What Ever Happened to Rubina Flake?

Like many another piano student, she logged the requisite thousand hours before Carl Czerny's yellow-backed exercise books. But while Roberta Flack labored over knuckle-aching third and fourth finger trills, Rubina Flake--a daydream twin invented in early childhood--polished off Chopin concertos. At 13, Flack played the complete score of Handel's Messiah for her church choir. In her early 20s, she became a serious opera student. At that time Flake, presumably, was a diva at the Met. It came as no small blow then when Flack's vocal coach gently suggested a pop singing career.

Second-decade rockers were dealing in primal screams in 1967 when Roberta Flack came along with her sweet, sensuous voice, an authentic light among trays of crackerjack sparklers. Flack turned The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face (1972) and Killing Me Softly with His Song (1973) into blockbuster hits. She began collecting her four gold singles and two gold albums. By the end of 1973 she had won a pair of Grammy awards. But one day, glancing at a copy of her album First Take, she realized suddenly that "I could not go through life playing First Time Ever."

Her career was at its peak. Yet, reversing the ambition of those opera singers who long to perform in nightclubs, Flack yearned for her classical roots. "One of the hassles of being a black female musician," she says, "is that people are always backing you into a corner and telling you to sing soul. I'm a serious artist. I feel a kinship with people like Arthur Rubinstein and Glenn Gould. If I can't play Bartok when I want to play

Bartok, then nothing else matters." She adds, "It doesn't make me very popular in certain communities."

After the five-year monotony of one-night rock stands, Flack was becoming ill. Successful or struggling, a musical performer's life is lonely and difficult. "All of a sudden you get that rush of 20,000, 30,000, 50,000 people--THE WORLD. All these people love me, you think. Then you're back in a hotel room by yourself in Missouri, your stomach hurts, and your humanness just overwhelms you." Flack had an epic case of growing pains.

An Old Habit. She decided to pause. That pause extended into a 15-month intermission while she plunged into a surge of demanding musical activity. She studied classical composers--Bach, Scriabin, Rachmaninoff. Scornful of record producers with eyes for trends but with unschooled ears, Flack decided to produce her own album. She booked studio time, hired musicians and arrangers, and passed out W-2 forms, even struggling to learn to operate the engineer's console. It took over a year to complete the record, and Flack says that she will never do all that again. She is confident that her new album, Feel Like Makin' Love (Atlantic), which lists Rubina Flake on the keyboard, on background vocals and as producer, is her best LP yet. But it is possibly too elaborate: the orchestrations have more Rachmaninoff than most of the simple songs can support.

Flack, 36, feels like performing now.

She recently concluded a highly successful six-week tour of the West Coast, Hawaii, Japan and Australia. Divorced from Bass Player Steve Novosel, she reluctantly concludes that for a woman marriage and a stage career are incompatible. "You can be in love, you can't help that. You can have children," says Roberta, who has an adopted twelve-year-old daughter of her own. "But women artists who marry spend all their time arranging. Even if they can manage cooking dinner and practicing, their art suffers. They fail a little in both roles."

Success is an old habit with Flack.

The exterior of soft susceptibility is misleading. She is a stubborn perfectionist. The woman who is one of the leading pop stylists of the decade is now learning Bach arias for future records: "I can share with the audience the way I feel through Bach as well as pop." Flack cautions tartly, "You better not be surprised if you hear me do Manon Lescaut some day."

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