Royalty in Waiting

Roberta Cleopatra Flack was born on Feb. 10, 1937, in Black Mountain, N.C., the second oldest of five siblings. In her early childhood, the family moved to Virginia, first to Richmond and then to Arlington, a segregated suburb of Washington. Her father, Laron Flack, worked as a draftsman in the Veterans Administration; her mother, Irene (Council) Flack, was a cook at a high school who also taught music and played the organ at Arlington’s A.M.E. Zion Church.

“I grew up playing piano for the choir: Handel, Bach, Verdi, Mozart and all those great, wonderful, intricately written Negro spirituals,” Ms. Flack remembered in a 1991 interview with The Chicago Tribune. But she would also sneak down the road to the local Baptist church, savoring its rawer forms of musical worship. From time to time, she caught gospel stars like Mahalia Jackson and Sam Cooke performing there.

Ms. Flack always identified with her family’s Southern history. “I like to say that two preachers came from Black Mountain. Billy Graham and I,” she was quoted as saying in a 1971 Ebony article. “He’s preaching in his way and I’m preaching my way.”

Ms. Flack has no immediate survivors. A seven-year marriage to the bassist Steve Novosel (which violated the law in Virginia, where interracial marriage was still illegal when she married Mr. Novosel, who is white) ended in divorce, as did a later marriage.

At 13, Ms. Flack won second place in a statewide competition for Black students after performing a Scarlatti sonata; she was convinced that she had deserved the main prize and that the judges were thrown off by the sight of a Black girl playing classical music with such command. Just two years later, she entered Howard University on a full scholarship. She became the first undergraduate vocal student to give a public recital in classical vocal literature, and she conducted a student production of “Aida” that drew a standing ovation from Howard’s music faculty.

But a dean warned that the opportunities in classical orchestras would be scarce for a Black woman, advising Ms. Flack to pursue a teaching career. Upon graduating, she started working toward a master’s degree in music education.