Renowned singer, pianist and Howard alumna Roberta Flack died of cardiac arrest at the age of 88 on Feb. 24.
In 2022, Flack announced via spokesperson that she was diagnosed with ALS, the brain disease called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis—also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. The condition reportedly made it “impossible to sing and not easy to speak.”
Roberta Cleopatra Flack was born in Black Mountain, North Carolina and raised in nearby Arlington, Virginia. She started taking formal piano lessons at age nine. At age 15, Flack received a full music scholarship to Howard to study voice and piano.
At Howard, she became a Delta Sigma Theta, Sorority Inc.’s Alpha Chapter member and a member of the School of Music’s Student Council. A Hilltop article from 1954 about a concert Flack performed at described her vocals as “easy-flowing.” Flack also met her close collaborator Donny Hathaway, a fellow Bison, at the university. She graduated at age 19 in 1958.
After graduating, Flack stayed in the D.C. area, teaching music at middle schools, giving private piano lessons and playing in local clubs. Keith Killgo, a founding member of The Blackbyrds, a jazz band formed at Howard, took piano lessons from Flack as a child.
“It was special to be able to have individualized lessons from her,” Killgo said. Flack knew Killgo’s father, Harry Killgo, a local jazz musician.
Killgo, a drummer, said that as a kid he was lazy and would often not practice playing.
“Many days I got there, I hadn’t practiced, and she knew it. So she’d make me do some other stuff and then come back. The cool part is that we had a wonderful relationship because, you know, I was young and she saw that I was going to do something in music,” he said.
Killgo recalled a memory of when he skipped practice to see Miles Davis play at Bohemian Caverns, a popular jazz venue on U Street.
“I called her up and said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sick. I can’t do it.’ She said, ‘Okay, well, stay home.’ Cause I know I hadn’t practiced. And I went out that evening. My dad took me to the [Caverns] and dropped me off. I walked down the steps, and who did I run into? Lo and behold, Miss Roberta Flack. I wasn’t so sick then,” he said.
That incident ended their piano lessons, but Killgo and Flack’s relationship remained. Flack wrote the liner notes for “The Blackbyrds,” the band’s debut album.
“Maybe two years later, we were playing at Carter Barron [Amphitheater.] She hadn’t seen me since the Bohemian Caverns since I was, what, 11 years old or something? And so we had a sound check and I went over to [Flack] and said hi. She said, ‘You don’t even have to tell me who you are, I can look at your eyes.’ And so we always had that relationship. She always looked in my eyes.” Killgo said.
Flack was discovered in 1967 at Mr. Henry’s, a club on Capitol Hill, by jazz musician Les McCann. Her first album “First Take,” was released in 1969. The album didn’t sell particularly well until 1972, when actor Clint Eastwood used her song, “The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face,” in his directorial debut. The song became the number one song of 1972 and earned her the Grammy for Record of the Year.
The following year, Flack released what remains her biggest hit, “Killing Me Softly With His Song.” The song, which went on to be covered by Fugees in 1996, earned Flack another Record of the Year trophy, making her the first artist to win the Grammy for Record of the Year for two consecutive years.
The 70s were a breakthrough decade for Flack. In addition to her solo success, Flack’s collaborations with Donny Hathaway topped the charts and became classic records. The duo recorded two albums together, including hits like the Grammy-winning “Where Is The Love,” “The Closer I Get To You,” “You’ve Got A Friend” and “You Are My Heaven,” the last song Hathaway recorded before he died in 1979.
Flack was also a civil rights advocate. She visited Angela Davis during her imprisonment in 1970. Flack sang at Jackie Robinson’s, the first Black major league baseball player, funeral. Her music was set amongst the backdrop of the Black Arts Movement, a time during the 60s and 70s where Black artists created art and institutions that reflected Black pride.
Roger Glass, a class of 1975 Howard alumnus who formerly wrote for The Hilltop, believes Flack carried that with her.
“Roberta didn’t sing songs, necessarily, that were the same as people like Gil Scott-Heron, or poets like The Last Poets. But she sang the love songs that were just that important to us. I think even if it wasn’t her music, at least her image,” Glass said. “In the 70s, I mean, she had an afro, she had braids, so even if she didn’t say it, she was in an industry where they weren’t as accepting all the time with that look. Having a fro on Howard’s campus is one thing, but having a fro on stage at Carnegie Hall is something different. She carried what was happening in her culture.”
Flack’s music was a fundamental part of the creation of “quiet storm,” a music genre and radio format born at WHUR, Howard’s radio station. Professor Ericka Blount’s father, Walter Blount, was a DJ at WHUR while he was a student at Howard. Blount said Flack’s music represents the community-oriented nature of D.C.’s music scene.
Luther Vandross, who later recorded a version of “The Closer I Get To You,” began his career as a backup singer for Flack. In a recently released documentary on Vandross from CNN, he revealed that Flack is the one who encouraged him to pursue a solo career.
“She’s a D.C. icon. Imagining her as a junior high school teacher is just crazy to me, but she was very much an unassuming part of the music scene. It was a music scene that was very community oriented. You could easily run into Roberta Flack on the street at that time, during that time period,” Blount said.
Flack, a firm believer in the power of music education, returned to Howard and the D.C. community multiple times over the years. She performed at the Homecoming Concert in 1968, and received an honorary doctorate in 1975. Flack also frequently held master classes at Howard.
Cyrus Chestnut, a jazz piano instructor at Howard, recalled performing a cover of “The First Time I Saw Your Face” when Flack visited Howard.
“The students on the floor, they saw me in my heightened anxiety. And they said, ‘Professor, what’s wrong?’ I said, ‘I’m asked to play for Roberta Flack.’ They said, ‘Come on now!’ So I go down, and as she was coming in, I played the iconic piece,” he said. “And when I finished, she beckoned for me to come to her, she put her arms around me and said, thank you. It was such a warm moment. Every time I was around her, I felt warm afterward.”
Chestnut described Flack as a benchmark.
“Everything that she’s done is definitely something that I have studied and continue to study. As an instrumentalist, I’m influenced by simply the way she weaves a very special story. As she would sing and she would perform, she would draw you in with elegance, precision, passion,” Chestnut said.
Flack leaves behind a musical legacy, both at Howard and in the rest of the music industry. Her music has been sampled and covered over 650 times by different artists.
“As a gentleman told me many years ago, he said ‘Tell a good story. For if you can tell a good story, you’ll never have to worry about your career. For everybody loves a good story,’” Chestnut said. “Roberta Flack told a very special and great story. And it’s a story that will go from generation to generation.”
Copy edited by Anijah Franklin
