Roberta Flack
Roberta Cleopatra Flack was an American singer and pianist known for her emotive, genre-blending ballads that spanned R&B, jazz, folk, and pop and contributed to the birth of the quiet storm radio format. Her commercial success included the Billboard Hot 100 chart-topping singles "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face", "Killing Me Softly with His Song", and "Feel Like Makin' Love". She became the first artist to win the Grammy Award for Record of the Year in consecutive years.
Flack frequently collaborated with Donny Hathaway, with whom she recorded several hit duets, including "Where Is the Love" and "The Closer I Get to You". She was one of the defining voices of 1970s popular music and remained active in the industry, later finding success with duets such as "Tonight, I Celebrate My Love" with Peabo Bryson and "Set the Night to Music" with Maxi Priest. Across her decades-long career, she interpreted works by songwriters such as Leonard Cohen and members of the Beatles. In 2020, Flack received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Early life and education
Flack was born on February 10, 1937, in Black Mountain, North Carolina, United States, to parents Laron Flack, a jazz pianist and U.S. Veterans Administration draftsman, and Irene Flack a church organist, choir director and music teacher. Her family moved to Richmond, Virginia, before settling in Arlington, Virginia, when she was five years old.Her first musical experiences were in church. She grew up in a large musical family and often provided piano accompaniment for the choir of Lomax African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church singing hymns and spirituals. She occasionally sang at the Macedonia Baptist Church in Arlington. Her father acquired a battered old piano for her, which she learned to play sitting on her mother's lap. and Flack took formal piano lessons when she was nine. She gravitated towards classical music and during her early teens excelled at classical piano, finishing second in a statewide competition for Black students aged 13 playing a Scarlatti sonata. In 1952, at the age of 15, she won a full music scholarship to Howard University in Washington DC, and was one of the youngest students ever to enroll there. She eventually changed her major from piano to voice and became assistant conductor of the university choir. Her direction of a production of Giuseppe Verdi's opera Aida received a standing ovation from the Howard University faculty. At Howard she met her future collaborator, Donny Hathaway.
Flack became a student teacher at a school near Chevy Chase, Maryland. She graduated from Howard University at 19 and began graduate studies in music there, but after the sudden death of her father she had to find work to support herself. She took a job teaching music and English at a small, segregated high school in Farmville, North Carolina, for which she was paid $2,800 a year.
Career
Early career
Before becoming a professional singer-songwriter, Flack returned to Washington, D.C., and taught at Banneker, Browne, and Rabaut Junior High Schools. She also taught private piano lessons out of her home on Euclid Street, NW, in the city. During that time, her music career began to take shape on evenings and weekends in nightclubs.At the Tivoli Theatre, she accompanied opera singers at the piano. During intermissions, she would sing blues, folk, and pop standards in a back room, accompanying herself on the piano. Later she performed several nights a week at the 1520 Club, providing her own piano accompaniment. About this time her voice teacher, Frederick "Wilkie" Wilkerson, told her that he saw a brighter future for her in pop music than in the classics. Flack modified her repertoire accordingly and her reputation spread. In 1968, she began singing professionally after she was hired to perform regularly at Mr. Henry's Restaurant, located on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.
Her break came in the summer of 1968 when she performed at a benefit concert in Washington to raise funds for a children's library in the city's ghetto district, and was seen by soul and jazz singer Les McCann, who was signed to Atlantic Records. He was captivated by Flack's voice and arranged an audition for her with Atlantic, in which she performed 42 songs from her nightclub repertoire in three hours for producer Joel Dorn. Dorn immediately told the label to sign her. In November 1968, she recorded 39 song demos in less than 10 hours. McCann later wrote in the liner notes of her first album: "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." Three months later, Atlantic recorded Flack's debut album, First Take, in 10 hours. The album was "an elegant fusion of folk, jazz and soul" and included her version of British folk singer Ewan McColl's song "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face".
