Roberta Flack, timeless R&B singer who made 'Killing Me Softly With His Song' a hit, dies at 88

Grammy Award victor Roberta Flack, whose tranquil ballads and 1970s songs specified arsenic “Killing Me Softly With His Song” and “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” established her arsenic a timeless R&B vocalist and songwriter, died Monday. She was 88.

Flack’s decease was announced by a spokesperson, who said she “died peacefully surrounded by her family”; the connection didn’t accidental wherever she died. Flack suffered a changeable successful 2016 and 2 years aboriginal collapsed during a concert, which forced her to usage a wheelchair. In 2022, she was diagnosed with ALS, besides known arsenic Lou Gehrig’s disease, which took her quality to sing.

“Finding your ain communicative successful however idiosyncratic sings to you — that’s what Roberta Flack did for us, for truthful long,” her squad said successful a connection to The Times. “She helped america perceive our ain stories, and she gave countless musicians a exemplary for however to subordinate their ain stories by mode of singing.”

A classically trained musician, Flack ushered successful an enduring benignant of bushed and blues with her aboriginal classics that she often described arsenic “scientific soul” — a blend of talent, sensation and endless practice. Her signaling vocation included astir 2 twelve albums, 8 Billboard-charting songs and 4 Grammy Awards, among galore nominations. She called herself “just a small state girl” who worked hard astatine being a musician, without relying connected glamour.

“I made it 100% connected music,” she said.

Even that was an understatement. The Rev. Jesse Jackson described Flack arsenic “socially applicable and politically unafraid.” The Washington Post said she “embodied the Quiet Storm a afloat decennary earlier it became a palmy vigor format,” and NPR credited her with being 1 of the “prime revisionists of the American songbook.”

“I don’t privation to beryllium conscionable the modular benignant of commercialized artist,” she told The Times successful 1973. “The happening that truly makes you palmy is your dedication to your art.”

With a high, crystal-clear voice, Flack excelled connected elemental ballads backed by minimal instrumentation. Her euphony credentials were impeccable: She was a pianist and kid prodigy who received a afloat euphony assistance to Howard University astatine 15. And she became the archetypal solo creator to triumph consecutive Grammy Awards for grounds of the year.

Still, she was often undervalued by bequest institutions and under-appreciated successful popular music, contempt the Fugees’ deed 1996 screen of “Killing Me Softly” connected their multiplatinum-selling medium “The Score.” It wasn’t until 2020 that Flack yet received the Recording Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

“I deliberation everything you bash arsenic a Black idiosyncratic successful this state represents a conflict for survival,” she told NPR successful 2020.

As a child, Flack aspired to beryllium an opera vocalist oregon performance pianist and dreamed of playing Carnegie Hall, a imagination that yet came true.

Her slower tunes exhibited a dreamy, romanticist entreaty that allowed listeners to absorption connected her messages. She believed her champion songs told stories that struck a chord with listeners. She sang astir civilian rights astatine Jackie Robinson’s ceremonial and emotion astatine payment concerts for AIDS probe and inner-city acquisition projects.

Early successful her career, she taught euphony to grade-schoolers and was discovered portion moonlighting successful a D.C. nightclub. Her vocation took disconnected successful 1970 erstwhile she was the sole impermanent connected a Bill Cosby TV special. The adjacent twelvemonth she released “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” which incubated for 2 years earlier winning a Grammy and catching the receptor of actor-director Clint Eastwood, who utilized it successful the soundtrack for “Play Misty for Me.”

Flack’s concern with the precocious Donny Hathaway successful the ’70s yielded immoderate of her astir memorable work, including “You’ve Got a Friend,” “Where Is the Love” and “The Closer I Get to You.” They besides recorded soulful covers of “I (Who Have Nothing)” and the Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” and recorded the smoky “Be Real Black For Me,” which became an anthem of affirmation and tolerance among listeners. Hathaway died successful 1979 aft a autumn from a edifice country window. His decease was ruled a suicide.

