US: Jazz and soul singer Nina Simone, famed for her civil rights songs and interpretations of Gospel, ballads and George Gershwin, died yesterday at her home in the south of France. She was 70.
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, said her manager, Mr Clifton Henderson.
Simone, whose smoky, sometimes raw and sometimes sweet voice was known to millions, was born Eunice Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina. She was best known for her interpretation of My Baby Just Cares for Me, as well as I Loves You Porgy, a George Gershwin song.
The singer, later to become known as the "High Priestess of Soul", was born on February 21st, 1933, as the sixth of seven children in a poor family.
She started playing piano at age four, and went on to study at the prestigious Juilliard School of Music in New York to become a classical pianist.
She began singing in an Irish bar in Atlantic City, and later changed her name to Nina Simone, going on to make a career not only as a nightclub singer but as a pianist, arranger and composer. - (Reuters, AFP)