New York – Roberta Flack, the singer and pianist winner of a Grammy whose intimate vocal and musical style on “Killing Me Softly with her song”, “The First Time I Saw Your Face” and other successes have made She one of the artists of the best recordings on the 1970s and an artist influenced a long time later, died on Monday. She was 88 years old.
What you need to know
- Roberta Flack died at 88
- The singer and pianist winner of a Grammy was known for her intimate vocal and musical style on “Killing Me Softly with her song”, “The First Time’s I Saw Your Face” and other successes
- Her publicist said that she died on Monday, surrounded by her family
- Flack became a night star in the early 1970s after Clint Eastwood used “the first time I saw your face” in his film “Play Misty for me”
She died at the house surrounded by her family, said Elaine Schock advertising in a statement. Flack announced in 2022 that she had ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, and could no longer sing.
Little known before the thirties, Flack became a star of the night after Clint Eastwood used “the first time I saw your face” as the soundtrack of one of the most memorable and explicit love scenes Cinema, between the actor and Donna Mills in his 1971 1971 film “Play Misty for me.” The smothered and hymn ballad, with the graceful soprano of flack afloat on a bed of sweet ropes and piano, dominated the Billboard pop list in 1972 and received a Grammy for record of the year. In 1973, she equaled the two achievements with “Killing Me Softly”, becoming the first artist to win consecutive grammys for the best record.
She was a pianist of classical training discovered in the late 1960s by the jazz musician Les McCann, who later wrote that “her voice touched, hit, trapped and kicked all the emotions that I ‘Aie never known. ” Pretty versatile to invoke Gospel passion in terms of Aretha Franklin tempo, Flack has often favored a more reflective and measured approach.
For the many admirers of Flack, she was a new sophisticated and daring presence in the world of music and in the movements of social and civil rights of the time, her friends, including Reverend Jesse Jackson and Angela Davis, that Flack has Visited in prison while Davis faced charges – for which she was acquitted – for murder and kidnapping. Flack sang during the funeral of Jackie Robinson, the first black player of Major League Baseball, and was among the many guest artists of the entertainment project for feminist children created by Marlo Thomas, “free to be … you and me “.
Roberta Cleopatra Flack, the daughter of musicians, was born in Black Mountain, in North Carolina, and grew up in Arlington, Virginia. Fans of the child gospel, she was such a talented piano player that at 15, she received a full scholarship in Howard, the historically black university.
The other flack tubes in the 1970s included the comfortable “Feel Like Makin ‘Love” and two duos with his nearby friend and former classmate of Howard Donny Hathaway University, “Where is the Love” and “The Closer I Get To You ” – A partnership that ended with a tragedy. In 1979, she and Hathaway worked on a duos album when he suffered a breakdown during recording and later at night, fell to the death of her hotel room in Manhattan.
“We were deeply connected in a creative way,” Flack told Vibe in 2022, on the 50th anniversary of the album “Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway”. “He could play anything, sing anything. Our musical synergy was different (anything) that I had before or since.”
She has never equaled her first series of success, although she was successful in the 1980s with the duo of Peabo Bryson “Tonight, I famous my love” and in the 1990s with the duo of the priest Maxi ” Jet The Night To Music “. In the mid-90s, Flack received new attention after the fugers recorded a winning cover of a Grammy of “Killing Me Softly”, which she finally played on stage with the Hip-Hop group.
Overall, she won five grammys (three for “Killing Me Softly”), was nominated for eight other times and received a Grammy Achievement in 2020, with John Legend and Ariana Grande among those who rent it.
“I love this connection with other artists because we understand music, we are living in music, it’s our language,” Flack told Songwriteniverse.com in 2020. “Through music, we understand this that we think and feel.
In 2022, Beyoncé placed Flack, Franklin and Diana Ross among others in a special heroine pantheon checked in the “Queens remix” nominated to the grammys of “Break My Soul”.
Flack was briefly married to Stephen Novosel, an interracial relationship that led to tensions with each of their families, and had a son earlier, the singer and keyboardist Bernard Wright. For years, she lived in the Dakota building in Manhattan, on the same floor as John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who became a close friend and provided lining notes for a flack album of Beatles covers, “Let it be Roberta. ” She also devoted a long time to the Roberta Flack School of Music, based in New York and mainly attended students aged 6 to 14.
Flack had taught music in secondary schools in the DC region for several years in their twenties, while occurring after hours in clubs. She sometimes supported other singers, but her own shows to the famous M. Henry de Washington attracted celebrities customers such as Burt Bacharach, Ramsey Lewis and Johnny Mathis. The owner of the club, Henry Yaffe, converted an apartment directly above a private studio, the Roberta Flack room.
“I wanted to succeed, a serious versatile musician,” she told Telegraph in 2015. “I listened to a lot of Aretha, the drifters, trying to do part of this myself, to play, d ‘teach.”
Flack was signed with Atlantic Records and his first album, “First Take”, “A Blend of Gospel, Soul, Flamenco and Jazz, was released in 1969. A piece was a love song by English folk artist Ewan MacColl : “The first time never saw your face,” wrote in 1957 for her future wife, singer Peggy Seeger. The ballad, but used it while working with a club of joy during its years as an educator.
“I teamed up at the Junior High banneker in Washington, DC, it was part of the city where the children were not so privileged, but they had the privilege to have a musical education. I really wanted them to read music. First of all, I would have their attention. So I could teach them! “She told Tampa Bay Times in 2012.
“You have to do all kinds of things when you are dealing with children in the city center,” she said. “I knew they would like the part where (” the first time I saw your face “) said” the first time I kissed your mouth “. Ooh, ‘kissed my mouth!’ Once the children went beyond the laughter, we were good. “