack became the first artist to take record of the year at the Grammy Awards two consecutive times, with “The First Time” winning in 1973 and “Killing Me Softly” in 1974.
Those are just two of Flack’s most familiar recordings, in a career that also included hit collaborations with singers like Donny Hathaway and Peabo Bryson, and later explorations into jazz standards. Here are 11 of her essential tracks.
‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’ (1969)
Though it would take nearly three years for this track from Flack’s debut album to become a hit — a placement in Clint Eastwood’s movie “Play Misty for Me” was the catalyst — it introduced all the elements of Flack’s greatness as a vocalist and an interpreter. Turning a folk ballad by Ewan MacColl into a rich, amorous incantation, Flack controls her voice with delicate restraint, letting it swell from a near-whisper to just enough of a cry to reveal a deep passion within. It went to No. 1 and became the top song of 1972.
‘Compared to What’ (1969)
Her first single was a protest song. Written by Gene McDaniels, and earlier recorded by Les McCann — the jazz pianist who discovered Flack and brought her to Atlantic Records — “Compared to What” has a right-on soul-jazz groove and lyrics like “The president, he’s got his war/Folks don’t know just what it’s for.” Flack’s rhapsodic vocal flights offered a sign of her potential.
‘Let It Be Me’ (1970)
Another stunning example of Flack’s interpretive power, and of her role in curating a new pop songbook in the 1970s. She paints this modern standard — made famous with lachrymose sweetness by the Everly Brothers — with soft blue notes and an expertly calibrated range of vocal dynamics.
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‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow’ (1971)
By the time Flack released her cover of this Shirelles’ classic, in late 1971, Carole King (who wrote the song with Gerry Goffin) had already done her own slowed-down version on her megaselling LP “Tapestry.” But Flack’s performance is still striking, a haunting showcase for her voice as well as her delicate and entrancing piano arrangement.
‘Freedom Song’ (1971)
In 1971, Flack performed at an Independence Day festival in Ghana, along with Ike and Tina Turner, the Staple Singers, Wilson Pickett and Santana. Her a cappella version of the spiritual “Oh Freedom” is a heart stopper, both a moaning prayer and a taste of rapture. The soundtrack has long since fallen into obscurity; it was never released on CD in the United States and is unavailable on streaming services.
Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway, ‘Where Is the Love’ (1972)
Donny Hathaway, a gifted and troubled singer and songwriter, was one of Flack’s most important collaborators, writing early tracks and arranging the songs on her second album. In 1972 they collaborated on a joint LP, “Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway,” that became a blueprint for ’70s romantic soul. “Where Is the Love,” a No. 1 R&B hit that remains in constant radio rotation, is a perfect duet, a tale of romance lost that still feels like a bonbon.
‘Killing Me Softly With His Song’ (1973)
Another surprising song choice that Flack fully remade into a giant, signature hit. She encountered Lori Lieberman’s folky original while on a plane, then reworked the chord structure and added a soaring interlude, transforming the tune into a soulful odyssey. She tried it out at a concert with Quincy Jones, who told her, “Ro, don’t sing that daggone song no more until you record it,” as Flack once recalled. The recording became her second No. 1 hit, and got another boost when the Fugees remade the track in 1996.
‘Feel Like Makin’ Love’ (1974)
Flack produced her sixth studio album herself, under the name Rubina Flake, with a smooth touch that comes through clearly on this sensuous title track, her third No. 1 hit. The album was delayed by months of strained recording sessions, and was a relative flop upon its eventual release in early 1975.
Roberta Flack With Donny Hathaway, ‘The Closer I Get to You’ (1977)
Not written as a duet, this song nonetheless reunited Flack and Hathaway for another gauzy crossover hit, which went No. 1 R&B and No. 2 on the Hot 100. Before Hathaway’s death in 1979, the two had begun recording another duets LP, which was released the following year as “Roberta Flack Featuring Donny Hathaway.”
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Peabo Bryson and Roberta Flack, ‘Tonight, I Celebrate My Love’ (1983)
Flack found a new partner for romantic duets in Peabo Bryson, whose smooth baritone was radio gold but struck many critics as a bit too squeaky-clean, especially in his appearances on Disney soundtracks. “Tonight, I Celebrate My Love,” written by Goffin and Michael Masser, was the lead single from their joint album “Born to Love,” and reached the Top 20.
‘Angel Eyes’ (1994)
On “Roberta,” an album of jazz and soul standards, Flack delivered this unorthodox but captivating take on “Angel Eyes,” a boozy tale of lost love that’s long been associated with Ella Fitzgerald. The song drips with pungent blue notes, but Flack — singing over a jazz combo at a ponderous tempo — finds a way to luxuriate in the melody, bending the lyrics enough to make any fan perk up.
Ben Sisario, a reporter covering music and the music industry, has been writing for The Times for more than 20 years. More about Ben Sisario
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