Roberta Flack, the singer and pianist awarded with Grammy, whose intimate singing and music style made her one of the best recording artists in the 1970s and an influential actor died long afterwards, died on Monday. She was 88.
She died at home, surrounded by her family, said publicist Elaine Schock in an explanation. Flack announced in 2022 that she was generally known as Lou Gehrig’s disease and could no longer sing.
Black hardly known before her early 30s and became a star overnight after Clint Eastwood was used The first time I saw your face As a soundtrack for one of the most unforgettable and more explicit love scenes of the cinema between the actor and Donna Mills in his film from 1971 Play Misty for me.
The subdued, hymn-like ballad with graceful soprano on a bed of soft strings and piano, in 1972 via the billboard pop charts and received a Grammy for the record of the year.
“The record label wanted to have started again at a faster pace, but he said he wanted it exactly as it was,” said Flack of Associated Press in 2018. “With the song as a title song for his film, it gained that that It won and won the song as a title song for his film and gained a lot of popularity.
In 1973 she agreed with both successes Kill me quietly with his songThe first artist to win consecutive Grammys for the best recording.
O’clock | Flake Kill me quietly won three Grammys: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrudt410tai
She was a classically trained pianist who was discovered by jazz musician Les McCann at the end of the 1960s, who later wrote: “Her voice touched, tapped, caught and kicks every emotion that I have ever known”.
Versatile enough to summon Aretha Franklin’s passion from Tempo Gospel, often preferred Flack a more reflective and more measured approach.
For Flacks many admirers, she was a demanding and brave new presence in the music world and in the social and civil rights movements of the time, her friends, including Rev. Jesse Jackson and Angela Davis, visited the Flack in prison while Davis was charged was acquitted – because of murder and kidnapping.
Flack sang at the funeral of Jackie Robinson, the first black player of Major League Baseball, and was one of the many guest artists of the feminist children’s entertainment project created by Marlo Thomas. Be free … you and me.
Illustrious life and career
Roberta Cleopatra Flack, the daughter of musicians, was born in Black Mountain, NC, and grew up as a child in Arlington, Virginia. The historically black university.
The other hits from Flack from the 1970s included the cozy Feel like making love and two duets with her close friend and the former classmate of Howard University, Donny Hathaway, Where is love And The closer I get you – A partnership that ended with a tragedy. In 1979 she and Hathaway worked on an album with duets when he suffered a collapse during the recording and later fell to death from his hotel room in Manhattan that night.
“We were creatively deeply connected” Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway Album. “He could play everything, sing everything. Our musical synergy was different from something that I had previously or since then.”
She never fit her first success, although she had a success with the Peabo Bryson duet in the 1980s I celebrate my love tonight And in the nineties with the Maxi Priett Set the night of music. Flack received new attention in the mid -1990s Kill me quietlyWhat she finally performed on stage with the hip-hop group.
In total she won five grammys (three for Kill me quietly), eight other times was nominated and was received by Grammy in 2020, with John Legend and Ariana Grande praised among those.
“I love this connection to other artists because we understand music, we live music, it is our language,” said Flack in 2020 to SongwriterUniVere.com. I am at home with my piano, on a stage, with my band in the studio, I can find my way when I listen to music. “
In 2022, Beyonce Flack, Franklin and Diana Ross put in a special pantheon of the heroines, which were examined in the Queens remix nominated by Grammy from Break my soul.
Flack was briefly married to Stephen Novosel, an interracial relationship that led to tensions with each of her families, and used to have a son, the singer and keyboardist Bernard Wright. For years she lived in Manhattan’s Dakota Apartment Building on the same soil as John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who became a close friend and provided liner notes for a flack album from Beatles Covers. Let it be Roberta. She also devoted herself to the Roberta Flack School of Music, based in New York, and mainly visited students between the ages of 6 and 14.
Flack had taught music in the Junior High Schools in DC area schools for several years when he appeared in clubs after hours. Sometimes she supported other singers, but her own shows in Washington’s well -known Mr. Henrys attracted such famous patrons as Burt Bacharach, Ramsey Lewis and Johnny Mathis. The club’s owner, Henry Yaffen, transformed an apartment directly into a private studio, the Roberta Flack Room.
“I wanted to be successful, a serious all-round musician,” she said in 2015 to The Telegraph.
Flack was contracted at Atlantic Records and her debut album, First takeA mixture of gospel, soul, flamenco and jazz came out in 1969. A track was a love song by the English folk artist Ewan Maccoll: The first time I saw your faceWritten in 1957 for his future wife, singer Peggy Seeger. Flack not only knew about the ballad, but also used it as an educator during her work with a Glee Club during her years.
“I taught at the Banneker Junior High in Washington, DC It was part of the city where children were not so privileged, but they had the privilege of having music training. I really wanted to read music.” So she would attract her attention “by singing the hit of the Supremes, Stop! In the name of love.
“Then I could teach them!” She told the Tampa Bay Times in 2012.
“You have to do all kinds of things when you have to do with children in the city center,” she said. “I knew that she was the part where (where (The first time I saw your face) Go ‘the first time that I kissed your mouth.’ Oh, ‘kiss your mouth!’ When the children came over the giggle, we were good. “
