Photo: Roberta Flack | By Fisher Jack, EUR Web | VIDEO story | The music world has lost a true legend with the passing of Roberta Flack, the iconic pop and R&B vocalist known for her timeless classics such as “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” and “Killing Me Softly With His Song.”
Flack, who died peacefully at 88, left an indelible mark on the industry, breaking boundaries and achieving remarkable feats throughout her career. A statement from her representative expressed profound sorrow at her passing, highlighting her contributions not only as a performer but also as an educator and a boundary-breaking artist.
Born into a musically inclined family in Black Mountain, North Carolina, Flack’s journey into music began early. Inspired by gospel legends like Mahalia Jackson and Sam Cooke, she took to the piano at nine and became a student at Howard University by the age of 15.
Although her graduate studies were cut short by her father’s death, her talent was undeniable, and she started performing at nightclubs in Washington, D.C. It was during one of these performances at Mr. Henry’s that she caught the attention of jazz pianist Les McCann, who would help launch her career.
Flack’s initial foray into the music industry was not met with immediate success. Although her debut album, “First Take,” released in 1969, did not gain traction, everything changed when Clint Eastwood featured her rendition of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” in his thriller “Play Misty for Me.” This pivotal moment catapulted Flack into stardom, making the song a No. 1 hit on the pop charts and winning her a Grammy for Record of the Year in 1973.
Her collaboration with fellow artist Donny Hathaway produced some of the most memorable duets in R&B history, including the hit “Where Is the Love,” which claimed the top spots on both the R&B and pop charts in 1974. Flack’s artistry was defined by her smooth, emotive vocal style and her ability to convey deep feelings through music.
Critics noted her appeal in “The Rough Guide to Soul and R&B,” calling her “urbane, genteel and jazzy,” exemplifying the quintessential soul artist of her time.
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Flack’s contributions to music, recognized by 13 Grammy nominations throughout her career, demonstrate her profound talent and influence on future generations of musicians. While she experienced the ups and downs of the industry, her legacy as a pioneering artist in the realms of R&B and soul remains intact.
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Read more of this tribute here:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/news/we-ve-lost-another-legend-remembering-roberta-flack-a-legacy-of-soulful-melodies-and-unforgettable-hits-video/
https://eurweb.com/2025/roberta-flack-music-legend-dies-at-88/
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Roberta Flack, Grammy-winning ‘Killing Me Softly’ Singer With an Intimate Style, Dies at 88
By Hillel Italie, AP Entertainment
NEW YORK (AP) — Roberta Flack, the Grammy-winning singer and pianist whose intimate vocal and musical style made her one of the top recordings artists of the 1970s and an influential performer long after, died Monday. She was 88.
She died at home surrounded by her family, publicist Elaine Schock said in a statement. Flack announced in 2022 she had ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, and could no longer sing.
Little known before her early 30s, Flack became an overnight star after Clint Eastwood used “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” as the soundtrack for one of cinema’s more memorable and explicit love scenes, between the actor and Donna Mills in his 1971 film “Play Misty for Me.” The hushed, hymn-like ballad, with Flack’s graceful soprano afloat on a bed of soft strings and piano, topped the Billboard pop chart in 1972 and received a Grammy for record of the year.
“The record label wanted to have it re-recorded with a faster tempo, but he said he wanted it exactly as it was,” Flack told The Associated Press in 2018. “With the song as a theme song for his movie, it gained a lot of popularity and then took off.”
In 1973, she matched both achievements with “Killing Me Softly With His Song,” becoming the first artist to win consecutive Grammys for best record.
A classically trained pianist so gifted she received a full scholarship at age 15 to Howard, the historically Black university, Flack was discovered in the late 1960s by jazz musician Les McCann, who later wrote that “her voice touched, tapped, trapped, and kicked every emotion I’ve ever known.” Flack was versatile enough to summon the up-tempo gospel passion of Aretha Franklin, but she favored a more measured and reflective approach, as if curating a song word by word.
For Flack’s many admirers, she was a sophisticated and bold new presence in the music world and in the social and civil rights movements of the time, her friends including the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Angela Davis, whom Flack visited in prison while Davis faced charges — for which she was acquitted — for murder and kidnapping. Flack sang at the funeral of Jackie Robinson, major league baseball’s first Black player, and was among the many guest performers on the feminist children’s entertainment project created by Marlo Thomas, “Free to Be … You and Me.”
