![]() However, freedom, to me, is the definition of what jazz is, so I can't say that I'm not a jazz performer." "It's always been my aim to stay outside any category," she told a reporter. Her version of the pop staple "Love Me or Leave Me," for example, plays a dazzling classical run with a throaty jazz vocal. In the 1960s, she had a run of best-selling albums, including "Wild Is the Wind," "High Priestess of Soul," "Silk and Soul," "Pastel Blues," "I Put a Spell on You," "Let it All Out" and "Nina Simone Sings the Blues."Ī hallmark of her recordings was her love for contrasting sounds and defying predictability. Through it all, she rendered an eclectic mix of music with precise diction and a powerful vibrato. She filled concert halls for decades, often turning them into forums for her biting political remarks and celebrations of art and folklore. Her own compositions, including "Mississippi Goddam," "To Be Young, Gifted and Black" and "Four Women," became particularly affecting and haunting anthems of the era. She soon moved from pop ballads to protest songs as the civil rights movement took hold. ![]() Simone had her first hit with a torchy rendition of "I Loves You, Porgy" in 1959. With a deep and husky voice that growled and whispered, Ms. Nina Simone, 70, a singer, composer and pianist who combined spiritual, jazz and protest songs in the 1960s and 1970s and who had been dubbed "the high priestess of soul," died April 21 at her home in France.
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