In honor of the late Roberta Flack, who passed away yesterday, today’s classic song of the day is one of her biggest hits. Ms. Flack released “Killing Me Softly With His Song” on her 1973 album, Killing Me Softly, and, in January of 1973, as a single. The single went all the way to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #2 on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary and Hot R&B Singles charts. It was also a #1 hit in Australia and Canada, and hit the top ten in Argentina, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, and the UK.
There is a bit of controversary concerning who actually wrote “Killing Me Softly With His Song.” The official songwriting credits go to Charles Fox for the music and Norman Gimbel for the words. Fox and Gimbel were known for the music they wrote for a bevy of American television shows, including the theme songs for ABC’s Wide World of Sports and Monday Night Football, as well as weekly background music for Love, American Style. They also wrote the tunes “I Got a Name” for Jim Croce (from the film The Last American Hero), “Ready to Take a Chance Again” for Barry Manilow (from the film Foul Play), “The First Years” for Seals & Crofts (from the television series Paper Chase), and “Making Our Dreams Come True” for Cindy Greco (from the television series Laverne & Shirley). Fox also composed the theme to The Love Boat, with Paul Williams supplying the lyrics.
The controversy comes from Fox and Gimbel’s relationship with aspiring musician Lori Lieberman, who the duo signed to a management contract. Ms. Lieberman, then just twenty years old, attended a Don McLean concert at the Troubadour in Los Angeles in November of 1971, and was so inspired that she started “scribbling notes” on a cocktail napkin while he was performing the song “Empty Chairs.” After the concert, Ms. Lieberman phoned Gimbel and read him her notes, which described her very personal feelings about Mr. McLean’s performance. Those notes reminded Gimbel of a song title he’d been kicking around, about “killing us softly with some blues.” According to Gimbel and Fox, that led them to write “Killing Me Softly With His Song.”
Here is what Ms. Lieberman remembers:
“Don McLean … I saw him at the Troubadour in LA last year. I had heard about him from some friends but up to then all I knew about him really was what others had told me. But I was moved by his performance, by the way he developed his numbers, he got right through to me.”
At least that’s Ms. Lieberman’s story. Fox and Gimbel, while initially supporting that account of the song’s origin, later changed their tune—after they’d broken with Ms. Lieberman. In their new account, they don’t mention the Don McLean connection at all and downplay Ms. Lieberman’s role in writing the song. “I think it’s called an urban legend,” Fox said in his 2010 memoir. “It really didn’t happen that way.”
However the song came about, Lori Lieberman got first crack at recording it. Her version, released in 1972, was produced by Gimbel and Fox but failed to chart.
Roberta Flack, however, heard Ms. Lieberman’s version on an airplane, on the in-flight audio program. Ms. Flack describes what happened next:
“The title, of course, smacked me in the face. I immediately pulled out some scratch paper, made musical staves [then] play[ed] the song at least eight to ten times, jotting down the melody that I heard. When I landed, I immediately called Quincy [Jones] at his house and asked him how to meet Charles Fox. Two days later I had the music.”
Ms. Flack started working on “Killing Me Softly” with her band in Kingston, Jamaica, but didn’t like the mix of what they recorded. In September of 1972, when she was opening for Quincy Jones at the Greek Theater in L.A., she was called back for a second encore but didn’t have a song prepared. That’s when she told Mr. Jones, “Well, I have this new song I’ve been working on” and played the song live for the first time. When the audience wouldn’t stop screaming afterwards, she knew she had something special on her hands.
After the concert, Quincy Jones told her, “‘Ro, don’t sing that doggone song no more until you record it,” so she did. The musicians on the session included Donny Hathaway on harmony vocals, Eric Gale on various guitars, Ron Carter on bass, Ralph McDonald on congas and percussion, and Grady Tate on drums. Ms. Flack herself played piano.
Released in January of 1973, Roberta Flack’s version of “Killing Me Softly With His Song” spent five (non-consecutive) weeks at number one and was ranked by Billboard as the number-three song for all of 1973. The song also won three Grammy Awards: Record of the Year, Best Female Pop Music Performance, and, for Gimbel and Fox, Song of the Year.
Roberta Flack was born on February 10, 1937, in Farmville, North Carolina. She grew up in Arlington, Virginia, often accompanying her church on piano. At age 15, she won a full music scholarship to Howard University, eventually changing her major from piano to voice. She became a teacher after she graduated and started performing weekends at various clubs in the Washington, D.C., area. She was discovered by jazz musician Les McCann, who helped her audition for and get a contract with Atlantic Records. Atlantic released her debut album, First Take, in June of 1969, and everything was uphill from there.
Over the course of her long career, Ms. Flack released a number of successful and influential albums, including First Take (1969), Take Two (1970), Quiet Fire (1971), Killing Me Softly (1973), and Feel Like Makin’ Love (1975). Many consider her the progenitor of the smooth subgenre of R&B dubbed quiet storm. Her hit singles included:
- “You’ve Got a Friend” (cover of the Carole King song, #29 in 1971)
- “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” (#1 in 1972)
- “Where is the Love” (with Donny Hathaway, #5 in 1972)
- “Jesse” (cover of the Janis Ian song, #30 in 1973)
- “Killing Me Softly With His Song” (#1 in 1973)
- “Feel Like Makin’ Love” (#1 in 1974)
- “The Closer I Get to You” (with Donny Hathaway, #2 in 1978)
- “If Ever I See You Again” (#24 in 1978)
- “Making Love” (#13 in 1982)
- “Tonight, I Celebrate My Love” (with Peabo Bryson, #16 in 1983)
- “Set the Night to Music” (with Maxi Priest, #6 in 1991).
Ms. Flack won a total of six Grammy Awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2020. Here’s what she once said about her career:
“I didn’t try to be a soul singer, a jazz singer, a blues singer—no category. My music is my expression of what I feel and believe in a moment… I am a person who has managed to last because I have chosen to stay true to my own ideals and principles, and true to my own experience. I am a Black person who sings the way I do. I am not a Black person who sounds anything like Aretha Franklin or anything like Chaka Khan. I know what I am, and I don’t want to, and I shouldn’t have to, change in order to be who I am.”
Ms. Flack continued recording and performing up until 2022, when she was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) and retired from performing. Her final recording was the song “Running,” for the end credits of the 2018 documentary 3100: Run and Become.
Roberta Flack passed away on February 24, 2025. She was 88 years old.
