By Olaitan Ibrahim
Roberta Flack, the Grammy-winning singer behind the classic “Killing Me Softly With His Song” and one of the most recognizable voices of the 1970s, died Monday at age 88.
Flack’s publicist announced her death without citing a cause.
The influential pop and R&B star in recent years had lost her ability to sing because of ALS, known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, which she was diagnosed with in 2022.
“She died peacefully surrounded by her family,” the statement from the publicist said.
The classically trained musician with a tender voice produced a number of early classics of rhythm and blues that she frequently described as “scientific soul,” timeless works that blended meticulous practice with impeccable taste.
Her work was key to the “quiet storm” radio form of smooth, sensuous, slow jams that popularized R&B and influenced its later aesthetics in the 1980s and 1990s.
– ‘A lot of love’ –
Born Roberta Cleopatra Flack in Black Mountain, North Carolina on February 10, 1937, the artist was raised in Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington DC.
Her large, musical family had a penchant for gospel, and she took up the piano in her youth, which ultimately earned her a music scholarship to Washington’s Howard University at the tender age of 15.
She told Forbes in 2021 that her father “found an old, smelly piano in a junkyard and restored it for me and painted it green.”
“This was my first piano and was the instrument in which I found my expression and inspiration as a young person.”
She was a regular playing clubs in Washington, where she was eventually discovered by jazz musician Les McCann.