Remembering Roberta Flack, a spellbinding virtuoso of musical interpretation

The multi-Grammy award winner Roberta Flack has passed away at 88.

Her approach and sound were a unique combination of soul, folk, rhythm and blues, jazz, pop and musicianship, and arranging skills so broad she had had a lasting impact on future artists.

Her sustained career laid a foundation for pop and neo-soul artists Alicia Keys, Erykah Badu, Solange, J Dilla, Flying Lotus, and D’Angelo.

Over her career, Flack performed some original songs, but she is better known for her myriad of covers and performances of songs written for her. No matter who wrote the songs, she made all of them her own. She was a master of musical interpretation.

An early life of music

Flack was born in North Carolina in 1937. Both of her parents played piano; her mother was the church organist.

Her early interest in gospel tunes was encouraged and supported with her participation in a local Baptist church in Arlington, Virginia, and many relatives who sang.

Her formal classical musical training continued at Howard University. After a brief period teaching at a junior high school, Flack started landing regular bookings at Mr. Henry’s, a Washington DC bar where Flack performed a range of traditional spirituals, jazz, blues and folk repertoire.

In 1968, she signed with Atlantic Records.

Her brilliant debut

Her debut album, First Take, was recorded over just ten hours in 1969 at Atlantic Recording Studios, New York. First take indeed! Genius!

Considering Flack’s background, religious inspiration and being surrounded by the social movements of the 1960s, it is not surprising that her first album features songs that address race and religion. The album creates a fusion of music with themes of spiritually and compelling political issues.

Flack blended genres effortlessly. One of the highlights of the album is Flack’s interpretation of the folk song The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face. Written in 1957 by British political singer-songwriter Ewan MacColl for the vocalist Peggy Seeger, Flack’s interpretation is notably delivered with a deliberately slower tempo, and with legato phrasing – smooth, and connected.

The lesser-known second track, the Venezuelan/Mexican song Angelitos Negros, offers a soulful statement of black rights.

Flack’s powerful vocal delivery evokes a haunting sense of loss and refined passion. This, combined with her choice of musical arrangement with repeating lyrics, forms a commanding protest song.

Always forging her own path

Labels often described her work as “adult contemporary” or “easy-listening”.

This barely addresses the diversity within her catalogue, which features Broadway ballads like The Impossible Dream, her definitive interpretation of Leonard Cohen’s Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye, Bee Gees and Beatles songs, and folk classics.

Blending genres like jazz, latin, rock and folk with nuanced elements of classical into her own arrangements and song interpretations, to the listener Flack’s interpretation becomes authorship.

In this way, Flack played a role in defining pop music’s processes.

Flack is best known for her majestic indelible early hits songs like Killing Me Softly with His Song, Where Is the Love and The Closer I Get to You.

The 1973 live recording of Killing Me Softly With His Song, written by Charles Fox and Norman Gimbel, is breathtaking.

Flack opens without an introduction: straight in, delicately infusing the lyrics with a vast array of tonal shades. The smooth phrases are delivered with a beautifully aligned dynamic, like the most carefully crafted expression.

In 1996 Killing Me Softly with His Song, was reinvented by the Fugees with lead vocalist Lauryn Hill.

Where Is the Love, a duet with Donny Hathaway, brings together their two legendary voices perfectly. Here were two highly skilled pianists with incredible musicality with voices that blended perfectly together.

I have always enjoyed Flack’s version of Compared to What. Flack’s emotive delivery; the warmth of her tone; the panache; the edgeless smooth phrasing pulls you near in complete comfort.

For Flack the lyric meaning – telling the story with clarity and honesty – was paramount. Her expression is refined with understated inventiveness. There is such power in her performances. She is spellbinding, reaching a deep soulful place that is both classically and contemporarily informed.

While Flack wrote some songs, such as You Know What It’s Like, she was not predominantly a songwriter. Instead, she was a virtuosic interpreter of music. Whether penned by Flack or not, each song’s interpretation sounds authored by her. That is the sense you are getting when you listen to her music: it doesn’t matter who it’s written by, her interpretation makes you believe it is by her.

Leigh Carriage does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.