Simone came from a low-income home as the sixth of seven children. She started playing the piano at the age of four and received classical training, spending a year at the Juilliard School in New York.
One of several setbacks she would later blame on prejudice, she had intended to enroll in Philadelphia’s esteemed Curtis Institute of Music.
To make money, she began singing jazz and popular music in nightclubs in Philadelphia and Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Simone made her first recordings in the late 1950s, including “Plain Gold Ring” and “Don’t Smoke in Bed,” but she shot to fame in 1959 with her rendition of the operatic song “I Loves You Porgy.”
How old was Nina Simone when she died?
Nina Simone passed away on Monday at her residence in France, according to her management. Nina Simone was a unique personality in jazz whose deep, raspy, strong voice subsequently helped document the civil rights fight. She was 70.
After a protracted illness, Simone passed away in her sleep from “natural causes,” according to Clifton Henderson, who was beside her bedside when she passed away. The town in which she resided was not mentioned by him.
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