Iconic singer Roberta Flack is famous for her hits “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” and “Killing Me Softly with His Song.”
The Grammy Award winner is widely regarded as one of the greatest songstresses of our time. Her songs provided insight into our lives, loves, culture, and politics while effortlessly navigating a wide musical landscape ranging from pop to soul to folk to jazz.
Roberta Flack, born on February 10, 1939, in North Carolina, ability to use music to tell an unparalleled story.
As a native of Black Mountain in North Carolina, Ms Flack excelled at telling stories through her music, drawing on inspiration from jazz, gospel, soul, folk, and classical music.
Roberta Flack found early musical influence in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, her father, Laron Flack, who played the piano and the harmonica, and her mother, Irene (née Council) Flack, a church pianist and organist.
At age four, Flack’s father repaired an old upright piano at home, and she started playing songs while sitting on her mother’s lap.
During her teenage years, she trained as a concert pianist, with a special devotion to composers Johann Sebastian Bach, Robert Schumann, and Frédéric Chopin.
At the age of 13, she placed second in a statewide competition for Black students with her performance of a Scarlatti sonata.
Two years later, she was awarded a full scholarship to Howard University to study music, where she met her friend and future duet partner Hathaway.
Her father’s sudden death forced her to leave both school and home to work as a teacher to support herself. Still eager to perform, she began accompanying opera singers on piano at the prestigious Tivoli Opera House club in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., in 1962.
One evening in December 1967, her boss told her to play Christmas carols. Following her performance, the audience applauded and asked her to sing another song. Flack declined, but in an interview with The Washington Post in 1989, she described the experience as “my cue that people would listen to me as a singer.” Soon after, she left her teaching job to pursue her music career.
In February 1969, Roberta Flack recorded her debut album, “First Take,” in just ten hours at Atlantic Studios. One of the songs she recorded was “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.”
A year later, she released her second album, “Chapter Two,” which was produced by Joel Dorn and King Curtis, arranged by future collaborator Donny Hathaway, featuring laudatory liner notes from Jerry Butler.
On March 6, 1971, she performed at Ghana’s star-studded Soul To Soul Festival. Roberta Flack performed “Freedom Song,” “Tryin’ Times,” and “Gone Away.” Atlantic Records released the event’s album (as well as the concert videotape fifteen years later).
In 2022, a rep announced that Roberta Flack is no longer able to sing following a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, otherwise known as ALS.
This progressive nervous system disease has made it “impossible for her to sing and not easy to speak,” her spokesperson told CNN.
Flack’s documentary, “Roberta,” was shown at the Doc NYC Film Festival on November 17, 2022, and then on PBS on January 24 of the same year.
Her children’s book “The Green Piano: How Little Me Found Music” was also published on January 10, 2022.
Nothing can silence the voice of this icon!
