Roberta Flack

Roberta Flack (born February 10, 1937, Black Mountain, North Carolina, U.S.) is 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 excels 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.

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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 Waters,” composed by singer-songwriter Paul Simon, and “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” by the songwriting team of Carole King and Gerry Goffin.

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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.