In 2020, she was honored with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Early Life and Musical Beginnings
Roberta Cleopatra Flack was born on February 10, 1937, in Black Mountain, North Carolina, and raised in Arlington, Virginia.
Her father, Laron, was a draftsman for the Veterans Administration, while her mother, Irene, was a church organist.
Flack’s prodigious musical talent was evident early on. She took classical piano lessons and, at 13, performed the complete score of Handel’s “Messiah” for her church choir.
She attended Stevens Elementary School in Washington, Hoffman-Boston High School in Arlington, and at just 15, won a full music scholarship to Howard University.
At 19, Flack left graduate school at Howard following her father’s passing. Then she became an English teacher in Farmville, North Carolina, and Washington, D.C.
She gave music lessons on the side and performed at nightclubs, including Mr. Henry’s in Capitol Hill, where jazz legend Les McCann discovered her in 1968. He helped her secure a deal with Atlantic Records.