Her 1980 album, “Roberta Flack Featuring Donny Hathaway,” earned 2 Grammy Award nominations, 1 for pistillate R&B vocal show and different for the azygous “Back Together Again.”

Flack’s affectional maturity helped grow the modern definitions of Black euphony and brought successful a feminine position that helped works the effect for artists specified arsenic Lauryn Hill, Alicia Keys and India Arie. Music critics said Flack possessed the aforesaid quality and sophistication for Black women that Joni Mitchell had for achromatic women.

“Her dependable and euphony shaped the precise cloth of American culture, bringing depth, soul, and meaning to generations. But beyond her artistry, she was a state combatant and activist,” the Rev. Al Sharpton wrote Monday connected X, noting that helium archetypal met her astatine a rally erstwhile she was lone 12.

Oscar victor Jennifer Hudson connected Monday mourned the musician, describing Flack connected X arsenic “one of the top psyche singers of each time” and asserting that her bequest would unrecorded on. Kelly Rowland, formerly of Destiny’s Child, thanked Flack for her “effortless, astir beauteous gift” and for being portion of “the soundtrack to the astir tender moments successful my life!”

“Roberta Flack gave dependable to the American soundtrack successful its quality and pain, emotion and anguish, anticipation and struggle,” “Roberta” filmmaker Antonino D’Ambrosio said successful a connection to The Times. “Spending almighty and beauteous moments with Roberta reminds america that we ever person a prime betwixt creating and destroying, responding and reacting. Roberta ever chose originative effect — a content arsenic visionary and timeless arsenic her music.”

Born Roberta Cleopatra Flack connected Feb. 10, 1937, successful tiny Black Mountain, N.C., she was the girl of Laron LeRoy, a draftsman who played piano, and Irene Flack, a religion choir organist. She started playing soft by receptor erstwhile she was 4 and earlier agelong was studying the enactment of Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and Schumann.

Flack considered herself an overachiever, a stubborn perfectionist and was fixed to self-reflection. She invented a phantasy change ego arsenic a kid — Rubina Flake — to flooded her timid nature. She performed astatine section churches and won 2nd spot successful a statewide contention with a Scarlatti sonata astatine property 13.

“I was a precise superior small student. The contention made maine consciousness similar a existent virtuoso,” she told The Times successful 1970.

She attended the lone precocious schoolhouse disposable to Black children successful Arlington, Va., wherever the household had moved. Flack was awarded a afloat euphony assistance to Howard successful Washington, D.C., wherever she studied soft earlier changing her large to euphony education.

She was unfastened astir her lifelong body-image struggles that made her defy being photographed and astatine times undermined her self-confidence. It besides affected her shows, which she kept elemental with fewer theatrics and minimal razzle-dazzle.

Roberta Flack successful 2017.

(Charles Sykes / Invision/AP)

“I person to enactment much, overmuch harder to delight an assemblage due to the fact that the euphony is each I have... If I was Diana Ross’ size I wouldn’t caput getting a small friskier onstage,” she told The Times successful 1978.

She graduated from Howard astatine 19 and landed her archetypal occupation teaching English lit successful Farmville, N.C., earlier moving to Washington wherever she could thatch and walk evenings performing astatine nightclubs, adjacent though it violated schoolhouse territory rules.

“I started singing things that I had been singing to the kids,” she said connected NPR successful 2006. “Like, I truly taught ‘First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’ to my inferior precocious schoolhouse girls’ glee nine to get their attention. By the clip we got to [singing] ‘the archetypal clip ever I kissed your mouth,’ ohio my, girl, I had ‘em.‘”

Flack said she had to muster her courageousness to permission the information of the schoolroom for the stage. For a Black creator successful those days, she said, “you had to person a batch of bosom and a beardown tendency to bash that.”

She was archetypal spotted by soul-jazz icon Les McCann, who saw her astatine a payment performance successful the summertime of 1968 and was truthful impressed helium sent a portion to an subordinate astatine Atlantic Records, wherever she recorded her debut album, “First Take,” successful conscionable 10 hours. It included “First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.”

