Goodbye Roberta Flack, the elegant voice of the 70s

When you talk about an "eternal" song. Among the various resurrections of Killing Me Softly with His Song , a ballad with dark semitones and at the same time strongly sensual, written by Charles Fox with lyrics by Norma Gimbel and the collaboration of Lori Lieberman who recorded it for the first time in 1972, the one perhaps best known to the new generations came exactly 24 years later. It was interpreted by the black voice with the full-bodied grain of Lauryn Hill from her time with the Fugees, accompanied by a hip hop rhythm that exploded on the charts all over the world in 1996. But the true, great version of that song - in some ways we could define it as definitive and entered into the collective imagination - is that of Roberta Flack, the American artist who died yesterday at the age of 88. Born in Asheville, North Carolina, she was an atypical singer in the world of black music.

EMERGING from classical studies, her passion was jazz and her inspiration came from listening to Shirley Horn, Nina Simone, performers – and not coincidentally also pianists like her – with a very restrained style. Roberta Flack invented a truly new soul language, made of emotion rather than power. And if gospel inevitably influenced her style, it did so in a less exposed way, exalting its sacredness. Flack is a performer who knows how to give expressiveness to the lyrics, she studies their meanings, she compares herself with the authors. The best songs, those recorded in her golden period on the albums made for Atlantic from 1969 to 1975, almost seem – in miniature – like movie scripts. It is no coincidence that her first real hit, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face was chosen by Clint Eastwood and included in the soundtrack of his directorial debut, in 1971, Back to the Future. A song that earned her her first Grammy for song of the year, repeated just a year later by the explosive success of Killing me softly with his song . A record that was only equaled thirty years later by U2, who achieved a similar feat in 2000 and 2001.

A climb to stardom in which the multifaceted American artist Donny Hathaway had important support. In her second – and perhaps best – album with Atlantic, Chapter Two (1971), she arranged and produced Reverend Lee (later also taken up by Aretha Franklin), written by Eugene McDaniels, where Roberta sings of «carnal and demonic» temptations with an arrangement of wind instruments «held back» by a funky rhythm. Even more engaging is Gone Away – a ballad composed by Hathaway together with Curtis Mayfield, and where Flack exalts every single word in a blues filigree of rare precision. A fundamental album – although not the most successful – by Roberta to which Eumir Deodato contributes for the rest of the songs. Love lyrics and more: in Business Goes On As Usual, written for a brother who died in Vietnam, Roberta slaps the listener in the face with a detached "aplomb" that enhances her lyrical power, her protest against that bloody conflict. In those early seventies - stylized, perfect - Roberta Flack was perhaps the interpreter of greatest prestige and sensitivity, as the American critic Peter Shapiro also wrote: "Sophisticated, with a jazz touch, her beautiful and sensual ballads appealed to the Burt Bacharach/5th Dimension crowd, while her sparkling keyboards and impeccable diction made her the testimonial of the soul crowd of the New York penthouse".

THE PARTNERSHIP with Hathaway is fundamental to creating this universe. With him, in 1972, she also recorded an album of duets that bears their name, where we also find a version of You've got a friend by Carole King and the hit Where is the Love . Alone - with Feel Like Making Love and then again with Hathaway in 1978 for The Closer I get to you, she will once again enter the pop charts. But the collaboration ends in 1979 when Hathaway takes her own life, a tragedy that emotionally destroys the singer who will later look for another partner. She will find it in the young Peabo Bryson and with him she records a couple of albums and a hit, Tonight, I celebrate my love , in 1983. An album of reasonable quality and with good commercial success, but the magic of the collaboration with Hathaway was irremediably lost. In the eighties and nineties, Roberta Flack concentrated essentially on live concerts and her recording activity became more sporadic. Her return in 1994 was beautiful with an album that bears her name – for which she will also be nominated for a Grammy (in her career she has totaled 13 nominations). A collection that sees her concentrated on a repertoire of standards where she juggles with extreme class between jazz, soul, r'n'b and even a touch of rap. She exalts herself in Let's stay together by Al Green and in the black notes of The Thrill is gone from the repertoire of BB King.