R&B singer Roberta Flack dead at 88

Killing Me Softly With His Song singer Roberta Flack has passed away, her representative has confirmed.

Grammy Award-winning singer Roberta Flack has died at age 88.

Flack, who was best known for her 1974 smash hit Killing Me Softly with His Song, died on Monday, her representative said in a statement, reports The U.S. Sun.

American soul singer Roberta Flack. Picture: AAP Image/Tracey Nearmy

The representative said Flack died peacefully at her home surrounded by her family.

“Roberta broke boundaries and records. She was also a proud educator,” the statement added.

A cause of death was not immediately disclosed.

In the years leading up to her death, Flack suffered several health challenges, including an amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) diagnosis in late 2022.

The neurological disease made it “impossible” for Flack to “sing and not easy to speak,” her manager, Suzanne Koga, revealed at the time.

In 2018, in the middle of her performance at the renowned Apollo Theater in Harlem, Flack was forced to leave the stage early due to an illness.

The singer was 88 when she passed. Picture: Rafa Rivas/AFP

At the time, her management team revealed the singer had suffered a stroke years before her recital at the Apollo Theater.

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Flack, who was born on February 10, 1937, was raised in a large, musical family in Black Mountain, North Carolina, about 15 miles east of Asheville.

Her mother, Irene Flack, was a church organist, who taught her daughter how to play classical piano at a young age.

Considered a young musical prodigy, Roberta Flack began studying piano at age 9, and by age 15, earned a full scholarship at Howard University in Washington DC.

Flack began her music career by working as a nightclub performer at the Mr. Henry’s bar in Washington DC.

She was discovered in the late 1960s by jazz songwriter Les McCann, who described Flack’s performance as “the soulful and central quality of Black Music.”

McCann acknowledged how Flack’s powerful voice “touched, tapped, trapped, and kicked every emotion I’ve ever known.

“I laughed, cried and screamed for more.”

McCann helped the young singer sign with Atlantic Records Group, where Flack recorded her first breakout single, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.

This article originally appeared in The U.S. Sun and was reproduced with permission.

Originally published as R&B singer Roberta Flack dead at 88