Once you put into perspective that chart-topping pop and R&B vocalist-composer Roberta Flack started her career accompanying opera vocalists on piano at one club, performing quiet jazz and blues at another, and playing the sacred music of the Methodist church at home, a fuller picture of the artist is revealed.
Music was a prismatic and intellectual form of creation for Flack, a rare sparkling diamond with a million diversely flashing facets, whose voice was — according to Les McCann, the jazz lion who discovered her — one that “touched, tapped, trapped and kicked every emotion I’ve ever known.”
Losing her on Monday at age 88 signals the loss of genius and the opening of a hole in the pop/soul/classical/jazz continuum that no 21st century artist has fully approached. Here are 10 of Roberta Flack’s greatest musical moments.
