 Then she went back to North Carolina as an English literature instructor and music teacher. But the school couldn't afford a music room with a piano, so she had to go from class to class with a pitch pipe in her pocket and an auto harp under her arm. Those were the early chapters in the life of Roberta Flack. Somewhere in her book, it'll be written that she was among the top artists of at least the early 1970s. The first time.