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Roberta Flack, Grammy-winning singer known for 'Killing Me Softly With His Song' and other intimate hits, dies at 88

RIP,one of the greatest song writers and composer/producers/whatever in music.

I been putting my old lady on to her and Donny for a minute and it's starting to stick.

She'll always be around,people are going to use her music
 
Roberta Flack had the most velvet, smooth, unique, pure, beautiful tone. Like a soft alto saxophone.

If ever there was a voice that could rightly be called an instrument, hers was it.

I first took notice of Roberta when I was a little boy and my mother had to learn to play and sing, “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” for a wedding.

Mama played that record over and over.

As an adult, when I was a private vocal instructor, that was one of the songs I would have some of my students sing. It was to train them in breath control and its effect on dynamics (loud-soft) and vocal coloration and expression.

I think that song was Roberta’s solo masterpiece. A deceptively simple love song and on it her notes were as carefully minimalistic and perfectly articulated as a Miles Davis trumpet solo.

In this day and age, it is almost an astonishing feat to be Black in the USA and reach 88 years. This earth was blessed to have her inhabit it.

May her memory forever live on.

Go well, Roberta.
 

1968 I was working for a company that had a conference in D.C. at the Watergate Hotel. It was for managers and I had recently been promoted so I was the only Black there and I was assigned to a room by myself. The brothers told me about this club on PA Avenue called "Mr. Henry's" that had live music. I found my way there on a Tuesday evening. Roberta Flack was at the piano. She introduced herself as a school teacher who loved music. She could really play. Every once in awhile she would break out in a song. There were maybe 10 people in the joint. She captured me, and I wound up talking to her between sets. From that time, I followed her career and watched as she brought a tremendous amount of great music out. I remember attending a party she gave for Jesse Jackson when he ran for president in 1984, and she remembered me from those little talks we used to have during the week at Mr. Henry's. She was really into Jesse and the culture. RIP Queen


​
 
I was just having a debate with some other music historians and I said THE most underrated female singer of all time was Roberta Flack. She was the only female artist to have the number 1 song of the year in back to back years. She didnt sell the records of an Aretha or Diana and wasnt as world known as Whitney but she was OUR Queen and in my opinion she was the female version of Luther Vandross just extraordinary voice and deserves her place in music history. RIP!
 

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