(January 13, 2022) We’ve just received word from the team of legendary singer Roberta Flack that she has recovered from a COVID-19 breakththrough infection. This is great news in a year that has been short on encouragement with regard to the pandemic.
“I tested in early January and was told, ‘COVID-19 Positive.’ However, the vaccines and booster worked and protected me from severe illness or hospitalization. Instead, I was ill with fatigue, fever, and slight congestion. I stayed home to rest and recover. Today I feel much better. I am at home and isolating until I retest and receive a negative test this week. I can testify: vaccines and boosters work. If you are not vaccinated, please do so. They likely saved my life.”
– Roberta Flack
GRAMMY Lifetime Achievement Award recipient Roberta Flack is the first solo artist to win the GRAMMY Award for Record of the Year for two consecutive years for her #1 singles “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” in 1973 which also won her the Song of the Year Grammy, and “Killing Me Softly With His Song” in 1974 which topped the charts for five weeks. Flack is also known worldwide for songs “Feel Like Makin’ Love,” her hit duets with Donny Hathaway “Where Is the Love” and “The Closer I Get to You,” “Tonight I Celebrate My Love” (Peabo Bryson), and “Set the Night to Music” (Maxi Priest).
In 2018, Flack was given the prestigious Clark and Gwen Terry Courage Award from the Jazz Foundation of America and in 2017 was presented with the Town Hall Friend of the Arts Award. She is considered one of the greatest songstresses of our time, effortlessly traversing a broad musical landscape over the years from pop to soul to folk to jazz with a voice the BBC describes as “a molten murmur [that] flexes into a cry as pure as a prayer, heartfelt as a confessional. It is elegantly tender, almost unbearably intimate.”
We are thankful that Ms. Flack is doing better and hope that she has no residual effects of COVID-19.