Roberta Flack

Roberta Flack, born in Black Mountain in 1937, sat down at the piano on First Take in 1969 and sang "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" as if she had all night and nothing to prove. That patience was the whole trick. Her ballads drifted between soul, jazz, folk and pop without asking permission from any of them, and the hush she brought to a record helped lay the groundwork for the late-night radio sound that came to be called quiet storm.

The hits kept coming: "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face", "Killing Me Softly with His Song", "Feel Like Makin' Love". She took the Grammy for Record of the Year in 1973 and again in 1974, the first artist to win it two years running. With Donny Hathaway she cut duets that still melt a room, "Where Is the Love" and "The Closer I Get to You" among them, and she kept finding partners for decades, singing "Tonight, I Celebrate My Love" with Peabo Bryson in 1983 and "Set the Night to Music" with Maxi Priest in 1991.

She could take a Leonard Cohen song or a Beatles number and make it sound like her own private confession. The Grammys gave her a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2020, and she died in 2025.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.