萝贝塔·弗莱克

Roberta Cleopatra Flack (February 10, 1937 – February 24, 2025) was an American singer and pianist known for her emotive, genre-blending ballads that spanned R&B, jazz, folk, and pop and contributed to the birth of the quiet storm radio format. Her commercial success included the Billboard Hot 100 chart-topping singles "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face", "Killing Me Softly with His Song", and "Feel Like Makin' Love". She became the first artist to win the Grammy Award for Record of the Year in consecutive years.

Flack frequently collaborated with Donny Hathaway, with whom she recorded several hit duets, including "Where Is the Love" and "The Closer I Get to You". She was one of the defining voices of 1970s popular music and remained active in the industry, later finding success with duets such as "Tonight, I Celebrate My Love" with Peabo Bryson (1983) and "Set the Night to Music" with Maxi Priest (1991). Across her decades-long career, she interpreted works by songwriters such as Leonard Cohen and members of the Beatles. In 2020, Flack received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Early life and education

Flack was born on February 10, 1937, in Black Mountain, North Carolina, United States, to parents Laron Flack, a jazz pianist and U.S. Veterans Administration draftsman, and Irene (née Council) Flack a church organist, choir director and music teacher. Her family moved to Richmond, Virginia, before settling in Arlington, Virginia, when she was five years old.

Her first musical experiences were in church. She grew up in a large musical family and often provided piano accompaniment for the choir of Lomax African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church singing hymns and spirituals. She occasionally sang at the Macedonia Baptist Church in Arlington. Her father acquired a battered old piano for her, which she learned to play sitting on her mother's lap, officially beginning formal piano lessons when she was nine. She gravitated towards classical music and during her early teens excelled at classical piano, finishing second in a statewide competition for Black students aged 13 playing a Scarlatti sonata. This won her a full music scholarship to Howard University in Washington DC,, but her parents made her wait until she turned 15, enrolling in 1952, where she was one of the youngest students ever to be accepted. She eventually changed her major from piano to voice and became assistant conductor of the university choir. Her direction of a production of Giuseppe Verdi's opera Aida received a standing ovation from the Howard University faculty. At Howard she met her future collaborator, Donny Hathaway.

Flack became a student teacher at a school near Chevy Chase, Maryland. She graduated from Howard University at 19 and began graduate studies in music there, but after the sudden death of her father she had to find work to support herself. She took a job teaching music and English at a small, segregated high school in Farmville, North Carolina, for which she was paid $2,800 a year.

Career

Early career

Before becoming a professional singer-songwriter, Flack returned to Washington, D.C., and taught at Banneker, Browne, and Rabaut Junior High Schools. She also taught private piano lessons out of her home on Euclid Street, NW, in the city. During that time, her music career began to take shape on evenings and weekends in nightclubs.