Collection: Roberta Flack

Roberta Flack was teaching music and English at a junior high school in Washington DC and playing sets five nights a week at a nightclub called Mr. Henry's on Capitol Hill when Les McCann caught her performing at a benefit in the summer of 1968. He arranged an audition with Atlantic producer Joel Dorn, she played 42 songs from her nightclub repertoire across three hours, and Dorn signed her on the spot. She recorded her debut album "First Take" in a single ten-hour session in November 1968, with Ron Carter on bass, Ray Lucas on drums, Bucky Pizzarelli on guitar, and Frank Wess on tenor saxophone. The album sat dormant until Clint Eastwood used the opening track, Ewan MacColl's "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face", in his 1971 film "Play Misty for Me", after which Atlantic rush-released it as a single and it spent six weeks at number one. "First Take" eventually reached number one on the Billboard 200 and number three on the jazz chart. "Quiet Fire" (1972), produced by Dorn, featured Chuck Rainey, Bernard Purdie, Richard Tee, Joe Farrell, Hubert Laws, Ron Carter and Romeo Penque. In 1971 she ended Ella Fitzgerald's near two-decade hold on DownBeat's Best Female Vocalist award. She was diagnosed with ALS in 2022 and died on 24 February 2025, aged 88.