Roberta Flack’s music, a precise blend of emotion and artistry, earned her five Grammys and a lasting legacy, dies aged 88: Videos, Photos

Renowned Grammy-winning soul singer Roberta Flack has passed away at the age of 88, as confirmed by a statement from her publicist.

Flack passed away on Monday at her home, surrounded by her loved ones, after battling health issues in recent years. In late 2022, it was publicly disclosed that she had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a progressive disease that ultimately prevented her from singing, according to her representatives.

Though her final years were marked by health struggles, Flack’s legacy was already firmly established. Her career spanned decades, during which she earned 14 Grammy nominations and won five awards, including a lifetime achievement honor in 2020 and multiple Record of the Year accolades.

Encouraged by a voice teacher to pursue pop music, she began performing in local DC clubs, eventually catching the attention of jazz musician Les McCann. He helped her secure an audition with Atlantic Records, where she sang over 40 songs for the label. Her debut album, First Take, released in 1969, included the iconic track “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” which gained widespread attention after Clint Eastwood featured it in his 1971 film Play Misty for Me. The song topped the Billboard Hot 100 and won a Grammy for Record of the Year in 1973.

Flack’s career flourished as she continued to release hit albums such as Chapter Two and Quiet Fire and formed a close partnership with Donny Hathaway. Their duet “Where Is the Love” won them a Grammy in 1973. In the same year, Flack released Killing Me Softly, which included the unforgettable hit of the same name. The song dominated the charts and earned her two more Grammys, including Record of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Performance by a female artist.

 

Throughout her career, Flack was known for her versatility, interpreting songs from artists like Leonard Cohen and The Beatles. By her fifth solo album, Feel Like Makin’ Love, she took on the role of producer, often using the name Rubina Flake. Alongside love songs, she also used her music to address serious societal issues, including racial injustice, poverty, and LGBTQ rights.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson once described her as “socially relevant and politically unafraid.” Flack herself expressed her sorrow that the social issues she addressed in her music decades earlier, such as civil rights and poverty, were still present in the world.

In 2020, after surviving a stroke, Flack was honored with a lifetime achievement award at the Grammys, a recognition she called “tremendous and overwhelming,” noting that her music had always aimed to tell stories and that receiving the award validated her artistic efforts.

Indeed, Roberta’s music, a precise blend of emotion and artistry, will forever echo in the hearts of listeners. Her timeless songs, especially “Killing Me Softly,” were embraced by new generations when Lauryn Hill’s group The Fugees covered the track, winning a Grammy and performing it with Flack on stage.

Singer Roberta Flack, who broke through as one of the most important and beloved singers of the 1970s and beyond with a sound that combined soul, jazz, rock and blues.

Musically gifted from a young age, Flack won a scholarship to Howard University at just 15 with plans to pursue a classical music career.

“My real ambition was to be a concert pianist,” Flack told NPR in 2012, “and to play Schumann and Bach and Chopin – the romantics. Those were my guys.”

But her teachers discouraged her from trying to break into the mostly white world of classical music in the late 1950s. Upon graduating, Flack taught at schools in North Carolina and Washington, D.C., and began performing in clubs, both as a pianist for other vocalists and as a singer herself. Attention from fellow musicians led to a contract with Atlantic Records, who released her debut album, First Take, in 1969.

First Take sold well but Flack credited her 1970 appearance guest-starring on The Third Bill Cosby Special with “the biggest break of my career,” as she told The New York Times. When Clint Eastwood used her version of Ewan MacColl’s “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” in his 1971 movie Play Misty For Me, Flack’s popularity soared.

The string of albums that followed — Chapter Two, Quiet Fire, Killing Me Softly, Feel Like Makin’ Love and an album of duets with Donny Hathaway — made her one of the decade’s most popular singers. In 1971, DownBeat Magazine named her the year’s best female vocalist, breaking Ella Fitzgerald’s 18-year streak. She earned eight Grammy nominations and four wins during this period, and remains the only solo artist to win the Grammy for record of the year two years in a row: in 1973, for “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” and in 1974, for “Killing Me Softly With His Song.”

Flack’s superstardom didn’t always translate to critical praise. Ann Powers points out that she was winning over audiences at a time when songwriters were getting most of the attention. “The idea that you had to write your own material was was held up as the gold standard,” says Powers. “For much longer interpreters were the greats, and Roberta Flack stands with Sinatra, with Ella Fitzgerald, with so many great interpreters of the 20th century, as someone who made every song she approached original.”

In the mid-’70s, Flack’s pace in the studio slowed slightly as she scored for film and TV, worked in music publishing and record producing and engaged in graduate-level coursework in education and linguistics. She returned with Blue Lights in the Basement in 1977, and continued releasing albums from the late ’70s through the early ’00s, including another album featuring Hathaway, a duet album with Peabo Bryson and a Christmas album. Flack continued performing around the world, though she suffered some health setbacks in the 2010s.

In 2022, Flack announced that she had ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), popularly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. The following year, she came out with The Green Piano: How Little Me Found Music, a children’s book about the time her father restored an old piano so that little Roberta could practice at home, co-written with Tonya Bolden.

Throughout her career, Flack built a musical legacy by working outside the confines of genre. She was known for helping to shape and define “quiet storm” R&B, and laid the groundwork for the rise of neo-soul. But her celebrated work as an interpreter of songs included elements of rock, folk, jazz, classical, Latin and more, continually challenging racialized conventions about popular music and influencing generations of artists.