Roberta Flack, an R&B singer who was best known for the singles Killing Me Softly With His Song and The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, passed away at the age of 88.
Representatives for Roberta Flack released a statement saying, “We are heartbroken that the glorious Roberta Flack passed away this morning, February 24, 2025.”
“With her family by her side, she passed away quietly. Roberta violated records and bounds. She was a proud teacher as well.
Flack had earlier declared in 2022 that she was unable to sing due to motor neurone illness.
The musician began as a classical pianist after being born in North Carolina and growing up in Arlington, Virginia. At the age of 15, she was awarded a full scholarship to Howard University. She became a teacher because of her classical training, but at night she would play the piano for opera singers and sing pop classics during the intermissions.
“The whole while I was studying classical music, especially in my younger years, I was also doing a lot of doo-ron-ron, shoo-doo-bee-doo, all of that stuff, with my peers, so I’ve been fortunate enough to be surrounded by music all of my life, the Bach and the Chopin and the Schumann on one hand, and all the rhythm and blues,” she said.
Les McCann, a pianist who later stated that “her voice touched, tapped, trapped, and kicked every emotion I’ve ever known,” spotted her singing in a jazz club, sparking her recording career.
However, she didn’t get her first success until she was in her 30s, when an explicit love scene in Clint Eastwood’s 1971 film Play Misty For Me featured her rendition of Ewan MacColl’s The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.
It went on to win the Grammy for song of the year. The next year, Flack won the award again for his song, Killing Me Softly With His Song.
Feel Like Makin’ Love, which topped the charts once more in 1974, caused Flack to take a hiatus from performing in order to focus on recording and philanthropic endeavors.
She toured for a large portion of the 1980s and collaborated with musicians like Miles Davis and Donny Hathaway during her career.
Set the Night to Music, a duet with Maxi Priest from the album of the same name, sent her back to the top of the charts in 1991.
In 2012, she also recorded Let It Be Roberta, an album of Beatles covers.
“True soul”
“I consider myself a soulful singer, in that I try to sing with all the feeling that I have in my body and my mind,” Flack reportedly told a journalist, according to the Guardian.
“A person with true soul is one who can take anybody’s song and transcend all the flaws, the technique and just make you listen.”
The celebrity, who was once married to American jazz musician Stephen Novosel, spent a significant amount of time at the Roberta Flack School of Music in New York.
She was previously characterized as “socially relevant and politically unafraid” by Reverend Jesse Jackson.
Flack received a Grammy for lifetime achievement in 2020, one year after suffering a stroke.
She remarked at the moment, “It’s a tremendous and overwhelming honor.”
“I’ve made an effort to use my music to create stories throughout my career. This honor confirms to me that my peers have listened to me and have absorbed what I have attempted to contribute.
Lauryn Hill’s hip-hop group, The Fugees, released a Grammy-winning cover of Killing Me Softly, which they would later perform onstage with Flack, introducing her most well-known song to a new generation of music lovers.
In 1996, it reached the top of the global charts.
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