pop singer; songwriter
Personal Information
Born February 10, 1940, in Black Mountain, NC; daughter of Laron (a draftsman) and Irene (a cook and cleaning person) Flack; married Stephen Novosel (a jazz bassist), 1966 (divorced 1972); children: Bernard Wright.
Education: Howard University, BA, 1958; University of Massachusetts, postgraduate work in music education.
Career
English teacher, Farmville, NC, 1959; English and music teacher, Washington, D.C. public schools, 1960-67; began performing in local clubs, mid-1960s; became full-time performer, 1967; Atlantic Records recording artist, 1968--; released first album, First Take, 1969; starred in ABC television special, "The First Time Ever," 1973; Has toured extensively worldwide since 1969. Has also scored for motion pictures and television, performed as a concert pianist, and conducted opera; formed own music publishing and record production company.
Life's Work
So timeless is the appeal of Roberta Flack's soulful singing that some of her hits of the 1970s are now being embraced by a generation of listeners far too young to remember when those hits were current. Her style, which has remained fairly consistent over the decades, contains hints of jazz, gospel, and blues. Flack's music has a broad appeal that makes a mockery of the demographic borders of race, age, and gender.
Flack was born on February 10, 1939, in Black Mountain, a small town in the mountains of North Carolina. Both of her parents, Laron and Irene Flack, were skilled musicians. Laron was a self-taught jazz piano stylist, while Irene, with the benefit of a few formal lessons, played piano for the local Methodist church. At an early age Roberta picked out melodies while sitting in her parents' laps. When she was about five years old, the family moved to Virginia and settled in Arlington, a suburb of Washington, D.C. Laron found work as a draftsman and Irene got a job cleaning and cooking at a high school, so Flack grew up in a comfortably working-class setting.
Flack began taking formal piano lessons at the age of nine. At 13, her rendition of "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny" earned her second prize in a state-wide piano competition among black students. Her only other interests were church, food, and school. As a result, she became a very religious, obese scholar. "I weighed over 200 pounds. All I did was play the piano and eat all day ... and study and go to church," she was quoted as saying in a 1971 Ebony article.
Flack graduated from high school at 15 and earned a piano scholarship to Howard University. After a short time, however, she switched her major from piano to music education, which required her to study voice in addition to instrumental music. Flack graduated from Howard in 1958 with a B.A. in music education and began working on a master's degree, but when her father died in 1959, she quit school in order to go to work to help the family out financially. Still only a teenager, Flack took a job teaching English at an all-black rural school in Farmville, North Carolina. The following year, she found a position teaching junior high grades in the Washington D.C. school system, where she spent the next seven years.
Meanwhile, music remained a central part of Flack's life outside of the workplace. She directed church choirs and began taking voice lessons, concentrating primarily on opera, with Frederick "Wilkie" Wilkerson. She also began taking on voice students of her own. Eventually, Wilkerson convinced Flack to give pop music a try. At first she considered the suggestion an insult, but over time she began making appearances at local clubs, both as a pop singer and as a piano accompanist for others. By 1967 Flack had gained a healthy local following, and was singing five nights a week at a nightclub on K Street in Washington. She was discovered there by Henry Yaffe, who brought her to his trendy new Georgetown club Mr. Henry's. By 1968 she was drawing such a crowd to the club that Yaffe opened a special room at his other location near Capitol Hill to showcase her talent. She also found time for a social life during this period, culminating in her 1966 marriage to Stephen Novosel, a jazz bassist.
As Flack's style continued to mature, she began to draw the attention of many show-biz types, who swarmed to hear her perform when they were in town. Among those celebrity admirers was jazz pianist Les McCann. McCann was so impressed with Flack's singing that he made a demo tape and took it to Atlantic Records, which immediately signed Flack to a recording contract. Flack's debut album, First Take, was released in late 1969. It sold well over 100,000 copies, but that was only a warmup for what was to take place over the next few years.
Flack emerged as a superstar of major proportions in 1970. Her follow-up album, Chapter Two, sold over a million copies within a few months of its release. Flack was suddenly in demand for live performances everywhere. She played at the Montreux Pop Festival in Switzerland, the Newport Jazz Festival, and at other important festivals and top nightclubs across the United States. She also created a sensation with her guest performance on a 1970 Bill Cosby television special. She followed that with many other TV appearances. Flack ended the year with a triumphant concert in front of a capacity crowd at New York's Philharmonic Hall in December. Downbeat magazine named Flack Female Vocalist of the Year for 1970, breaking a string of 18 straight years in which Ella Fitzgerald received that honor.
Flack's third album, Quiet Fire, was released in 1971, and it quickly won both great critical acclaim and strong sales. Later that year, Flack's single "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" was used in the soundtrack of the Clint Eastwood film Play Misty for Me. Its exposure in that movie helped catapult the song to the top of the pop charts. The song earned Flack her first Grammy award in 1972, and also sparked a new wave of sales for her first album, on which it had originally appeared. Although 1972 was a tumultuous year in Flack's personal life, with her marriage to Novosel ending in divorce, it was another banner year in her professional life. She initiated an ongoing collaboration with singer Donny Hathaway with the release of their joint album Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway. That album spawned the hit single "You've Got a Friend." The pair also earned a Grammy for the single "Where is the Love?" as Best Vocal Performance by a Duet, Group, or Chorus.
