“My hope is that out of all the anger and seeming hostility that we hear in some of today’s music will come some sort of coalition that will become politically involved.”–Roberta Flack
Roberta Flack was only fifteen when she attended college on a full-ride scholarship from Howard University to study music. Of course, she didn’t become one of the youngest students to enroll in Howard out of nowhere. When Flack was nine years old, she began taking piano lessons after the superintendent at her Sunday school noticed her incredible talent. In her teenage years, she developed a special appreciation for the classics: Bach, Schumann, Mozart, and Chopin. “When I played, that was when I felt the presence of God,” Flack shared with PBS. However, even that doesn’t explain the origins of her musicality.
Flack grew up in the church—her mother was an organist. Her father, a draftsman, had fixed up an old upright piano for her, and not long after she was picking tunes on her mother’s lap. “Being a little girl, and being in such awe of my mother’s ability to play the organ and make such beautiful sounds, which I did not understand, but which I loved,” Flack shared. “Then it seemed like it was only a matter of a little, tiny bit of time, and I was sitting on the organ bench myself.”
Within a year at Howard, Flack found herself accompanying pop, jazz, and opera singers and conducting her sorority’s vocal quartet. On the side, she started teaching private piano lessons and became an organist at the same church her mother played. Flack graduated in 1956, changing her major and earning a bachelor’s degree in music education. However, disaster struck when her father faced an untimely death in 1959, forcing Flack to quit her graduate studies in music. She took up a teaching job in her home state of North Carolina and later in D.C. to support herself.
Nevertheless, her dreams of stardom didn’t die quite yet. In 1962, still a schoolteacher, Flack began as an accompanist for opera singers at the Tivoli in Georgetown, performing solo during intermissions. Over the next few years, Flack would establish herself as a notable performer in the area. In 1968, Henry Yaffe offered her a gig at his new nightclub on Capitol Hill, Mr. Henry’s. Playing Sunday brunch sets for $20 a week, Flack’s reputation grew. In fact, Yaffe remodeled the apartment above the club into the “Roberta Flack Room,” filled with church pew seating. Soon enough, she could quit her job and perform full-time.
Flack became the talk of the town. Top artists attended her club performances such as Burt Bacharach, Al Hibbler, Carmen McRae, Ramsey Lewis, and Johnny Mathis—but there was one performance that would put her on a path toward greatness.
“I saw what appeared to be this very timid person, just shy and reserved, but underneath, I knew there was a strong, powerful person because of the way she sang.” A then twenty-nine-year-old Flack was performing at a benefit for the Inner City Ghetto Children’s Library Fund in D.C., and in attendance was jazz legend Les McCann. “Her voice touched, tapped, trapped, and kicked every emotion I’ve ever known. I laughed, cried, and screamed for more… she alone had the voice!” Within days, McCann set up an audition for Flack with Atlantic Records in New York.
Flack only knew music, not the record business. She had never heard herself sing or her piano playing. Flack had one thing, though, that set her apart: an expansive repertoire of over 600 songs. She played nearly 40 of them, and a few months later came her debut album, First Take, aptly titled for being recorded in just ten hours. Now a recording artist, her debut wasn’t a smash hit but sold well enough to garner two more albums: Chapter Two (1970) and Quiet Fire (1971). That same year, in 1971, Flack received a phone call that would change her life.
“The story is that he was driving down the Los Angeles freeway and heard the song. He said the song just totally hypnotized him. And he found himself driving off the side of the freeway.” Film director Clint Eastwood had heard Flack’s cover of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” from her debut album on the radio on his way to work and knew he needed it in his upcoming thriller, Play Misty for Me. With the release of the film, Atlantic pushed the song out as a single. Within seven weeks, the song hit #1 on the charts.
On April 22, 1972, Washington D.C. held “Roberta Flack Human Kindness Day” to honor the singer. She released her fourth album, Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway, which topped the charts for two months. In 1973, Flack won the Grammy award for both Record of the Year and Song of the Year for “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.” Roberta Flack had finally become a star.
Flack would record nineteen studio albums throughout her career, generating chart-topping singles such as “Feel Like Makin’ Love,” “The Closer I Get to You,” “Set the Night to Music,” and “Killing Me Softly with His Song.” In 1974, Flack won the Grammy Award for “Killing Me Softly with His Song,” which won Record of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Performance for a Female. Flack became the first artist to win the Grammy for Record of the Year for two consecutive years. In 2020, Flack received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Above all the music, the records, the accolades, and the recognition, Flack was “socially relevant and politically unafraid,” as described by Reverend Jesse Jackson. While her chart-toppers were powerful love songs, Flack lingered just as much on the social and political issues of the nation. Highlighting racial issues on songs like “Tryin’ Times,” social and economic disparities on “Compared to What,” and acknowledging the hardships faced by the LGBTQ+ community on “Ballad of the Sad Young Men.” Even though Flack released these songs decades ago, they still hold true today.
Flack never liked to label her music under a single genre. Flack, whether singing jazz, pop, soul, R&B, or rock, bent and blended genres in her music. As the industry, fans, and the world alike mourn the loss of a music legend, her impact on modern music will never be forgotten.
