Thankfully, Roberta Flack’s music ‘has no endpoint’

Roberta Flack’s recording career spanned more than six decades. Few artists have had that kind of star power.

 

Writing for Our State magazine, Mark Kemp said Robert Flack “took the pop world by storm” in the early 1970s…“with a pair of gentle, ethereal No. 1 singles, ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’ and ‘Killing Me Softly with His Song.’”

“Her crisp, clear and wistful voice could segue effortlessly from polished classical stylings to warm folk ballads, contemplative jazz, simmering soul and playful funk,” Kemp said.

Her death on Feb. 24, 2025, at age 88, “silenced an angelic voice,” Kemp added. “Flack was credited with helping introduce a smoother, moodier style of R&B known as ‘Quiet Storm.’”

(The subgenre was named after the title song on Smokey Robinson’s 1975 album “A Quiet Storm” and was marketed primarily to upscale, mature African-American audiences.)

 

Born in Black Mountain, N.C., in 1937, Roberta Cleopatra Flack was inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame in 2009, which is located in Kannapolis.

“She was celebrated not only for her outstanding achievements in music but also for her dedication to elevating North Carolina’s musical legacy on the world stage,” said Veronica Cordle, executive director of the hall of fame.

 

Roberta Flack was “one of the state’s most beloved and most cherished musical treasures,” Cordle noted. “Her profound influence on the arts and culture of our state will continue to live on…and we will forever honor her incredible legacy.”

As a youth, Roberta Flack experimented with all music genres including Appalachian mountain music, boasting that she “recorded a number of North Carolinian folk songs that she learned growing up.”

“Flack’s work was shaped by her artistry as well as her activism,” Cordle said. “She spoke out for education, social justice and equality, using her platform to advocate for change and inspire the next generation of musicians and leaders.”

At Howard University, Roberta Flack’s praises are sung loudly by faculty member Dr. Valerie (Kehembe) Eichelberger, associate professor of music, who says the current generation of students “still hears the music” of Roberta Flack. “That means it crossed over the timeline. It doesn’t have an endpoint.”

 

In Black Mountain, at the Swannanoa Valley Museum & History Center, a permanent exhibit highlights Roberta Flack’s local roots in the community, giving visitors a unique insight into what life was like for African-Americans who lived in Buncombe County in the 1930s,” said LeAnne Johnson (shown below), the museum director.

 

The Swannanoa Valley Museum in Black Mountain was established in 1989 and is housed in the old downtown firehouse that was constructed in 1921, now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Nearby, a mural with Robert Flack’s image, painted by legendary muralist Scott Nurkin of Chapel Hill, looms prominently on the side of the Black Mountain Brewing building. It’s an important addition to the artist’s “N.C. Musicians Mural Trail.”

 

Scott Nurkin

In the Farmville community in Pitt County, where Roberta Flack taught school in 1959, another mural captures the essence of what it was like for educators and students attending the all-black H.B. Sugg School.

The student body was “every African-American child in town” – from pre-school through high school. “I taught every one of them something musical,” Roberta Flack said.

The mural, painted by artists Andrew Wells and Vincent Li, graduates of East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C., on a building on Main Street, is one of 20 public art exhibits that make up Farmville’s famed “Art Trail.”

 

Lori Drake, a freelance writer who lives in Farmville, said: “It appears that people are going in and out of the school building. And if one looks closely and uses his or her imagination, one might see a Grammy-winning singer (Roberta Flack) in this snapshot of history.”