Flack shone as one of the music industry's brightest stars through the middle part of the 1970s. By this time, her sound was beginning to veer away from her gospel and jazz roots toward more of a middle- of-the-road pop sensibility. Her 1973 album Killing Me Softly, which featured the number one hit "Killing Me Softly With His Song," went gold within two weeks of its release. She earned Grammies for both the single and the album. Flack topped the charts again the following year with the single "Feel Like Makin' Love," and her 1975 album of the same title quickly went gold, like its predecessors. Following this string of successes, Flack decided to slow down the pace of her recording career in order to both assume more creative control over her projects, and to spend more time pursuing other interests. She began doctorate studies at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. She also launched her own music production and publishing company, and became involved in composing and producing musical scores for television and motion pictures.
Even with her energies distributed more widely, Flack was able to put out another successful album, Blue Lights in the Basement, in 1977. Although critics were generally more reserved in their praise than they had been in the past, Blue Lights was among the top selling albums of the year. It included a duet with Hathaway, "The Closer I Get to You," which reached number two on the pop charts. Flack joined forces again with Hathaway a few years later to record the album Roberta Flack Featuring Donny Hathaway, which included the hits "You Are My Heaven" and "Back Together Again." Before the album's 1980 release, however, this fruitful collaboration came to an abrupt end when Hathaway jumped to his death from the 15th floor of a New York hotel.
Flack wasted little time in finding another male singing partner. She recorded two albums in the early 1980s with vocalist Peabo Bryson, Live and More (1980) and Born to Love (1983). The latter album contained the major hit "Tonight I Celebrate My Love." Meanwhile, Flack kept busy composing and producing the soundtrack for the 1981 movie Bustin' Loose, starring Richard Pryor and Cicely Tyson. She also released two Atlantic albums in 1982: I'm The One, and a collection of greatest hits called The Best of Roberta Flack.
During the mid-1980s, Flack was absent from the recording studio. She returned after a five-year hiatus to make the album Oasis in 1988. Oasis, whose title track rose to number one on the R&B charts, represented a bit of a shift in musical strategy. It was a much more heavily-produced album than her previous efforts, although the intimacy and depth of her vocals was as clear as ever. The album featured support from a host of celebrity collaborators that included Quincy Jones, Maya Angelou, Ashford & Simpson, Marvin Hamlisch, and Brenda Russell.
1991 found Flack in the studio once again. The resulting album, Set the Night to Music, produced yet another top ten hit in the title track, a duet with Maxi Priest. In 1994 Flack co-produced Roberta, a Grammy-nominated collection of jazz, blues, and pop classics celebrating her 25th year as an Atlantic recording artist. Two years later, Flack found herself in the limelight again, through not through her own efforts. When the popular hip-hop act The Fugees scored a huge hit with its cover version of "Killing Me Softly With His Song," Flack was suddenly introduced to new generation of listeners, many of whom had not even been born when she first recorded the song more than twenty years earlier. She even made a cameo appearance in the Fugees' video.
Taking their cue from the Fugees, other younger artists have begun covering classic Flack hits. By now a performer of legendary status, Flack continues to perform concerts for adoring audiences at nightclubs, concert halls, festivals, and in other settings. She has also continued to produce great music through collaborations with other artists. In 1997 she performed a series of concerts in five cities with folksinger Judy Collins to benefit the Nina Hyde Center for Breast Cancer Research at Georgetown University and a handful of other breast cancer organizations. As one of the premier pop vocalists of the last thirty years, Roberta Flack's voice has penetrated deeply into the consciousness of American popular culture, and will likely remain there for years to come.
Awards
Down Beat Female Vocalist of the year, 1971-73; Roberta Flack Human Kindness Day, Washington, D.C., 1972; Grammy Awards for: Record of the Year, 1972, for "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face," and 1973, for "Killing Me Softly With His Song;" Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Duo (with Donny Hathaway), 1972, for "Where Is the Love?;" Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Female Solo Artist, 1973, for "Killing Me Softly."
Works
Selective Discography
- Albums First Take, Atlantic, 1969.
- Chapter Two, Atlantic, 1970.
- Quiet Fire, Atlantic, 1971.
- Killing Me Softly, Atlantic, 1973.
- Feel Like Makin' Love, Atlantic, 1975.
- Blue Lights in the Basement, Atlantic, 1977.
- Roberta Flack, Atlantic, 1978.
- Bustin' Loose (soundtrack), MCA, 1981.
- Best of Roberta Flack, Atlantic, 1981.
- I'm the One, Atlantic, 1982.
- Oasis, Atlantic, 1988.
- Set the Night to Music, Atlantic, 1991.
- Roberta, Atlantic, 1994.
- With Donny Hathaway Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway, Atlantic, 1972.
- Roberta Flack Featuring Donny Hathaway, Atlantic, 1980.
- With Peabo Bryson Live and More, Atlantic, 1981.
- Born to Love, Capitol, 1983.
Further Reading
Sources
- Billboard, August 27, 1994, p. 12.
- Ebony, January 1971, p. 54.
- Essence, December 1982, p. 58.
- High Fidelity, May 1978, p. 121.
- Interview, May1996, p. 76.
- New York Times, March 23, 1997, p. 34.
- People Weekly, October 9, 1978, p. 124; June 17, 1996, p. 65.
- Saturday Review, June 17, 1972.
- Time, June 5, 1972, p. 73; May 12, 1975, p. 62.
— Robert R. Jacobson