Flack’s other hits from the 1970s included the cozy “Feel Like Makin’ Love” and two duets with her close friend and former Howard classmate Donny Hathaway, “Where Is the Love” and ”The Closer I Get to You” — a partnership that ended in tragedy. In 1979, she and Hathaway were working on an album of duets when he suffered a breakdown during recording and later that night fell to his death from his hotel room in Manhattan.
“We were deeply connected creatively,” Flack told Vibe in 2022, upon the 50th anniversary of the million-selling “Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway” album. “He could play anything, sing anything. Our musical synergy was unlike (anything) I’d had before or since.”
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Flack was briefly married to Stephen Novosel, an interracial relationship that led to tension with each of their families, and earlier had a son, the singer and keyboardist Bernard Wright. For years, she lived in Manhattan’s Dakota apartment building, on the same floor as John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who became a close friend and provided liner notes for a Flack album of Beatles covers, “Let It Be Roberta.” She also devoted extensive time to the Roberta Flack School of Music, based in New York and attended mostly by students between ages 6 to 14.
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https://apnews.com/article/roberta-flack-dies-61ad9755cc7b4f37b29884adc49c9340
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OTHER NOTABLE MUSICIANS’ DEATHS
Warning Signs of Suicide – National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 or if you want to discuss, call the old numbers at 800-273-TALK or 800-273-8255 for English and 888-628-9454 for Spanish. Learn the signs of someone who may be contemplating suicide.If you want to know more about any of the musicians we lost, please check them out at http://www.wikipedia.com
February 2025
26: Manolis Lidakis, 64, Greek éntekhno singer.25: Krista Aru, 66, Estonian historian of journalism, museologist, and politician, MP (2015–2019); Simon Lindley, 76, English organist, choirmaster and composer; Malyda, 61, Indonesian singer; Coburn Pharr, 62, Canadian singer (Annihilator); Ferenc Rados, 90, Hungarian pianist and academic.
24: Frank Dingenen], 74, Belgian actor, presenter and singer; Roberta Flack, 88, American singer (“Killing Me Softly with His Song”, “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”, “Feel Like Makin’ Love”), Grammy winner (1973, 1974), complications from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; Robert John, 79, American singer (“Sad Eyes”, “If You Don’t Want My Love”); Ricardo Kanji, 76, Brazilian flautist, brain cancer.
23: Jacques de Jongh, Australian musician (Hush, John Paul Young and the All Stars) and chef; Chris Jasper, 73, American Hall of Fame singer (The Isley Brothers, Isley-Jasper-Isley), songwriter (“Caravan of Love”), keyboardist and producer, cancer.
22: Linsey Alexander, 82, American songwriter, vocalist and guitarist; Bill Fay, 81, English singer-songwriter, complications from Parkinson’s disease; Lílian Knapp, 76, Brazilian singer-songwriter; Ken Parker, 76, Jamaican reggae musician; Gianni Pettenati, 79, Italian singer and music critic.
21: Larry Applebaum, 67, American audio engineer and jazz historian; Fred Bekky, 81, Belgian singer and guitarist (The Pebbles); Oscar García Urrego, 82, Colombian musician; Gwen McCrae, 81, American singer (“Rockin’ Chair”); Voletta Wallace, 78, American record producer and film producer (Notorious).
20: Gerry Arling, 63, Dutch musician (Arling & Cameron); Jerry Butler, 85, American Hall of Fame soul singer-songwriter (“Only the Strong Survive”, “He Will Break Your Heart”), musician (The Impressions) and politician, complications from Parkinson’s disease; Ilkka Kuusisto, 91, Finnish composer, choirmaster and opera manager (Finnish National Opera).
19: Karl Cochran, 61, American guitarist (Ace Frehley, Joe Lynn Turner, Eric Singer Project), traffic collision; Snowy Fleet, 85, English-born Australian drummer (The Easybeats); Jean Sarrus, 79, French singer, composer (Les Charlots) and actor (Stadium Nuts, Les Bidasses en folie).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_in_2025
Photo: Roberta Flack
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