Roberta Flack had no flash or gimmick to propel her to stardom. A schoolteacher in her 30s when she achieved fame, she was a classically trained pianist with a low-key demeanor and a restrained vocal style. But she had a knack for getting deep inside a song and finding its heart.
“Her voice touched, tapped, trapped, and kicked every emotion I’ve ever known,” said jazz musician Les McCann, who helped Flack get a record deal after seeing her perform in a nightclub. Flack notched some of the 1970s’ top hits, including “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” (1972) and “Killing Me Softly With His Song” (1973). A partnership with Donny Hathaway yielded others, such as the breezy “Where Is the Love” (1972). While known as a soul/R&B singer, Flack incorporated influences including jazz, pop, folk, and classical. “I didn’t try to be a soul singer, a jazz singer, a blues singer—no category,” she said in 2020. “My music is my expression of what I feel and believe in a moment.”
Roberta Cleopatra Flack was born in Black Mountain, N.C., where her father was a draftsman and her mother a church organist, said the Los Angeles Times. She began playing by ear at 4, and “before long was studying the work of Bach and Chopin” and performing in church. At 15, she won a scholarship to Howard University and later settled in Washington, D.C., where she taught music in schools by day and played clubs at night. She earned a devoted following, and after McCann lined her up with an audition at Atlantic Records, she recorded her debut album, First Take (1969), in a day. Sales were modest, said the Associated Press, until director Clint Eastwood used “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” over a key scene in his steamy thriller Play Misty for Me (1971). The “hushed, hymn-like ballad” shot to No. 1, and “Flack became an overnight star.”
Flack continued to “log chart hits through the ’70s,” said Variety, but fell out of favor as tastes moved “to the harder sounds of funk, rap, and hip-hop.” Yet she toured and recorded “into the new millennium,” having honed an unvarnished style that valued emotional expression over vocal razzle-dazzle. “My main interest is in telling my story through a song,” she said in 2020. “Tell the truth with clarity and honesty, so that the listener can feel their story.”