Grammy-award winning singer Roberta Flack has died at the age of 88, her publicist has announced.
The American singer was best known for her hit songs Killing Me Softly With His Song and The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face.
One of the top recording artists of the 1970s, she died on Monday surrounded by her family.
In 2022, Flack announced she was suffering from ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, and could no longer sing.
Rising to fame in her early 30s, Flack had become an overnight success after Clint Eastwood chose her song, The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face, as the soundtrack for the explicit love scenes of his 1971 movie Play Misty For Me.
The track topped the US charts in 1972, and Flack was rewarded with a Grammy.
The following year she took the coveted record of the year prize at the Grammys for a second time with Killing Me Softly, becoming the first artist ever to do so.
Discovered in the late 1960s by jazz musician Les McCann, Flack was also a classically trained pianist. McCann later wrote of Flack: “Her voice touched, tapped, trapped, and kicked every emotion I’ve ever known.”
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