Roberta Flack is the daughter of a draftsman and a church choir organist who learned to play music at her mother’s knee. She studied both Chopin and Methodist hymnody before gaining admission to Howard University.
“For the first three decades of my life, I lived in the world of classical music,” Robert Flack said in an interview with NPR. “I found in it wonderful melodies and harmonies that were the vehicles through which I could express myself.”
After graduation, she dreamed of becoming an opera singer but instead chose a career in music education. She taught in rural North Carolina and Washington, D.C.- area schools while performing in nightclubs on the side. Her unusual repertoire of folk revival ballads and Motown hits made her a sensation. In 1969, signed to Atlantic Records, Roberta Flack released her debut album, “First Take.” One of her many accomplishments is being the only solo artist to win the Grammy for Record of the Year two years in a row — in 1973 for “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” and in 1974 for “Killing Me Softly With His Song.”
Although she occasionally co-writes her material, Roberta Flack is mostly known as a deeply intuitive song interpreter.
“I always say that ‘love is a song’ — meaning that music reaches beyond age, race, nationality and religion to touch our hearts,” Roberta Flack told NPR.
Throughout her career, Roberta Flack has had 18 Billboard-charting songs, four Grammy awards, 13 nominations, and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement award.
Her hits include soul-stirring collaborations with Peabo Bryson and Donny Hathaway and chart-topping singles, showcasing her musical brilliance and emotional depth.
“My music is inspired thought by thought, and feeling by feeling,” she said in the same article. “Not note by note. I tell my own story in each song as honestly as I can in the hope that each person can hear it and feel their own story within those feelings.”
In addition to her music success, she founded the Roberta Flack School of Music at the Hyde Leadership Charter School in the Bronx, offering underprivileged students a free, inspiring music education. Her dedication to music and welfare culminated in the formation of The Roberta Flack Foundation, which supports animal welfare and music education.
Roberta Flack’s music remains indelible in our lives, touching hearts and minds globally.