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With majestic anthems like “Killing Me Softly” and “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” Ms. Flack, a former schoolteacher, became one of the most widely heard artists of the 1970s.
Feb. 24, 2025, 10:49 a.m. ET
Roberta Flack, the magnetic singer and pianist whose intimate blend of soul, jazz and folk made her one of the most popular artists of the 1970s, died on Monday in Manhattan. She was 88.
She died en route to a hospital, according to Suzanne Koga, her manager and friend. The cause was cardiac arrest, she said. Ms. Flack revealed in 2022 that she’d been diagnosed with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, which left her unable to perform.
After spending almost 10 years as a Washington, D.C., schoolteacher and performing nights downtown, Ms. Flack zoomed to worldwide stardom in 1972, after her version of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” was featured in a Clint Eastwood film.
The song had been released three years earlier, on her debut album for Atlantic Records, but came out as a single only after the film was released. Within weeks it was at No. 1 on the Billboard chart — a perch she would reclaim two more times, with “Killing Me Softly With His Song” (1973) and “Feel Like Makin’ Love” (1974).
In both 1973 and ’74, she won Grammy Awards for record of the year and best pop vocal performance, and in both years the composers of her hits won for song of the year.
Ms. Flack’s steady, powerful voice could connote tenderness, pride, conviction or longing, but hardly ever despair. Most of her best-known albums included at least a few funk and soul tracks, driven by a slapping backbeat and rich with observational social commentary. But her biggest hits were always something else: slow folk ballads (“The First Time”) or mellifluous anthems (“Killing Me Softly”) or plush love songs (“Feel Like Makin’ Love”).
