New York: Roberta Flack, the Grammy-winning singer and pianist whose intimate vocal and musical style made her one of the top recording artists of the 1970s and an influential performer long after, died Monday. She was 88. She died at home surrounded by her family, publicist Elaine Schock said in a statement. Flack announced in 2022 that she had ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, and could no longer sing. Little known before her early 30s, Flack became an overnight star after Clint Eastwood used The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face as the soundtrack for one of cinema’s more memorable and explicit love scenes, between the actor and Donna Mills in his 1971 film Play Misty for Me. The hushed, hymn-like ballad, with Flack’s graceful soprano afloat on a bed of soft strings and piano, topped the Billboard pop chart in 1972 and received a Grammy for record of the year. “The record label wanted to have it re-recorded with a faster tempo, but he said he wanted it exactly as it was,” Flack told The Associated Press in 2018. “With the song as a theme song for his movie, it gained a lot of popularity and then took off.”