American singer Roberta Flack graced the Air Jamaica Jazz and Blues Festival stage.
Roberta Flack of Killing Me Softly fame dies at 88
Singer had special relationship with reggae, Marley
Grammy-winning singer Roberta Flack, the American rhythm and blues star, who died yesterday at age 88, had a long association with Jamaica and reggae music. That affinity resulted in a big hit song for her with Maxi Priest 33 years ago with Set The Night to Music.
That ballad peaked at #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and was one of 1991’s biggest hits.
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Maxi Priest told the Jamaica Observer that Flack initiated the collaboration.
“I first met Roberta Flack through a phone call — one I will never forget. She called my home and spoke to my sister Rose. We were both taken by surprise and thought it was a joke. I took the phone and she asked if I would be interested in doing a song with her Set The Night to Music,” he recalled.
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Produced by Arif Mardin, the track had a reggae lilt reminiscent of Fine, Fine Day, a minor hit for Flack in 1977.
At the time she linked Maxi Priest, the British singer was riding high with Bonafide, a platinum-selling album that contained Close to You, which went #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
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The dreadlocked artiste said he was excited about recording with Flack, known for quiet storm standards like Killing Me Softly With His Song, Feel Like Making Love, and The Closer I Get to You with Donny Hathaway.
“To be honest, it was never about whether the song took off or not. The real honour was simply having the opportunity to record a song with Roberta Flack — an icon, a legend, a pioneer, and a true foundation of music,” Maxi Priest stated. “Her voice, her artistry, her compassion; it all resonated with me long before I ever met her.”
A three-time Grammy Award winner, Roberta Flack was among a group of black American artistes who visited Jamaica frequently during the 1970s to find out more about reggae and Rastafari. She became a close friend of Bob Marley and Alan “Skill” Cole, his manager.
Born in Black Mountain, North Carolina, Flack on February 10, 1937, the artiste was raised in Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington, DC.
She attended Howard University, where she majored in voice on a music scholarship at just 15. She later befriended the gifted Hathaway, another Howard alumni, who produced many of her songs.
Roberta Flack was discovered by a new generation of fans in 1996 when The Fugees covered Killing Me Softly With His Song.
Flack’s publicist announced her death without citing a cause.
The influential pop and R&B star in recent years had lost her ability to sing because of ALS, known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, which she was diagnosed with in 2022.
“She died peacefully surrounded by her family,” the statement from the publicist said.
The classically trained musician, with a tender but confident voice, produced a number of early classics of rhythm and blues that she frequently described as “scientific soul”, timeless works that blended meticulous practice with impeccable taste.
“I’ve been told I sound like Nina Simone, Nancy Wilson, Odetta, Barbra Streisand, Dionne Warwick, even Mahalia Jackson,” Flack said in 1970 in The New York Times. “If everybody said I sounded like one person, I’d worry. But when they say I sound like them all, I know I’ve got my own style.”
Flack signed at Atlantic Records, launching a recording career at the relatively late age of 32.
But her star grew overnight after Clint Eastwood used her romantic ballad The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face on the soundtrack of his 1971 movie Play Misty for Me.
The song earned her the Grammy for Record of the Year in 1972, a prize which she took home at the following ceremony as well for Killing Me Softly With His Song, thus becoming the first artiste ever to win the honor two years in a row.
Flack has described hearing Killing Me Softly, which was recorded by folk singer Lori Lieberman in 1971, on a flight and quickly rearranging it.
She performed her version at a show in which she opened for the legendary music tastemaker Quincy Jones, who, blown away by her rendition, told Flack not to publicly perform the song again until she had recorded it and made it her own.
It would become the defining hit of her career.
Flack’s many accolades included a lifetime achievement honour from the Recording Academy in 2020.
She was a figure in the mid-20th century’s social movements, and was friends with both Reverend Jesse Jackson and activist Angela Davis. She sang at the funeral of baseball icon Jackie Robinson, Major League Baseball’s first black player.
She has described growing up “at a time ‘black’ was the most derogatory word you could use. I went through the civil rights movement. I learned, long after leaving Black Mountain, that being black was a positive thing, as all of us did, the most positive thing we could be.
“I did a lot of songs that were considered protest songs, a lot of folk music,” she said, “but I protested as a singer with a lot of love.”
