Roberta Flack’s Beautiful Soul

Grammy Award winner Roberta Flack, who passed away on February 24 at age 88, will always be remembered for her soul-stirring ballads. Initial reports stated she died peacefully at home surrounded by her family. However, her manager Suzanne Koga later stated the singer died of cardiac arrest en route to a hospital in Manhattan.

Her team released the following statement to The LA Times: “Finding your own story in how somebody sings to you – that’s what Roberta Flack did for us, for so long. She helped us hear our own stories, and she gave countless musicians a model for how to relate their own stories by way of singing.” The statement continued: “Roberta broke boundaries and records. She was also a proud educator.”

A classically trained musician, she was a pianist and child prodigy who received a full music scholarship to Howard University at 15. Flack is best known for timeless classic number-one singles such as “Killing Me Softly with His Song,” “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, and “Feel Like Makin’ Love.”

Flack is also known for several duet recordings with the late Donny Hathaway. Their most memorable collaborations include the Grammy-winning “Where is the Love” (1972) and “The Closer I Get to You” (1978), both million-selling gold singles.

In 1973, the North Carolina native told The LA Times, “I don’t want to be just the standard kind of commercial artist. The thing that really makes you successful is your dedication to your art.”

Before she became a top-selling recording artist, Flack taught at Banneker, Browne, and Rabaut Junior High Schools in Washington, D.C. She also gave private piano lessons out of her home on Euclid Street, NW with one of her pupils having been gospel great Richard Smallwood.

Flack suffered a stroke in 2016; in 2018, she collapsed on stage at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem. In 2022, she was diagnosed with ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease), forcing her to retire from performing due to the sad inability to sing.

“The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” was originally recorded in 1969 for her First Take debut. It took on a new life when Clint Eastwood used it in the closing credits for his feature film directorial debut, 1971’s Play Misty for Me. It is also the song that introduced Flack to the MTV generation when The Fugees released their chart-topping, hip-hop version in 1996.

Founding member Pras Michel recalled that the trio recorded the song in a New York City basement during a heatwave the year before: “We were playing back Roberta Flack’s album. [Lauryn Hill] was like, ‘Oh, she’s doing this key right here. Let me go back and do that.’ And she’d go back and do it. That’s how she stacked the harmonies. Yo, it was like poetry in motion.”

Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun referred to her as “one of the finest singers in American pop history.” Roberta Cleopatra Flack was the first solo artist to win consecutive Grammy Awards for “Record of the Year.”

-Sharon Oliver

Photo: Public domain