Roberta Flack
*Roberta Flack was born on this date in 1937. She is a Black singer and educator.
From Asheville, NC, she earned a BA degree in Music from Howard University and briefly taught high school Music and English in North Carolina. Flack began her professional career recording for Atlantic Records without much success until one of her earliest recordings, "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" (1969), was included on the soundtrack to the movie Play Misty for Me; it became a #1 hit in 1972. Flack soon began working with Donnie Hathaway, with her second number-one hit being "Killing Me Softly with His Song" (1973). She and Hathaway continued recording successfully together until Hathaway's suicide in 1979.
She then began working with Peabo Bryson with the charted song "Tonight I Celebrate My Love" 1983 and "Set the Night to Music" 1991, a duet with Maxi Priest. She is the aunt of Rory Flack Burghardt, a well-known professional ice skater. She regularly plays to appreciative audiences worldwide and had the pleasure of appearing recently with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, DC, conducted by Marvin Hamlisch. In February 2009, Ms. Flack performed with critically acclaimed orchestras in Australia, including the Melbourne, Queensland, Adelaide, Tasmanian, West Australian, and Sydney Symphonies.
Very active as a humanitarian and mentor, she founded the Roberta Flack School of Music at the Hyde Leadership Charter School in the Bronx, providing an innovative and inspiring music education program to underprivileged students free of charge.
