When Roberta Flack rocketed to superstardom in the early 1970s, she was something of an anomaly. The classically trained pianist, vocalist and gifted song stylist did not easily fit in the gritty decade of arguably the artistic apex of rhythm and blues and funk. And yet the Flack, who died February 25 at the age of 88 after a short battle with ALS, achieved one of the most acclaimed runs in music history on her own delicate, introspective terms.
In 1972, the former schoolteacher scored her first No. 1 pop hit, her two-year-old haunting version of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.” The track was given new life after actor-director Clint Eastwood featured it in his 1971 film Play Misty for Me. That song would win Flack a Grammy Award for Record of the Year in 1973.
Flack scored a second Record of the Year statue the following year for her heartbreaking global smash “Killing Me Softly with His Song,” making her the only solo act to win the prestigious category back-to-back. Just a few years earlier, Flack was cutting her teeth as a Washington D.C. nightclub performer at such hangouts as Mr. Henry. Her voice was as sumptuous as it was vulnerable. The entertainment biz never saw her coming.
“I didn’t try to be a soul singer, a jazz singer, a blues singer – no category,” she told The Guardian in a 2020 interview. “My music is my expression of what I feel and believe in a moment.”
Flack’s dedicated subtleness and earnest conviction as an interpreter of song in the tradition of Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, and Nina Simone at times drove music critics to view her as an old-school oddity in the straight-no-chaser R&B age of Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Sly Stone, Curtis Mayfield, and Gladys Knight. Yet it was Flack’s musical dexterity that allowed her to thrive in an industry eager to pigeonhole artists.
On Flack’s first three releases — her album debut First Take (1969), Chapter 2 (1970) and Quiet Fire (1971) — she effortlessly covered a Gene McDaniels-penned protest anthem (“Compared to What”); a gospel hymn (“I Told Jesus”); Bob Dylan (“Just Like a Woman”); and Simon & Garfunkel (“Bridge Over Troubled Water”).
Alone on the keyboards, Flack was hypnotic, a master of space and pacing. She could reimagine an entire arrangement of well-known songs and make it her own. Vernon Reid, Grammy-winning guitarist and leader of the groundbreaking Black hard rock band Living Colour, spoke of Flack’s boundless artistic footprint. “In a Better World? Roberta Flack would be considered a Pioneer in the field of Ambient Music as well as of Jazz, Folk, & Soul,” he wrote on social media.
When Flack teamed up with vocalist, songwriter and arranger Donny Hathaway, the pair created magic. The duo would sell over a million copies of their critically acclaimed, self-titled album Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway (1972), backed by the No. 5 Billboard Hot 100 hit “Where Is the Love,” which picked up another Grammy for Flack for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals.
GAB Archive/Redferns
Flack and Hathaway shared a deep friendship (they both attended Howard University) that went beyond being studio collaborators. Yet the duo also proved to be more than romanticists during the post-Civil Rights era, co-writing the empowering “Be Real Black for Me” with Charles Mann.
Other classic duets followed: “The Closer I Get to You,” “Back Together Again,” and “You Are My Heaven,” the final song Hathaway would record before his untimely death on January 13, 1979. “We were deeply connected creatively,” Flack told Vibe in 2022. “He could play anything, sing anything. Our musical synergy was unlike [anything] I’d had before or since.”
Before her career as a celebrated pop-R&B icon, Roberta Flack was a gifted musical prodigy who, at just 15, won a full scholarship to Howard University in the late 1950s. The plan was to go into classical music, she recalled in a 2022 NPR interview. “My real ambition was to be a concert pianist… and to play Schumann and Bach and Chopin — the romantics. Those were my guys,” she said.
Yet Flack was pushed by teachers not to pursue a career in the largely white classical scene as a Black woman. After a teaching stint, Flack was discovered during a live gig by jazz pianist Les McCann, who brought her to Atlantic Records. She was signed in 1968.
Flack was also one of the early voices of the burgeoning quiet storm sound. Her delightfully sensual, co-produced 1974 single “Feel Makin’ Love” became another No. 1 Hot 100 hit eventually transitioning to a beloved jazzy standard covered by a diverse range of artists including Isaac Hayes, Roy Ayers, Gladys Knight & the Pips, George Benson and D’Angelo.
By the 1980s, Flack had settled into easy-listening balladry with her top 20 theme song for the film Making Love (1982) and the go-to wedding hit with Peabo Bryson’s “Tonight, I Celebrate My Love.” Meanwhile, the kids of the hip-hop age were re-discovering Flack’s rich catalog. Biz Markie sampled “Back Together Again” for his campy 1989 track “Spring Again.” The Fugees, with Lauryn Hill on lead vocals, enjoyed a massive worldwide No. 1 hit with their 1996 Grammy-winning boom-bap cover of “Killing Me Softly With His Song.”
When Flack made a surprise appearance with L Boogie, Wyclef and Pras onstage at the 1996 MTV Movie Awards, the audience erupted.
Even when most artists of Flack’s stature would be content with enjoying the fruits of their labor, she was still a curious stylist. Her fifteenth and last studio album, 2012’s Let It Be Roberta, saw her re-shaping the Beatles’ classics. It’s fitting that an artist who received tributes from across the musical spectrum defied categories.
In all, Flack amassed six gold albums, one platinum, a double platinum set and a string of indelible hits. But commercial success is a mere part of her impact.
“For me, it’s not just singing the song well, it’s meaning every word personally,” Flack opened up in a 2022 Vinyl Me, Please interview. “My aim is to share my story vulnerably and encourage my audience to feel their own stories as they are moved to when they listen to my music.”
Mission accomplished, Ms. Flack.
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