Roberta Flack, the Grammy-winning soul singer best known for her celebrated interpretations of romantic ballads like “Killing Me Softly with His Song,” as well as her professional collaborations and social activism, has died, according to a statement from her publicist.
She was 88.
Roberta Flack died Monday at her home, surrounded by her family, Elaine Schock, her publicist. Her death came after many health issues, including a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, that was made public in late 2022. The progressive condition, often referred to as Lou Gehrig’s disease, made it impossible for Flack to sing, her representatives said at the time.
On the other hand, Roberta Flack had already established herself as one of the most important voices of her generation by performing other people's songs and writing her own. Throughout her career, Flack was classically trained and the daughter of a church organist. She received 14 Grammy nominations and won five, including a lifetime achievement award in 2020 and back-to-back wins for Record of the Year. Quest Love, drummer for The Roots, musical director for “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” and a filmmaker, paid tribute to Flack.
He added the phrase "Thank You Roberta Flack" to a vintage picture of the late artist. "Rest in Harmony." Born in Black Mountain, North Carolina, and raised in Arlington, Virginia, Flack received classical music training throughout her childhood, starting piano lessons at age 9. By 15, she’d earned a scholarship to Howard University, where she graduated in 1958 with a bachelor’s degree in music education.
Roberta Flack taught music for a time and wanted to pursue classical music—but found the genre in the 1960s disinclined to welcome her.
Roberta Flack said, "One of the difficulties of being a Black female musician is that people are always backing you into a corner and telling you to sing soul." “I’m a serious artist. Glenn Gould and Arthur Rubinstein are two people I can relate to. Nothing else matters if I am incapable of playing Bela Bartok, a 20th-century orchestral composer. Flack was encouraged to pursue pop music by a voice teacher, and she spent nights and weekends performing in Washington, DC clubs before getting her big break at Mr. Henry's, where jazz musician Les McCann came across her. He helped land her an audition with Atlantic Records for which, the story goes, she played more than 40 songs over three hours. “I was so anxious and so 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.”
In 1969, her first record, "First Take," was released. It included her version of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” which was written by folk singer Ewan McColl and helped catapult Roberta Flack to superstardom after Clint Eastwood used the recording for his 1971 film, “Play Misty for Me.” It went straight to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 the following year, where it stayed for six weeks and won Record of the Year at the 1973 Grammy Awards. By that time, Flack was already well-established, having released her sophomore follow-up, “Chapter Two,” as well as the album “Quiet Fire” and a record with Donny Hathaway, who became a close collaborator before he died in 1979. For their duet, "Where Is the Love," they won another Grammy in 1973.
Across her career, Roberta Flack also interpreted a wide variety of artists, including Leonard Cohen and The Beatles, and by her fifth solo album, “Feel Like Makin’ Love,” she’d taken over as producer—a role typically filled by men in a male-dominated industry—crediting herself as Roberta Flake, her self-styled alter ego.
Even though Roberta Flack's most well-known songs may have been love songs, she never shied away from complex issues. In songs like "Tryon' Times," she talked about racial injustice, social and economic inequality, and the difficulties the LGBTQ community faces in her version of "Ballad of the Sad Young Men." The Rector According to Flack's website, Jesse Jackson once described her as "socially relevant and politically unafraid."
However, as an older adult, Roberta Flack lamented that many of the issues she had encountered as a musician persisted. She acknowledged connections in her music 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," which she stated to AARP in 2020. "I’m 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 said.
