One of the true greats of American music is gone. Roberta Flack has passed away at the age of 88.
“We are heartbroken that the glorious Roberta Flack passed away this morning, February 24, 2025,” her spokesperson said in a statement. “She died peacefully surrounded by her family. Roberta broke boundaries and records. She was also a proud educator.”
Flack experienced her greatest success in the first half of the ‘70s, but she recorded well into her 70s, releasing her last single at the age of 79. She won five Grammys including two consecutive trophies for Record of the Year and a lifetime achievement award in 2020, and she sold nearly 8 million albums throughout a career that spanned six decades.
She was born in North Carolina and raised in Virginia, and she received classical piano training as a child. She even performed Handel’s Messiah on piano with her church choir as a teenager. She began her career as a teacher but moonlighted in jazz clubs around Washington, D.C. It was in one of these clubs where legendary jazzman Les McCann discovered her and helped her secure a contract with Atlantic Records.
"Her voice touched, tapped, trapped, and kicked every emotion I've ever known,” recalled McCann in the liner notes for Flack’s debut album “First Take” in 1969. “I laughed, cried, and screamed for more... she alone had the voice."
Flack’s first two albums made a minor splash, but her career didn’t take off until Clint Eastwood included a track from “First Take” in his 1971 film “Play Misty for Me.” Atlantic released “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” as a single, and it spent six weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and won her the Grammy for Record of the Year.
Her 1972 album of duets with soul singer Donny Hathaway won her another Grammy, and she had another massive Hot 100 hit with “Killing Me Softly With His Song,” which topped the charts for five weeks and won her Grammys for Record of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female.
Flack had one more number-one hit on the Hot 100 with “Feel Like Makin’ Love.” She produced it herself using the nickname she gave herself as a child: Rubina Flake.
She had a few more hits here and there throughout the years, including duets with Hathaway, Peabo Bryson, and reggae singer Maxi Priest. Her duet with Priest, “Set the Night to Music,” gave her her last top-ten pop hit.
One of my favorite moments from her career was her appearance on a Christmas compilation album that Christian music label Myrrh Records released in 1990. Alongside luminaries like Amy Grant, Al Green, and Michael W. Smith, Flack contributed her elegant take on “What Child Is This.”
Her last full-length album in 2012 was an album of Beatles covers, which she recorded in her inimitable style. But what Flack desired more than anything else was to perform classical music. She did, performing with symphony orchestras for years. In 1975, she told Time Magazine that she felt like the music industry pigeonholed her into soul, jazz, and pop.
"One of the hassles of being a black female musician is that people are always backing you into a corner and telling you to sing soul,” she said. “I'm a serious artist. I feel a kinship with people like Arthur Rubinstein and Glenn Gould. If I can't play Bartok when I want to play Bartok, then nothing else matters. It doesn't make me very popular in certain communities."
In her later years, health issues plagued her. She suffered from ALS, which took away her ability to sing and forced her to retire in 2022. (As a singer, I can't imagine how difficult that must have been for her.) However, there's no official cause of death as of now.
Tributes are pouring in:
With her crystal clear voice, piano virtuosity, and impeccable ability to interpret a song, there was nobody classier than Roberta Flack. There has been no one like her — and there probably never will be again. May she rest in peace.