1970s
Flack's second album, Chapter Two, was released in 1970 and marked the start of her collaboration with Hathaway as arranger, accompanist and backing singer. In 1971, Flack participated in the legendary Soul to Soul concert film by Denis Sanders, which was headlined by Wilson Pickett, along with Ike & Tina Turner, Santana, The Staple Singers, Les McCann, Eddie Harris, The Voices of East Harlem and others. The U.S. delegation of musical artists featured in the film was invited to perform for the 14th anniversary of the March 6 Independence Day of Ghana. The film was digitally reissued on DVD and CD in 2004 but for unknown reasons Flack refused permission for her image and recording to be included. Her a cappella performance of the traditional spiritual "Oh Freedom", retitled "Freedom Song" on the original Soul to Soul LP soundtrack, is only available in the VHS version of the film.Flack's cover version of "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" hit No. 76 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1972. Her Atlantic recordings did not sell particularly well, until actor/director Clint Eastwood used a song from First Take, "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face", written by Ewan MacColl, for the soundtrack of his directorial debut Play Misty for Me.
Atlantic rush-released the song as a single and it became the biggest hit of 1972, spending six consecutive weeks at No. 1 and earning Flack a million-selling gold disc. "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" finished the year as Billboard's top song of 1972. The First Take album also went to No. 1 and eventually sold 1.9 million copies in the United States. Eastwood, who paid $2,000 for the use of the song in the film, remained an admirer and friend of Flack's ever after. The song was awarded the Grammy Award for Record of the Year and Song of the Year in 1973. In 1983, Flack recorded the end music to the Dirty Harry film Sudden Impact, at Eastwood's request.
In 1972, Flack began recording regularly with Donny Hathaway, scoring hits such as the Grammy-winning "Where Is the Love" and later "The Closer I Get to You", both of which became million-selling gold singles. Flack and Hathaway recorded several duets together, including two LPs, until Hathaway's death in 1979. After his death, Flack released their final LP as Roberta Flack Featuring Donny Hathaway.
On her own, Flack scored her second No. 1 hit in 1973, "Killing Me Softly with His Song", written by Charles Fox, Norman Gimbel l, and Lori Lieberman. "Killing Me Softly" was awarded both Record of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female, at the 1974 Grammy Awards. Its parent album was Flack's biggest-selling disc, eventually earning double platinum certification. In 1974, Flack released "Feel Like Makin' Love", which became her third and final No. 1 hit to date on the Hot 100 and her eighth million-seller. She produced the single and her 1975 album of the same name under the pseudonym Rubina Flake. In 1974, Flack sang the lead on a Sherman Brothers song, "Freedom", which featured prominently at the opening and closing of the movie Huckleberry Finn. In the same year, she performed "When We Grow Up" with a teenage Michael Jackson on the television special Free to Be... You and Me, and a year later in 1975 performed two Johnny Marks songs, "To Love And Be Loved" and "When Autumn Comes", for the animated Christmas special The Tiny Tree. "Blue Lights in the Basement included a chart-topping duet with Hathaway on "The Closer I Get to You", and in 1978 they began working on a second album of duets, which was half-completed when Hathaway, a paranoid schizophrenic who suffered mood swings and bouts of depression, took his own life in 1979. Flack, devastated, completed the album and it was released in 1980 as "Roberta Flack featuring Donny Hathaway".
1980–1991
She found a new duetting partner in Peabo Bryson and they released "Live and More" in 1980. "Born to Love" in 1983 produced a hit single, "Tonight, I Celebrate My Love", which reached No. 2 on the UK charts. Flack had a hit single in 1982 with "Making Love", written by Burt Bacharach, which reached No. 13.Flack continued to tour in the 1980s, often backed by a live orchestra. In 1986, she sang the theme song "Together Through the Years" for the NBC television series Valerie, later known as The Hogan Family. The song was used throughout the show's six seasons. In 1987, Flack supplied the voice of Michael Jackson's mother in the 18-minute short film for "Bad". Oasis was released in 1988 and failed to make an impact with pop audiences, though the title track reached No. 1 on the R&B chart and a remix of "Uh-Uh Ooh-Ooh Look Out " topped the dance chart in 1989, after failing to chart on the Billboard Hot 100.
In 1991, Flack found herself again in the US Top 10 with a cover of the Diane Warren-penned song "Set the Night to Music", performed as a duet with British-Jamaican reggae singer Maxi Priest, which peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts and No. 2 AC. In 1996, The Fugees released a hip-hop remix of "Killing Me Softly".