‘Killing Me Softly’ Superstar, Roberta Flack Dies at 88
The beloved, Grammy-winning 1970s Roberta Flack singer best known for such hits as “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” and “Killing Me Softly” died on Monday (Feb. 24) at 88.
“We are heartbroken that the glorious Roberta Flack passed away this morning, Feb. 24, 2025,” read the statement. “She died peacefully surrounded by her family. Roberta broke boundaries and records. She was also a proud educator.”
A classically trained pianist from an early age, Flack received a music scholarship at 15 to attend Howard University and was soon discovered singing at Washington, D.C., nightclub Mr. Henry’s by jazz great Les McCann, which led to her signing with Atlantic Records. She scored her first break in 1971 when Clint Eastwood used her version of the moon-y ballad “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” in his directorial debut, Play Misty for Me.
A master of the “quiet storm” style, Flack’s effortless, soothing vocals soon became a staple of R&B and pop radio, leading to a two-decade run of chart hits.
Flack was born Roberta Cleopatra Flack in Black Mountain, N.C. on Feb. 10, 1937, and raised in Arlington, Va., where her mother, Irene, played organ at the Lomax African Methodist Episcopal Church. She learned to play piano on a funky junkyard instrument her father — a jazz pianist himself — found and restored for her, on which she practiced Handel’s Messiah and Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, as well as Mozart’s Requiem.
After getting her public debut playing piano as an adolescent in the Lomax church, Flack studied piano at Howard, then moved on to a music educator program after being told that the racial barriers at that time for a Black classical concert pianist were too high for her to achieve her dream. Following her father’s death in 1959, Flack returned to North Carolina and took a job teaching music at a public school, later moving back to D.C., where she taught at several middle and high schools for a decade.
Flack released her debut LP, First Take, in 1969. In an introduction to the album penned by McCann, the late musician recalled the first time he saw Flack perform: “What I heard touched me on a level that I have never heard since … When my time on this earth is over, in my heart, I want to carry Roberta’s voice back home so the Angels can hear.”
First Take included her first No. 1 on the Billboard hot 100,“The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” the song would win the Grammy for record of the year in 1972. She hit No. 1 again in 1973 with “Killing Me Softly With His Song,” from the album Killing Me Softly, with the song winning the 1974 Grammy for record of the year. It was later famously covered by the Fugees in 1996 on the group’s second album, The Score.
Flack’s unprecedented back-to-back Grammy wins for record of the year feat wasn’t achieved again until U2 scored the same two-fer with “Beautiful Day” (2001) and “Walk On” (2002).
Over the course of her career, Flack was nominated for 14 Grammys and won three. She was also presented with a lifetime achievement award from the Jazz Foundation of America in 2018. Then in 2020, Flack received the Recording Academy’s lifetime achievement award. At the time, Flack said, “When I met artists and so many others in person and heard from them that they were inspired by my music, I felt understood.”
