Nina Simone

Simone's admirers have found their way to her from a range of places, and that diversity is reflected in her music. She plays blues, jazz, protest songs, gospel, pop, hymns and folk tunes. She covers the songs of the Beatles, Jacques Brel, Leonard Cohen, George Gershwin, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Duke Ellington and the Bee Gees, and yet every song she sings is her own.

She was trained as a classical pianist, and her playing is infused with the Bach of her childhood; her youth spent in church tinges her sound with traces of gospel. Though she didn't begin to sing until after she'd developed her skills as a pianist, her voice demonstrates these influences as well, mirroring her playing. When Simone sings the Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun," its dreadful sadness and enormous ecstasy make it seem like it could never have been anyone else's song. Beneath the complex layers of her voice and her playing are longing, loss and happiness laid bare.

Roger Caras writes, "No song that Nina sings has ever been sung before, at least as the same work. Nina brings to each number a special quality that comes from brilliant musicianship with an almost philosophical understanding of the words. When Nina sings the word 'love,' it isn't a word combined from four letters out of the alphabet but an emotional experience you can feel.