Roberta Flack Artistfacts

February 10, 1937 – February 24, 2025
Roberta Flack is the first woman to produce a #1 hit by herself: her 1974 song "Feel Like Makin' Love." She did so because her longtime producer quit in a dispute with her label, leaving her on her own. She used the name "Rubina Flake" for her producer credit because she struggled to complete the song.
She was born in Black Mountain, North Carolina, to Laron Flack, a US Veterans Administration draftsman, and Irene (née Council) Flack, a church organist. Flack spent her childhood in Arlington, Virginia. According to DNA analysis, she was of Cameroonian descent.
A child prodigy, Flack was so good at piano and singing, she earned a full music scholarship to Howard University in 1952 when she was just 15. She graduated at 19 with a degree in music education.
Before her breakthrough, Roberta Flack balanced two lives. She worked by day as a schoolteacher in Washington, D.C., instructing students in music. At night, Flack performed in clubs where she accompanied opera singers on piano, singing pop standards during the breaks. She did this from about 1962 to 1968, when the singer Les McCann spotted her at a benefit show and arranged for her to audition at his label, Atlantic Records.
Her 1969 debut album, First Take, went to #1 in America... in 1972!

That's because the album track "First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" became a huge hit in 1972 after it was used in the Clint Eastwood movie Play Misty For Me.
Flack was the first artist to win the Grammy Award for Record of the Year in two consecutive years: in 1973 for "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" and in 1974 for "Killing Me Softly With His Song." In 2020, she received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
She collaborated frequently with Donny Hathaway, resulting in hit duets like "Where Is The Love?" and "The Closer I Get To You." In the '80s she did some duets with Peabo Bryson ("Tonight, I Celebrate My Love," "Born to Love") and in 1991 she teamed with Maxi Priest on the hit "Set The Night To Music."
For many years, Flack lived in New York City's Dakota building next door to the apartment of Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon. Lennon referred to her as "Aunt" Roberta.
Flack was active in social and civil rights movements, counting Rev. Jesse Jackson and Angela Davis among her friends.
The Hyde Leadership Charter School in the Bronx, New York City, calls its extracurricular music program "The Roberta Flack School of Music," a program Roberta Flack founded to provide free music education to underprivileged students.
In 2022, Flack announced her retirement from singing after being diagnosed with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, which made it difficult for her to speak and impossible to sing.
Roberta, a documentary about Flack's life and legacy directed by Antonino D'Ambrosio, premiered at the DOC NYC film festival in November 2022.
Flack was dedicated to music education, which was very important to her because so many people in her small town of Black Mountain, North Carolina, fostered her love for music when she was young, including choir directors and church members. She was a teacher before launching her career as a singer, and after she hit it big, she started the The Roberta Flack Foundation to support music programs for young people, particularly those in disadvantaged communities.

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