R&B Legend Rorberta Flack Dies Aged 88

Roberta Flack, the first singer to win consecutive Grammy Record of the Year honors for “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” (1972) and “Killing Me Softly With His Song” (1973), has passed away, according to a statement from her publicist.

Roberta Cleopatra Flack was born on Feb 10, 1937, in Black Mountain, North Carolina, with DNA results revealing that Flack was Cameroonian.

She liked gospel music, sang in several church choruses, and came from a big, musical family with Mahalia Jackson and Sam Cooke being early influences.

Throughout her illustrious career, Roberta Flack produced 20 studio albums, garnered four Grammy Awards, and was nominated for 14 more.

Flack died at home with her family by her side on Monday, February 24th of this year, at the age of 88, according to her publicist, Elaine Schock.

After several years of health problems, including a public diagnosis in late 2022 of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), she passed away.

Flack’s managers claim that her degenerative sickness, known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, caused her to lose her ability to sing.

Before she died, she became one of the most influential voices of her generation, created her own songs, and won numerous awards.

Flack’s Rise to Fame

Flack, who was an outstanding musician, began playing the classical piano when he was nine years old.

Playing on a piano her father had rescued from the garbage, she placed second in a statewide competition for black students when she was thirteen.

At the age of 15, she became one of the youngest students at Howard University in Washington, DC, where she obtained a scholarship and studied voice in addition to piano.

Flack was doing well in her music studies until her father died when she was 19 years old, forcing her to drop out of school and become a teacher so she could “bring a bit in” for her family.

For the next seven years, she was in Washington school system and spent nights working as a singer and pianist at local bars and

She was discovered in 1968 by jazz pianist Les McCann, who recalled their first meeting saying, “I laughed, sobbed, and screamed for more.”

After he set her up with Atlantic Records, Flack’s early jazzy folky records had some little success.

Clint Eastwood of Hollywood, in 1971, then used “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” in “Play Misty For Me,” a movie he was performing and directing.

Due to the success of the movie, the song which had not been initially released as a single, shot to the top of the charts.

It received a Grammy for Record of the Year in 1973 and 1974 after spending six weeks at the top of the charts in 1972.