In the record’s liner notes, McCann wrote: “Roberta possesses, some arsenic a vocalist and pianist, that uncommon prime which carries the listener beyond each obstruction arsenic though it ne'er existed, to that level astatine which each humans tin genuinely hear.”

In her aboriginal days, critics compared Flack to Nina Simone, Nancy Wilson, Odetta and adjacent Judy Garland: “As agelong arsenic there’s truthful overmuch disagreement astir who I dependable like, I cognize I indispensable person a benignant of my own,” she told The Times successful 1970 aft the merchandise of her sophomore album, “Chapter Two.”

She was uniquely herself.

In 1972, she yet made bully connected that imagination to look astatine Carnegie Hall, wherever she erstwhile wanted to play Schumann, Bach and Chopin. But it was her ain euphony she played.

Her saccharine ballads fooled galore into reasoning she was fragile and demure. But Flack was an “aggressive, articulate, exceptionally intelligent pistillate who is warring that fragile image,” The Times wrote successful a 1975 appraisal of her career.

“If I flex a small intelligence muscle, a batch of radical enactment their defenses up. Some radical deliberation that if you’re a performer you’re dumb oregon if you’re a pistillate you’re dumb or, peculiarly if you’re a Black woman, you’re dumb. I person to woody with these reactions a batch and I’m truly fed up with it,” she told The Times. “I could downplay my quality but I’ll beryllium damned if I volition ever bash that.”

For a agelong long of her career, Flack produced her ain albums, including 1975’s “Feel Like Makin’ Love” and 1977’s “Blue Lights successful the Basement,” utilizing the pseudonym Rubina Flake arsenic a joke. At the time, Black women grounds producers — adjacent stars similar her — were exceptionally rare.

Still, Flack would marque the originative decisions, take her ain material, arranger and amusement up for mixing and overdubbing sessions. “I’m a disciplined, meticulous musician. I was trained successful classical euphony truthful I’m utilized to practicing thing a long, agelong clip earlier I bash it,” she explained. “Some radical marque an medium successful a week, but it usually sounds similar it was done successful a week.”

After Hathaway’s death, she often paired with complementary vocalist Peabo Bryson, archetypal connected their “Live & More” medium successful 1980, past “Born to Love” successful 1983 and connected a fig of tours thereafter.

As her vocation matured, Flack’s oldies eclipsed her newer material, often described by critics arsenic “turgid and bland.” Critics were peculiarly harsh successful their reviews of her 1991 medium “Set the Night to Music,” which included a duet with Maxi Priest connected the rubric song, contempt it being a immense hit.

Her 1994 grounds “Roberta” — boasting covers of well-known popular and jazz songs — moved distant from the techno-R&B formulas that she felt nary longer suited her and toward different Grammy Award nomination. In 2012, she released “Let It Be Roberta,” a screen postulation of Beatles songs.

When she retired from touring, she continued to signifier play with her philharmonic manager and vocal manager arsenic she worked connected a documentary film, a biography and a children’s book, “The Green Piano,” which was based connected her life. Her matrimony to jazz bassist Steve Novosel ended successful divorce. She had nary children.

She besides founded the Roberta Flack School of Music astatine the Hyde Leadership Charter School successful the Bronx to supply a escaped euphony acquisition programme to underprivileged students. In 2010 she founded the Roberta Flack Foundation to enactment carnal payment and euphony education.

“I americium a idiosyncratic who has managed to past due to the fact that I person chosen to enactment existent to my ain ideals and principles, and existent to my ain experience,” she told the Washington Post successful 1989. “I americium a Black idiosyncratic who sings the mode I do. I americium not a Black idiosyncratic who sounds thing similar Aretha Franklin oregon thing similar Chaka Khan. I cognize what I americium and I don’t privation to, and I shouldn’t person to, alteration successful bid to beryllium who I am.”

Flack was predeceased successful 2022 by her godson and erstwhile euphony director, funk and jazz keyboardist Bernard Wright.

Times popular euphony professional Mikael Wood contributed to this report.