Roberta Flack

Roberta Flack was the professional name of Roberta Cleopatra Flack, born 10 February 1937 in Black Mountain, North Carolina, United States, and she died on 24 February 2025. She was an American singer and pianist whose work combined soul, jazz, R&B and pop. She is notable for a series of major recordings in the 1970s, including “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” and “Killing Me Softly with His Song”, and for rare back-to-back wins in a leading Grammy category.

Flack studied music from an early age and developed her skills as a pianist and vocalist before gaining wider attention. After working as a teacher and performing in clubs, she was signed to Atlantic Records and released her debut album First Take (1969). Her breakthrough arrived when “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” was used in the 1971 film Play Misty for Me and later became a major hit, reaching number one in the United States.

Her peak success came in the early-to-mid 1970s. “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year, and she followed it with “Killing Me Softly with His Song”, which also topped charts and won Record of the Year, making her the only solo artist to win that award in consecutive years. During this period she released albums including Killing Me Softly (1973) and continued to place singles on major charts with a style associated with intimate, carefully arranged performances.

In later years, Flack continued recording and performing, including notable collaborations with Donny Hathaway, with whom she recorded successful duets such as “Where Is the Love” and “The Closer I Get to You”. She remained active through subsequent decades, with later releases and appearances reflecting her standing as a major vocalist of her era. Her career activity reduced in the 2010s and early 2020s, following health-related challenges, but her recordings remained widely circulated.

Roberta Flack received multiple Grammy Awards and nominations across her career and is often cited as a key figure in the development of the quiet storm format. While total worldwide sales figures are not consistently reported in a single definitive public total, her signature recordings remain enduring standards, regularly reinterpreted and referenced across popular music.