Roberta Flack

Associated with the famous 1972 song "Killing Me Softly with His Song", pianist and soul pop singer Roberta Flack has enjoyed other successes, notably duets with Donny Hathaway and Peabo Bryson. Born in Black Mountain, North Carolina, on February 10, 1937, Roberta Cleopatra Flack grew up in Arlington, Virginia, and began singing in church and playing the piano at the age of nine. She began performing in Washington, where pianist Les McCann noticed her and arranged a successful audition for Atlantic Records. Her debut album First Take (1969), recorded in ten hours, proved to be a runaway success three years later: #1 on the charts, as did her cover of "The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face", which earned her her first Grammy Award. Present at the filmed Soul to Soul concert (1971), Roberta Flack recorded her first album the same year, a duet with Donny Hathaway (No. 3), from which "Where Is the Love" was taken (2nd Grammy Award). In 1973, the album Killing Me Softly, which achieved the same position and was certified double platinum, unveiled her major hit "Killing Me Softly with This Song", a cover of a song that had gone unnoticed, which she took to the top of the charts. With two more Grammy Awards under her belt, the piano-driven soul balladeer followed this up with "Feel Like Makin' Love" (her 3rd No. 1), from her album of the same name (No. 24). Other less successful albums included Blue Lights in the Basement (No. 8 in 1977), from which the duet with Donny Hathaway "The Closer I Get to You" (No. 2) was taken. After a second album with Donny Hathaway in 1980, Roberta Flack collaborated twice with Peabo Bryson, on Live & More the same year and Born to Love (1983). Meanwhile, she sang on the soundtrack to the film Bustin' Loose (1981), and her solo album I'm the One brought her the hit "Making Love" (No. 13 in 1982). The creator of the theme song for The Hogan Family series ("Together Through the Years") appears in the video clip for Michael Jackson's "Bad", and returns with the album Oasis (1988), whose title track reaches No. 1 in the R&B charts. She sang the duet "Set the Night to Music" with Maxi Priest (#6 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1991) and produced the albums Roberta (1994), This Christmas Album (1997), Roberta & Friends Sings Mariko Takahashi (1999), as well as another tribute to one of her influences, The Beatles in Let It Be Roberta (2012). A resident of the Dakota Building in New York, where she rubbed shoulders with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Roberta Flack has had her own star on Hollywood Boulevard since 1999. Diagnosed with Charcot's disease in 2022, the singer ceased her stage activity before dying of cardiac arrest on February 24, 2025, at the age of 88.