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Roberta Flack’s 10 Greatest Musical Moments
A look back at 10 great songs recorded by Roberta Flack, with 'Killing Me Softly' and 'The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face' just as starting points.
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. That she could take on songs by writers of hit soulful jazz (“Compared to What” from Gene McDaniels), socially minded Venezuelan poetry (“Angelitos Negros” from Andrés Eloy Blanco) and existential folk (“Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye” by Leonard Cohen) signaled a maverick in the midst. “Go Up Moses” (1971) Flack takes the Holy Spirit of her church days and the Black consciousness of the moment and turns it all into a steadily simmering boil of hand percussion grooves, flame-flickering guitars and an insistently rising melody co-composed between herself, her stalwart producer Dorn, and activist Jesse Jackson.
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