Roberta Flack, soul icon and voice of 'Killing me Softly', dies aged 88

American singer and pianist Roberta Flack, an icon of soul and R&B in the 1970s who will go down in history as the voice of Killing me Softly With His Song and The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face , has died at the age of 88, her publicist Elaine Schock reported in a statement distributed by the AP agency. The artist, winner of two consecutive Grammy Awards for best song, who announced that she was suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in 2022, died this Monday “peacefully” surrounded by her family: “Roberta broke limits and records. And she was also a proud educator.”

Roberta Cleopatra Flack, born in Black Mountain, North Carolina (USA) on 10 February 1937, achieved fame in her thirties thanks to Clint Eastwood's 1971 use of her version of The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face , a ballad by British folklorist Ewan McColl recorded two years earlier, for a racy scene in his directorial debut: Chill in the Night , in which Eastwood plays a radio DJ with a taste for good music. That number one on the charts was joined in 1973 by Killing me Softly With His Song , which also made her the first artist to win two consecutive Grammys for best song (in her lifetime she won four awards in total).

The American, educated as a classical pianist, began her connection with music singing in the church where her mother played the organ, which pushed her to study music in Washington and return home as a teacher and occasional singer. Flack also became a nightclub voice in Washington, where Les McCann, an established jazz pianist and singer, found her in 1968. It was he who alerted his record company, Atlantic Records, to her power. And Ahmet Ertegün, the big boss of the New York label, signed her to be the voice of whispering, fragile, sophisticated R&B for the label. First Take (1969) is her first album and was recorded in one day.

Over the next two years, it went in and out of the most listened to list, until Eastwood discovered the song that definitively placed it at number one for six weeks. In 2018, Spotify crowned it as the saddest song in history . By 1971, Flack had already released new LPs, Chapter Two (1970) and Quiet Fire (1971), and prepared an album of duets with Donny Hatthaway. That Roberta Flack and Donny Hatthaway (1972) became another hit. On her fifth album, Flack includes Killing me Softly With His Song , written by Norman Gimbel and Charles Fox at the request of Lori Lieberman. Among her other triumphs are Feel Like Makin' Love (1975), Where Is the Love and The Closer I Get to You. In 2020, the Grammys gave her an honorary award, with 20 albums under her belt.

The artist, who was active from 1968 to 2022, later also delved into the jazz, pop and soul genres - in addition to R&B - with other songs such as Where Is the Love or albums such as Blue Lights in the Basement or Roberta . In the eighties and nineties, her music did not reach the top of the charts due to various changes in trends in public tastes, but she continued to maintain a very loyal audience. In fact, it was then that she also ventured into modern music, collaborating with young producers and musicians to explore more contemporary sounds; her album I'm the One (1982) demonstrates this. With the new century, Roberta Flack chose to perform in select concerts and launch special projects; Her last album was Let It Be Roberta , a Beatles recital that came out in 2012. In 2016, the 13-time Grammy nominee suffered a stroke, which temporarily affected her ability to play the piano, but she continued to work on her career and preserving her musical legacy.