Jazz-Soul Singer Nina Simone Dies in France
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Jazz and soul singer Nina Simone, famed for her civil rights songs and interpretations of gospel, ballads and George Gershwin, died on Monday at her home in the south of France, her manager said. She was 70 years old.
Simone, a North Carolina native who had been living in France off and on for the past eight years, had been ill for some time, Clifton Henderson told Reuters when reached by telephone in France.
Among her biggest hits were the 1959 recording of Gershwin’s “I Love You Porgy.” Her repertories also included the socially conscious song “Mississippi Goddamn” and “Old Jim Crow.””
Raised in a family of eight children, she studied piano at New York’s prestigious Juilliard School of Music, a rare opportunity for a black woman in the 1950s.
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