Her parents always encouraged her music and went the extra mile to support her artistry.
Singer Roberta Flack is proud of the green piano her father Laron LeRoy gifted her from a junkyard, sharing her story in her new autobiographical children’s book, The Green Piano: How Little Me Found Music.
According to Today, LeRoy was unable to afford a new piano for his daughter, so he snagged one from a local junkyard and refurbished it, painting it green.
“He and my mother hoped that the piano would inspire me. Both of them being musical people, they wanted to encourage me. They had been told that I had potential,” Flack wrote.
The book follows the early stages of the legendary singer as she pursued her path in music.
Flack was born in Black Mountain, NC and her childhood environment was full of music. LeRoy and her mother, Irene Council Flack, who was a church organist, kept the art of music alive in their home, having family jam sessions together.
“A home filled with music gives children another language to express themselves. As my friend Angela Davis
said, ‘Music helps us to feel what we may not be able to say,'” Flack said.“Although I no longer play or sing, when I experience music — it’s so much more than just ‘listening’ for me — I connect to my parents, my teaches, my fans, my peers. Everyone. Music is everything to me,” she said.
The illustrated children’s book, set in Flack’s childhood, highlights the artistry that was nurtured in her early stages before her fame.
“Find your own ‘green piano’ and practice relentlessly until you find your voice, and a way to put that beautiful music into the world,” Flack noted in a message to young readers.
The “Killing Me Softly With His Song” singer studied at Howard University on a scholarship when she was 15 years old, later being discovered in a nightclub, and signing to Atlantic Records.
As previously reported by BLACK ENTERPRISE, singing became impossible for the legend after she was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord.
The Green Piano is co-written with Tonya Bolden and illustrated by Hayden Goodman, and was released on January 11.