Legendary pop/R&B vocalist Roberta Flack, who was launched to stardom in the early ’70s by the Grammy-winning hits “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” and “Killing Me Softly With His Song,” has died, according to a statement from her rep. No cause of death was cited; she was 88.
“We are heartbroken that the glorious Roberta Flack passed away this morning, February 24, 2025,” the statement reads. “She died peacefully surrounded by her family. Roberta broke boundaries and records. She was also a proud educator.”
The classically trained singer-pianist only belatedly found fame when Clint Eastwood employed her 2-year-old version of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” in his 1971 directorial debut “Play Misty for Me.”
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She reached her peak with the 1974 pop and R&B smash “Where Is the Love,” which claimed the apex of both charts.
In all, Flack’s supple, slow-burning style brought her six top-10 pop hits and 10 top-10 R&B singles, some of them in partnership with vocalist Donny Hathaway.
Economically summarizing her appeal in “The Rough Guide to Soul and R&B,” Peter Shapiro wrote, “Urbane, genteel and jazzy, Roberta Flack was, in many ways, the perfect soul act of the early ’70s. Her pretty, sensuous ballads appealed to the Burt Bacharach/5th Dimension crowd, while her shimmering keyboards and flawless diction made her the poster child of the penthouse soul crowd.”
Though her chart eminence faded at the close of the ’70s, Flack continued to record into the new millennium; her last album, the Beatles recital “Let It Be Roberta,” was released in 2012.
Born to a musical family in Black Mountain, N.C., Flack was inspired as a girl by the gospel work of Mahalia Jackson and Sam Cooke. He began studying piano at the age of 9; something of a musical prodigy, she entered Howard University in Washington, D.C., at 15 on a full scholarship.
Her graduate work was cut short by her father’s death, and she taught school in North Carolina and the District of Columbia. She also began work as a nightspot performer in D.C.; a fateful engagement at the club Mr. Henry’s was attended by jazz pianist Les McCann, then a crossover star at Atlantic Records. McCann brought Flack to the attention of the label, which signed her in 1968.
