Roberta Flack, the Queen of Soul, known for the song Killing Me Softly, has died
Kyiv • UNN
American soul singer Roberta Flack, known for her hit song “Killing Me Softly,” has died. The two-time Grammy winner for Best Recording of the Year passed away in New York surrounded by her family.
Roberta Flack was one of the most prominent singers of soul music in the seventies. Her hit song "Killing Me Softly with His Song" was later covered by the American hip-hop band Fugees in the 90s.
Transmits UNN with reference to Variety and Spiegel.
Details
Legendary rhythm and blues vocalist and pianist Roberta Flack, known for her hits "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" and "Killing Me Softly With His Song," died in New York on Monday. She was 88 years old.
She died peacefully surrounded by her family. Roberta broke boundaries and records. She was also a proud educator
Fleck was born in 1937 in Black Mountain, North Carolina, into a family of musicians. Her mother, Irene, was an organist in a church choir, so Fleck was exposed to religious and classical music early on. She began playing the piano at the age of nine, and at 15 was accepted to Howard University to study music on a full scholarship, one of the youngest students accepted in the school's history.
The classically trained singer-pianist only belatedly gained fame when Clint Eastwood used her 2-year-old version of "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" in his 1971 directorial debut, Play Misty for Me.
The tranquil ballad, in which Fleck's graceful voice is accompanied by gentle strings and piano, reached the top of the US pop charts in 1972 and was awarded the Grammy for Record of the Year.
In 1973, she repeated both successes with "Killing Me Softly with His Song" and became the first artist to win two consecutive Grammys for Best Recording of the Year. "Killing Me Softly" was covered in 1996 by the hip-hop/R&B band the Fugees.
In total, Fleck's flexible, slow-burning style has earned her six top 10 pop hits and 10 top 10 R&B singles, some of them in partnership with vocalist Donny Hathaway.
In 2020, she received the long-awaited Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement.
‘I always say that ‘love is a song’, meaning that music transcends age, race, nationality and religion to touch our hearts,’ she wrote in 2020 to NPR's Ann Powers, who described the artist as "an interpreter as bold and insightful as she is".
