The music world is paying tribute to one of the greatest. Roberta Flack. The songstress, songwriter and pianist, whose timeless hit songs impacted many, died Feb. 24 at age 88.
In 1952, a 15-year-old Roberta Cleopatra Flack started at Howard University, an HBCU with a scholarship to study piano and vocal music. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in music education. Both her parents were skilled pianists, and Ms. Flack began piano lessons at nine.
She dedicated six hours daily to practice, receiving instruction from a Black woman named Hazel Harrison, who had received her musical education in Europe. “I was a good student because I didn’t do anything else,” Ms. Flack told Ebony magazine in 1971.
After graduation she received a practice-teaching assignment at Alice Deal Junior High in Northwest Washington, “I was one of the first Negroes inside that building except for the cooks and janitors,” she told The Post in 1968. Her rise to fame came slowly. She taught for years, while playing D.C. at night clubs.
A regular during her performances at D.C.’s Mr. Henry’s was the song, “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.” In 1969, Ms. Flack’s debut album First Take featured her unique rendition of the song. It was a much slower version than the original by Peggy Seeger. That album went nowhere. Her producers told her that song was too slow.
“That record was heard by Clint Eastwood,” Music Producer A. Haqq Islam told The Final Call. “He heard it on the radio and immediately wanted to put it in his movie, Play Misty for Me. She won a Grammy for that and her career just took off.” She was well into her 30’s when this happened.
That song won her Grammies in 1973, Record of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance after the song spent six weeks atop the Billboard Top 100 charts, making it Billboard’s top song of the year. The next year was even better for the new artist.
“Killing Me Softly with His Song,” in 1974 spent more weeks at number one on the Billboard charts than any other artist, topping the charts for five weeks. It was also a Grammy winner.
Roberta Flack died recently, in Manhattan, at the age of 88. Her publicist, Elaine Schock, stated that the cause of death was related to complications from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease which prevented her from singing.
“We are heartbroken that the glorious Roberta Flack passed away this morning, February 24, 2025,” the statement reads. “Roberta broke boundaries and records. She was also a proud educator.”
On social media, various artists and performers, including Kelly Rowland, Questlove, and Jennifer Hudson, recognized her significant influence on popular and R&B music. Flack achieved numerous successes during the 1970s, leading to her songs being sampled and covered by younger generations.
“My heart just sank!! Our Dear Ms. Roberta Flack has ascended beyond but what beauty she has left us with!! THANK YOU for your effortless, most beautiful gift! THANK YOU for being a part of the soundtrack to the most tender moments in my life! So Grateful for you!” singer Kelly Rowland posted on X.
Singer Brenda Russell in a statement to Billboard offered prayers to Ms. Flack’s family and friends on her passing, saying in part, “The sweetness of her vocal tone was soothing and healing for so many,” reported ca.billboard.com.
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture also issued a statement which stated in part, “Her eclectic and refined style continues to inspire contemporary performers across genres.”
“Whitney Houston once said to me that Roberta Flack’s voice was one of the purest voices she’d ever heard,” Lauryn Hill wrote in her Instagram Tribute. “ I grew up scouring the records my parents collected.
Mrs. Flack was one of their favorites and quite instantly became one of mine as soon as I was exposed to her. She looked cool and intelligent, gentle and yet militant.
The songs she recorded from ‘Compared To What’ to ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’ to her version of ‘Ballad Of The Sad Young Men’ fascinated me with their beauty and sophistication.”
“Mrs. Flack was an artist, a singer-songwriter, a pianist and composer who moved me and showed me through her own creative choices and standards what else was possible within the idiom of Soul.
Killing Me Softly, a song Mrs. Flack didn’t write, but made hugely popular became the song that catapulted myself and the Fugees into household phenomena.
We wanted to honor the beauty and brilliance of this song and her performance of it to our generation. I will forever be grateful for the sensitivity and delicate power of her Love and Artistry.”
Nation of Islam Student Minister Jamil Muhammad told The Final Call, “When you listen to Roberta Flack, you’re listening to someone who was able to modulate and project her vocal stylings.
Her piano accompaniments and fills with great, great dignity and reserve. I found her very, very powerful.” Student Min. Jamil Muhammad is the radio host of Morning Brew Yardbird Suites on WPFW.
“Once I was at the Chicago Theater with the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan for a concert headlining Roberta Flack along with Mays featuring Frankie Beverly.
I remember when Roberta Flack saw Minister Farrakhan in the audience, she noted and said over the stage microphone, ‘This concert is now a command performance because I see Minister Louis Farrakhan in attendance,’” he recalled.
“She came over to stage front near where Minister Farrakhan was seated and I was seated next to him. She bowed deeply from the waist and rose reverentially slowly, and nodded her head. They smiled the smile of understanding and acclamation, and then she proceeded to rip the house,” said Student Min. Jamil Muhammad.
Several years ago, award-winning journalist and media personality Roland Martin, posted video footage on his Facebook page of Minister Farrakhan and Ms. Flack sitting at a piano. In the 2008 footage, Minister Farrakhan, an artist and classically trained violinist, was playing a song he had written.
Dionne Warwick said in a statement shared with Variety, “Losing friends, especially ones that feel more like family as I’m experiencing, hearing of my dear friend—Professor Roberta Flack.
We now say Rest In Peace and receive the loving award the Heavenly Father has for her. I’ll miss our conversation about the journey through music we would have, as well as the love of the music we have been able to share. You will be missed, dear friend.”
Roberta Flack will be remembered for many hits including duets with her Howard University classmate Donny Hathaway, “You’ve Got a Friend” and “Be Real Black for Me.”
According to Canada Billboard, “Roberta Flack scored a total of 18 Hot 100 hits, and notched four albums in the top three of the Billboard 200, as well as more than two dozen charting hits on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. Flack was also nominated for 14 Grammys and won three.”
“I love that connection to other artists because we understand music, we live music, it’s our language,” Ms. Flack told songwriteruniverse.com in 2020, according to the Associated Press. “Through music we understand what we are thinking and feeling.
No matter what challenge life presents, I am at home with my piano, on a stage, with my band, in the studio, listening to music. I can find my way when I hear music,” AP reported. At Final Call presstime, no memorial or funeral information was available. Final Call staff contributed to this report.