Roberta Flack, Grammy-Winning Soul Singer, Dead at 88

Roberta Flack, the veteran Grammy-winning soul and R&B vocalist who recorded massive hits with “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” and “Killing Me Softly with His Song,” died Monday at age 88. Elaine Schock, Flack’s representative, confirmed the singer’s death from cardiac arrest. “Roberta broke boundaries and records. She was also a proud educator,” a statement read.

In 2022, Flack was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, and lost her ability to sing. The disease, her rep said at the time, “has made it impossible to sing and not easy to speak.”

“She sang reveries as much as exclamations, and yet her stillness electrified the soul. In time, the style she created became known as ‘quiet storm,’” journalist Mikal Gilmore wrote in a tribute accompanying the announcement of her death. “If Roberta Flack was unlike singers who came before her, there were many who would emulate her in her wake. In fact, her influence has never stopped reverberating. She was a woman who sang in a measured voice, but her measurements moved times and events as much as they moved hearts.” 

Born Feb. 10, 1939, in Asheville, North Carolina, Flack began playing classical piano as a teenager and was awarded a scholarship to Howard University. After graduating, she planned to continue her studies, but her father’s death forced her to leave school and start a teaching career in her home state. She eventually began gigging in clubs in Washington, D.C., with the likes of of Burt Bacharach and Johnny Mathis, in attendance. As the buzz around her grew, Flack was soon signed to Atlantic Records, which released her first album, First Take, in 1969.

Flack recorded First Take over just 10 hours at at Atlantic Studios in New York that February, working with a crack team of session players including bassist Ron Carter and guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli. The album found Flack interpreting an array of different songs from the protest song “Compared to What” (written by close collaborator Gene McDaniels) to “Angelitos Negros,” a ballad originally penned for the 1948 Mexican film of the same name. Flack also turned in what arguably became the definitive version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye.”

While First Take would eventually assume its rightful place as a widely-recognized masterpiece, success was not immediate. The first few singles failed to chart, and Flack quickly moved onto her next records, releasing Chapter Two in 1970 and Quiet Fire in 1971. She also linked up with friend and fellow Howard University student Donny Hathaway for a duets album, with the pair earning minor hits with contemporary pop standards like “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” and “You’ve Got a Friend.”

But Flack’s real breakthrough came when Clint Eastwood used her meditative version of British folksinger Ewan MacColl’s “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” — originally recorded for First Take — in his 1971 film Play Misty for Me. The song shot to Number One and took First Take along with it, the album eventually reaching Number One on the Billboard 200 in April 1972, nearly three years after its original release. Flack’s version of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” would go on to win the Grammy for Record of the Year in 1973 (and she and Hathaway won Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Duo, Group or Chorus for “Where Is the Love” that year, too).

Over the next few years, Flack’s sensuous voice and piano, which pioneered the Quiet Storm R&B genre, were ubiquitous on pop radio. Her version of “Killing Me Softly with His Song” hit Number One in 1973 and went on to win Record of the Year at the 1974 Grammys — making Flack the first artist to win the category two years in a row. She scored her third Number One single the following year with the friskier, “Feel Like Makin’ Love.” And with Hathaway, Flack recorded some of the most beloved R&B duets of the era: “Where Is the Love” and “The Closet I Get to You.”

For a brief period, Flack took a break from the business and returned in the early Eighties, hitting the Top 40 again with another duet, “Tonight, I Celebrate My Love,” with Peabo Bryson.

Flack scored four Grammys alongside a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2020, picking up back to back Record of the Year awards for “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” and “Killing Me Softly With His Song.” “Where Is the Love” earned the duo a Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Performance. “It was overwhelming and breathtaking to be there,” Flack said of receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award. “When I met those artists and so many others in person and heard from them that they were inspired by my music, I felt understood.” 

Flack’s last album, a tribute to the Beatles, was released in 2012; a year later, she made a cameo in the video for Yoko Ono’s “Bad Dancer” single.

This story is developing…

From Rolling Stone US