Legendary pop and R&B singer Roberta Flack, best known for her iconic hit “Killing Me Softly With His Song,” passed away this week at the age of 88.
She rose to prominence in the early 1970s with Grammy-winning tracks like “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” and “Killing Me Softly With His Song.”
Flack went silent on the morning of February 24, 2025.
Despite being a classically trained singer and pianist, her breakthrough came when Clint Eastwood featured her rendition of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” in his 1971 film “Play Misty for Me.”
That No. 1 pop smash was succeeded by a second chart-topper, 1973’s “Killing Me Softly.”
Both performances were acknowledged in back-to-back years with Grammys as record of the year – a feat that wasn’t duplicated until U2 captured the same award in 2001-02.
She reached her peak with the 1974 pop and R&B smash “Where Is the Love,” which claimed the apex of both charts.
In all, Flack’s supple, slow-burning style brought her six top-10 pop hits and 10 top-10 R&B singles, some of them in partnership with vocalist Donny Hathaway.
Economically summarizing her appeal in “The Rough Guide to Soul and R&B,” Peter Shapiro wrote, “Urbane, genteel and jazzy, Roberta Flack was, in many ways, the perfect soul act of the early ’70s. Her pretty, sensuous ballads appealed to the Burt Bacharach/5th Dimension crowd, while her shimmering keyboards and flawless diction made her the poster child of the penthouse soul crowd.”
Though her chart eminence faded at the close of the ’70s, Flack continued to record into the new millennium; her last album, the Beatles recital “Let It Be Roberta,” was released in 2012.
Born to a musical family in Black Mountain, N.C., Flack was inspired as a girl by the gospel work of Mahalia Jackson and Sam Cooke. He began studying piano at the age of 9; something of a musical prodigy, she entered Howard University in Washington, D.C., at 15 on a full scholarship.
Her graduate work was cut short by her father’s death, and she taught school in North Carolina and the District of Columbia. She also began work as a nightspot performer in D.C.; a fateful engagement at the club Mr. Henry’s was attended by jazz pianist Les McCann, then a crossover star at Atlantic Records. McCann brought Flack to the attention of the label, which signed her in 1968.
Released in 1969, her Joel Dorn-produced debut “First Take” didn’t catch fire. However, “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” — a ballad composed by English folksinger Ewan MacColl and cut by the American folk-pop act the Kingston Trio in 1962 — supplied popular liftoff for Flack after Eastwood used it behind a love scene in his thriller “Play Misty for Me.”
Flack had already garnered a No. 8 R&B hit with her version of James Taylor’s “You’ve Got a Friend,” but “The First Time” became a No. 1 pop ubiquity, and pushed “First Take” to No. 1 for five weeks. In January 1973, it collected the record of the year Grammy.
Almost simultaneously, “Where Is the Love,” Flack’s second pairing with the similarly subdued and sensuous soul singer Hathaway, reached No. 1 on the R&B chart and No. 5 on the pop list. The number was named best pop vocal performance by a duo or group at the ’73 Grammys and pushed the LP “Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway” to No. 3 on the pop rolls.
Flack reached the height of her popularity among both the public and her peers with “Killing Me Softly.” Penned by Charles Fox and Norman Gimbel, the number was inspired by singer Lori Lieberman’s reaction to a performance by pop folkie Don McLean. Lieberman’s 1971 recording of the tune failed to chart, but Flack quickly recorded it after hearing it during an airline flight to New York.
Produced by Dorn, Flack’s lustrous version shot to No. 1 on the pop chart and No. 2 on the R&B charts in early 1973; the “Killing Me Softly” album peaked at No. 3 and went double platinum. The song was named record of the year and best female pop vocal performance at the 1974 Grammys ceremony, and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999. The Fugees’ 1996 cover, featuring vocals by future Grammy winner Lauryn Hill, was also a No. 1 R&B hit.
Flack continued to log chart hits through the ’70s, topping herself with the double-barreled pop and R&B No. 1 single “Feel Like Making Love” in 1974. She also notched another chart-topping pop single, “The Closer I Get to You,” with Hathaway in 1978.
However, that teaming was tragically sundered by Hathaway’s suicide in January 1979; the duet “Back Together Again,” issued posthumously in 1980, reached No. 8. Her subsequent pairing with vocalist Peabo Bryson yielded a No. 5 R&B single, “Tonight, I Celebrate My Love,” in 1983.
Flack’s adult contemporary-oriented sound waned in popularity in the late ’70s, as listeners increasingly gravitated to the harder sounds of funk, rap and hip-hop. Her final top-10 album, “Blue Lights in the Basement” (No. 8), was issued in 1978. Her last major pop singles were the Burt Bacharach-penned movie theme “Making Love” (No. 13, 1982) and “Set the Night to Music,” a duet with reggae singer Maxi Priest (No. 6, 1991).
Nominated a total of 13 times, she received her last Grammy nod in 1995, for best traditional pop vocal performance, for “Roberta,” on which she essayed the standard songbook.
Flack, who was divorced from Stephen Novosel in 1972, was predeceased by her son Bernard Wright, who died in 2022.
