Roberta Flack’s voice was more than a musical instrument. It was a translator of human emotion. Every range of it – love, loss, longing, heartbreak, sensuality and more – was reflected with a purity and clarity that transcended genre. And while it didn’t possess the trills and runs often associated with soul singers, her sound was unapologetically Black. She proved as much in duets with her longtime musical collaborator – St. Louis native Donny Hathaway – and later through chart topping hits that redefined both soul and popular music.
Flack died on Monday, February 24, 2025. Her passing came two weeks after her 88th birthday.
“She died peacefully surrounded by her family,” a statement on Flack’s passing said. “Roberta broke boundaries and records. She was also a proud educator.”
Although no cause of death was given in the statement, Flack was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, otherwise known as ALS, in 2022. The disease cost her the singing voice that was a musical treasure for generations.
“Her music wasn’t just heard – it was FELT,” singer Celine Dion said in a social media tribute to Flack. “She was a legend, with a voice that could soothe and stir all at once.”
Flack became the first artist ever to win back-to-back Grammy awards for “Record of the Year.” She took home the honor for “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” in 1973 and “Killing Me Softly with His Song.” The latter became a mainstream music crossover hit for rap trio The Fugees – and introduced many pop music lovers to a then emerging rapper/singer named Lauryn Hill.
“Whitney Houston once said to me that Roberta Flack’s voice was one of the purest voices she had ever heard,” Hill said Tuesday on Instagram.
Flack won five Grammys over the course of her 50-plus year career, including a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2020. She was nominated for 14.
Before her name became synonymous with heart-piercing songs performed by a voice that could melt the coldest of souls, she was a little girl with big dreams of becoming a classical concert pianist.
Roberta Cleopatra Flack was born February 10, 1937, in Farmville, North Carolina. Her father Laron Flack was a draftsman by day and a self-taught jazz pianist by night. Her mother Irene was a church organist. When she was a small child, the family moved to Arlington, Virginia. By the time they arrived, she was already a piano prodigy.
At the tender age of fifteen she arrived on the campus of Howard University thanks to a full music scholarship. But her professional ambitions had nothing to do with singing.
“My real ambition was to be a concert pianist and to play Schumann and Bach and Chopin – the Romantics,” Flack told NPR in 2012. “Those were my guys.”
Instead, she met a guy from St. Louis who helped her change the course of her musical purpose.
She found a musical kindred spirit in Vashon High School graduate Donny Hathaway. The pair collaborated throughout their time at Howard and beyond – when she became a music educator in Washington, DC and he became a studio singer and session musician. She would perform at DC area lounges and clubs as a pianist and singer. It was through one of these gigs that she landed a deal with Atlantic Records, where she released her debut album “First Take” in 1968.
Flack and Hathaway released “Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway” in 1972. The self-titled LP spawned the Grammy winning hit “Where is the Love.” They produced two albums together before Hathaway’s untimely death in 1979.
The year after their first duet album, Flack became a household name when Clint Eastwood chose “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” from “First Take,” for his film “Play Misty For Me.” The song introduced Flack to mainstream popular music. “Killing Me Softly” solidified her stardom and put her on the path to becoming a musical influence that has resonated with fellow artists and fans for more than fifty years.
The duet “The Closer I Get To You,” a posthumous release for Donny Hathaway, ushered in a wave of hits in the 1980s for Flack, including duets with Peabo Bryson and Maxi Priest. She also enjoyed a stint as a singer of theme songs. Television audiences may have recognized her voice on the opening credits for “Valerie” and “The Hogan Family.”
Her music continued to inspire g singer/songwriters – and music lovers as a whole – for generations.
In 2023, Flack released a children’s book, “The Green Piano: How Little Me Found Music.” It was written with Tonya Bolden and was a lifelong goal for Flack. She received her flowers from the industry later that same year with the release of the PBS documentary, “American Masters: Roberta Flack.”
“Mrs. Flack was an artist, a singer-songwriter, a pianist and composer who moved me,” Hill said. “And showed me through her own creative choices and standards what else was possible within the idiom of Soul.” ary, “American Masters: Roberta Flack.