Roberta Flack, singer of ‘Killing Me Softly,’ has died at age 88

Singer Roberta Flack, who broke through as one of the most important and beloved singers of the 1970s and beyond with a sound that combined soul, jazz, rock and pop, died Monday at the age of 88.

A representative for Flack did not share a cause of death, but the singer had been battling amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS.

Musically gifted from a young age, Flack won a scholarship to Howard University at just 15 with plans to pursue a classical music career.

“My real ambition was to be a concert pianist,” Flack told NPR in 2012, “and to play Schumann and Bach and Chopin – the romantics. Those were my guys.”

But her teachers discouraged her from trying to break into the mostly white world of classical music in the late 1950s. Upon graduating, Flack taught at schools in North Carolina and Washington, D.C., and began performing in clubs, both as a pianist for other vocalists and as a singer herself. Attention from fellow musicians led to a contract with Atlantic Records, who released her debut album, First Take, in 1969.

First Take sold well but Flack credited her 1970 appearance guest-starring on The Third Bill Cosby Special with “the biggest break of my career,” as she told The New York Times. When Clint Eastwood used her version of Ewan MacColl’s “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” in his 1971 movie Play Misty For Me, Flack’s popularity soared.

The string of albums that followed — Chapter Two, Quiet Fire, Killing Me Softly, Feel Like Makin’ Love and an album of duets with Donny Hathaway — made her one of the decade’s most popular singers. In 1971, DownBeat Magazine named her the year’s best female vocalist, breaking Ella Fitzgerald’s 18-year streak. She earned eight Grammy nominations and four wins during this period, and remains the only solo artist to win the Grammy for record of the year two years in a row: in 1973, for “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” and in 1974, for “Killing Me Softly With His Song.”

Flack’s superstardom didn’t always translate to critical praise. NPR’s Ann Powers points out that she was winning over audiences at a time when songwriters were getting most of the attention. “The idea that you had to write your own material was was held up as the gold standard,” says Powers. “For much longer interpreters were the greats, and Roberta Flack stands with Sinatra, with Ella Fitzgerald, with so many great interpreters of the 20th century, as someone who made every song she approached original.”

In the mid-’70s, Flack’s pace in the studio slowed slightly as she scored for film and TV, worked in music publishing and record producing and engaged in graduate-level coursework in education and linguistics. She returned with Blue Lights in the Basement in 1977, and continued releasing albums from the late ’70s through the early ’00s, including another album featuring Hathaway, a duet album with Peabo Bryson and a Christmas album. Flack continued performing around the world, though she suffered some health setbacks in the 2010s.

In 2022, Flack announced that she had ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), popularly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. The following year, she came out with The Green Piano: How Little Me Found Music, a children’s book about the time her father restored an old piano so that little Roberta could practice at home, co-written with Tonya Bolden.

Throughout her career, Flack built a musical legacy by working outside the confines of genre. She was known for helping to shape and define “quiet storm” R&B, and laid the groundwork for the rise of neo-soul. But her celebrated work as an interpreter of songs included elements of rock, folk, jazz, classical, Latin and more, continually challenging racialized conventions about popular music and influencing generations of artists.

“My main interest is in telling my story through a song — whether mine or someone else’s,” Flack told NPR’s Ann Powers in 2020. “Tell the truth with clarity and honesty so that the listener can feel their story.”