Roberta Flack, the Grammy-winning soul singer best known for her celebrated renditions of romantic ballads such as “Killing Me Softly With His Song,” as well as her professional collaborations and social activism, has died, according to a publicist.
She was 88.
Flack died on Monday at home, surrounded by her family, her publicist, Elaine Schock, told CNN. Her death came after several years of health challenges, including a public diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, in late 2022. Flack’s progressive condition, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, rendered her unable to sing, according to her representatives at the time.
Flack, on the other hand, had already cemented her legacy as one of the defining voices of her generation, both as an interpreter of others’ songs and as a writer of her own, notching a slew of chart-topping hits and earning accolades:
Throughout her career, the classically trained daughter of a church organist received 14 Grammy nominations and won five, including a lifetime achievement award in 2020 and back-to-back Record of the Year awards.
Questlove, The Roots’ drummer, musical director of “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” and filmmaker, paid tribute to Flack.
“Thank You, Roberta Flack,” he wrote alongside a throwback photo of the late artist. “Rest In Melody.”
Flack was born in Black Mountain, North Carolina, and raised in Arlington, Virginia. She received classical music training throughout her childhood, beginning piano lessons at the age of nine. By the age of 15, she had earned a scholarship to Howard University, where she received a bachelor’s degree in music education in 1958.
Flack taught music for a while and wanted to pursue classical music, but in the 1960s, the genre was unwilling to accept her.
“One of the hassles of being a Black female musician is that people are always backing you into a corner and telling you to sing soul,” she once told the magazine TIME. “I am a serious artist.
I feel a connection to people like Arthur Rubinstein and Glenn Gould. Nothing else matters if I can not play Bela Bartok, a 20th-century orchestral composer.
Flack’s voice teacher encouraged her to pursue pop music instead, and she spent nights and weekends performing in Washington, DC clubs before landing her big break one night at Mr. Henry’s, where she was discovered by jazz musician Les McCann.
He assisted her in getting an audition with Atlantic Records, where she reportedly performed more than 40 songs in three hours.”I was so anxious and happy, and I still am,” she told Philadelphia Weekly decades later, “but it was all a brand-new experience, and I probably sang too many songs.”
Her debut album, “First Take,” was released soon after, in 1969. It featured her version of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” which was written by folk singer Ewan MacColl and helped propel Flack to superstardom after Clint Eastwood used the recording in his 1971 film, “Play Misty for Me.” The following year, it peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for six weeks and won Record of the Year at the 1973 Grammys.
Flack was already well-established at the time, having released her sophomore follow-up, “Chapter Two,” as well as the album “Quiet Fire” and a record with Donny Hathaway, with whom she worked closely before his death in 1979. They won another Grammy in 1973 for their duet “Where Is the Love.”
Flack also released her album “Killing Me Softly” in 1973, which featured the title track “Killing Me Softly with His Song,” another smash hit that spent five weeks at the top of the Billboard chart. It earned her two more Grammys in 1974, for Record of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Female Artist.
Throughout her career, Flack interpreted a wide range of artists, including Leonard Cohen and The Beatles, and by her fifth solo album, “Feel Like Makin’ Love,” she would taken over as producer – a role typically filled by men in a male-dominated industry – identifying herself as Rubina Flake, her self-styled alter ego.
While her most well-known songs may have been love songs, Flack never avoided complex issues: She addressed racial injustice in songs like “Tryin’ Times,” social and economic inequality in “Compared to What,” and the challenges faced by the LGBTQ community in her version of “Ballad of the Sad Young Men.” According to her website, the Rev. Jesse Jackson once described Flack as “socially relevant and politically unafraid,” but as an older adult, she lamented that many of the issues she faced as a musician remained unresolved.
“I am deeply saddened that many of the songs I recorded 50 years ago about civil rights, equal rights, poverty, hunger and suffering in our society are still relevant in 2020,” she told AARP in 2020. She acknowledged the links in her performances to “the growing economic disparities, to Black Lives Matter, to police brutality, to activism versus apathy, and the need for each of us to see it and address it.”
Flack’s legacy has endured over the decades, influencing younger artists such as Lauryn Hill and the Fugees, who released their own celebrated version of “Killing Me Softly” in 1996, as well as Lizzo, Lady Gaga, and Ariana Grande.
Flack told NPR music journalist Ann Powers in 2020 that “every single song I have recorded expressed something deep and personal to me,” regardless of whether the theme was protest, romance, or classics. “Each was my singular focus whether in the studio or on the stage.”
