Roberta Flack, best known for the hits “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” and “Killing Me Softly With His Song,” has died at the age of 88. The cause of death was cardiac arrest while en route to a hospital in Manhattan according to her manager Suzanne Koga.
Born Roberta Cleopatra Flack in Black Mountain, North Carolina on February 10, 1937, Flack was raised in Arlington, Virginia where she got her start singing and playing the piano in the church which later got her a full scholarship to Howard University at age 15. She graduated from Howard at age 19 and started graduate studies before dropping out due to the sudden passing of her father. She took a job teaching music and English in a small town in North Carolina which began her career as a teacher. She later relocated to Washington D.C. where she taught junior high during the week and played at nightclubs at night and on the weekends.
As a nightclub performer, Flack performed everything from the blues to soul to folks to pop. However, it was her jazz performances that caught the eye of fellow pianist-vocalist Les McCann, best known for the song “Compared to What” and one of the innovators of the “soul jazz” genre. He got her an audition with Atlantic Records which lasted three hours in which she performed 42 songs. Her debut album, First Take, released in 1969, was recorded in a span of 10 hours. The album went to number 1 on the Billboard charts and went Platinum in the U.S. The song “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” won Record of the Year at the 1973 GRAMMY Awards.
It was her 1973 hit “Killing Me Softly With His Song” that catapulted Flack as one of the most popular singers of the 1970s. Flack’s rendition of the song shot up to No.1 on the Billboard charts and won another Record of the Year along with Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female at the 1974 GRAMMY Awards. It was famously recorded by Lauryn Hill and the Fugees in 1996 and hit No.1 in over twenty countries.
Flack was also known for her duets with friend and classmate Donny Hathaway and together they released two albums in 1972 and 1980, including the duet “The Closer I Get to You.”