Tributes have poured in for the legendary jazz and blues singer Nina Simone who died yesterday at her home in southern France at the age of 70.
Ms Simone, who was born in North Carolina, was best known for her interpretation of "My Baby Just Cares for Me" in 1966 and "One Night Stand" a year later.
Her manager, Clifton Henderson, said "She inspired other singers to do what they believed in," Henderson said,adding that the musician would also be remembered for her activism.
"She'lldefinitely be looked at as a civil rights movement leader."Norah Jones, India.Arie, Peter Gabriel, Sade and Aretha Franklin, whorerecorded one of Simone's most famous songs, the anthem To Be Young, Gifted andBlack, were among the artists who cited her as an influence.
"She was ahead of her time as a concert-level piano player who sang, wroteand spoke her mind," India.Arie said. "I aspire to be more like her."
Born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in 1933 in North Carolina, Simone was the sixth ofeight children in a poor family. She began playing the piano at four and wasclassically trained, attending the Juilliard School in New York for one year.
She had hoped to attend the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music inPhiladelphia, but was rejected - one of many disappointments she would attributeto racism.
She turned to singing jazz and popular music as a way to make money,performing in nightclubs in Philadelphia and Atlantic City, New Jersey. In thelate 1950s Simone recorded her first tracks, including Plain Gold Ring and Don'tSmoke in Bed. But she gained fame in 1959 with her recording of I Loves YouPorgy, from the opera Porgy & Bess.
Simone later wove the turbulent times of the 1960s into her music. In 1963,after the church bombing that killed four young black girls in Birmingham,Alabama, and the killing of Medgar Evers, she wrote Mississippi Goddam, whosesearing lyrics included the lines: "Oh but this whole country is full of lies,You're all gonna die and die like flies."
After the killing of Martin Luther King Jr, she recorded Why? The King of LoveIs Dead.
"That's what separated Nina from the other singers," friend and jazz concertpromoter George Wein told The Associated Press. "Nina took civil rights and themovement, the fight to another level, and made it part of her persona."
In a 1998 interview, Simone blamed racism in the United States for herdecision to live abroad, saying that as a black person, she had "paid a heavyprice for fighting the establishment".
She left the United States in 1973 and lived in the Caribbean and Africabefore settling in Europe. She did not return to the United States until 1985for a series of concerts.
Wein said she was extremely bitter.
"She was a black woman who never could relate to the position of what it wasto be black in America. She couldn't understand it," he said. "She was anunhappy person."
Simone enjoyed perhaps her greatest success in the 1960s and 70s, with songssuch as I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl and Four Women, a song about four blackwomen with varying skin colours and lifestyles. One of the verses reads: "Myskin is brown-And my manner is tough-I'll kill the first mother I see ... Whatdo they call me? My name is PEACHES."
Although she was a gifted songwriter, Simone also recorded songs from artistsas diverse as Leonard Cohen and the Bee Gees and made them her own.
Perhaps oneof her more popular covers was her version of House Of The Rising Sun.While she had a regal presence on stage, she could often be temperamental -she had a reputation for criticising audience members who interrupted herperformances with conversation or loud drinking or talking.
"As an entertainer, she had the world in her hands, but she never knew how tograb it," said Wein.
Sometimes called "High Priestess of Soul", she remained a top concert drawin her later years.
However, she was quite frail. At a 2001 concert at Carnegie Hall, she had tobe helped to the stage, and was later seen sitting backstage in a wheelchair.
Yet Wein called the performance, which ran a little over an hour, one of hergreatest. Fans wildly applauded every song, and demanded an encore after sheleft the stage - to which Simone responded by returning and shouting: "Gohome!"
"This was one of the most amazing evenings I had ever seen in my years," hesaid.
Simone, who was divorced twice, is survived by a daughter, Lisa - a singer whogoes by Simone. She is starring in Broadway's Aida and has recorded with thegroup Liquid Soul.