Roberta Flack, singer of ‘Killing Me Softly,’ has died at age 88 : NPR

Roberta Flack performs on the San Sebastian Jazz Competition in Spain in 2005.

Rafa Rivas/AFP by way of Getty Photos

cover caption

toggle caption

Rafa Rivas/AFP by way of Getty Photos

Roberta Flack performs on the San Sebastian Jazz Competition in Spain in 2005.

Rafa Rivas/AFP by way of Getty Photos

Singer Roberta Flack, who broke by way of as one of the vital necessary and beloved singers of the Seventies and past with a sound that mixed soul, jazz, rock and pop, died Monday on the age of 88.

A consultant for Flack didn’t share a explanation for dying, however the singer had been battling amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS.

Musically gifted from a younger age, Flack received a scholarship to Howard College at simply 15 with plans to pursue a classical music profession.

“My actual ambition was to be a live performance pianist,” Flack advised NPR in 2012, “and to play Schumann and Bach and Chopin – the romantics. These have been my guys.”

However her lecturers discouraged her from making an attempt to interrupt into the largely white world of classical music within the late Fifties. Upon graduating, Flack taught at faculties in North Carolina and Washington, D.C., and commenced performing in golf equipment, each as a pianist for different vocalists and as a singer herself. Consideration from fellow musicians led to a contract with Atlantic Data, who launched her debut album, First Take, in 1969.

First Take bought effectively however Flack credited her 1970 look guest-starring on The Third Invoice Cosby Particular with “the most important break of my profession,” as she advised The New York Instances. When Clint Eastwood used her model of Ewan MacColl’s “The First Time Ever I Noticed Your Face” in his 1971 film Play Misty For Me, Flack’s reputation soared.

The string of albums that adopted — Chapter Two, Quiet Fireplace, Killing Me Softly, Really feel Like Makin’ Love and an album of duets with Donny Hathaway — made her one of many decade’s hottest singers. In 1971, DownBeat Journal named her the 12 months’s finest feminine vocalist, breaking Ella Fitzgerald’s 18-year streak. She earned eight Grammy nominations and 4 wins throughout this era, and stays the one solo artist to win the Grammy for file of the 12 months two years in a row: in 1973, for “The First Time Ever I Noticed Your Face,” and in 1974, for “Killing Me Softly With His Tune.”

Flack’s superstardom did not all the time translate to vital reward. NPR’s Ann Powers factors out that she was successful over audiences at a time when songwriters have been getting many of the consideration. “The concept you needed to write your individual materials was was held up because the gold commonplace,” says Powers. “For for much longer interpreters have been the greats, and Roberta Flack stands with Sinatra, with Ella Fitzgerald, with so many nice interpreters of the twentieth century, as somebody who made each music she approached authentic.”

Within the mid-’70s, Flack’s tempo within the studio slowed barely as she scored for movie and TV, labored in music publishing and file producing and engaged in graduate-level coursework in training and linguistics. She returned with Blue Lights within the Basement in 1977, and continued releasing albums from the late ’70s by way of the early ’00s, together with one other album that includes Hathaway, a duet album with Peabo Bryson and a Christmas album. Flack continued performing world wide, although she suffered some well being setbacks within the 2010s.

In 2022, Flack introduced that she had ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), popularly often known as Lou Gehrig’s illness. The next 12 months, she got here out with The Inexperienced Piano: How Little Me Discovered Music, a kids’s ebook in regards to the time her father restored an previous piano in order that little Roberta may observe at dwelling, co-written with Tonya Bolden.

All through her profession, Flack constructed a musical legacy by working outdoors the confines of style. She was recognized for serving to to form and outline “quiet storm” R&B, and laid the groundwork for the rise of neo-soul. However her celebrated work as an interpreter of songs included parts of rock, folks, jazz, classical, Latin and extra, frequently difficult racialized conventions about fashionable music and influencing generations of artists.

“My important curiosity is in telling my story by way of a music — whether or not mine or another person’s,” Flack advised NPR’s Ann Powers in 2020. “Inform the reality with readability and honesty in order that the listener can really feel their story.”