After her father’s death, needing to support herself, she dropped out and took a job at a grade school in Farmville, N.C., where she taught English and music to children in a deeply impoverished community — an experience that left a lasting impression. “There was no piano in my classroom, but I went from room to room with a pitch pipe and autoharp, teaching them music,” she told Ebony.
After a year, she returned to Washington and began teaching at junior high schools in the city while establishing herself on the nightclub circuit. At the upscale Tivoli restaurant, Ms. Flack accompanied opera singers on piano as they promenaded across the room. During intermissions, she sometimes retired to a piano in the back room where she sang blues, folk and pop songs for the staff.
Soon came gigs under her own name at the 1520 Club and Mr. Henry’s, which was known for attracting a racially diverse clientele and for welcoming openly gay and lesbian patrons. The restaurant outfitted its upstairs specifically for Ms. Flack, with a stage and rows of pew-style seating.
She was soon the talk of D.C. “I was trying to develop my skill, to read music, interpret it, rearrange it,” she told the BBC for a documentary, “Killing Me Softly: The Roberta Flack Story.” “I felt I could do everything, and I felt comfortable enough to know that if I had a chance I could show anybody.”
Stars like Burt Bacharach and Johnny Mathis made a point of going to Mr. Henry’s when they were in town. One night, Liberace came and sat in, playing a piano duet with Ms. Flack. And, celebrity guests or not, what were supposed to be two- or three-set nights would often stretch on much longer. “I just couldn’t get up from the piano,” she said.
When the star soul-jazz pianist and vocalist Les McCann heard her in 1968 at the nearby Bohemian Caverns, he was floored. “Her voice touched, tapped, trapped and kicked over every emotion I’ve ever known,” he later wrote in the liner notes to her debut album. “I laughed, cried and screamed for more.”
