Nina Simone

Earthy and elegant, reflective and ferocious, hauntingly intimate and scathingly political: Nina Simone was a glorious blend of contradictions. She combined a Julliard classical education with a gift for jazz improvisation and raw blues honesty. Queenly in bearing, confrontational in her intensity, Simone influenced generations of artists. Here's the essence of her eclectic legacy.

Never taking the easy path, Nina Simone began her career as a jazz artist, before branching out into funk-tinged R&B and improvisational revisions of rock and theatrical music. By the late '60s, she was dealing with racism head-on in her songwriting, becoming an icon of the Black Power movement. Her fascinating story unfolds further in these tracks.

In her long and startlingly diverse recording career, Nina Simone sang classic Tin Pan Alley tunes, church spirituals, rock hits, and her own category-defying material. Indifferent to pop fads, she crafted her sound from international sources. Here's a sampling of Simone's more esoteric creative expressions.

Nina Simone was called the High Priestess of Soul for good reason — her performances were passion plays, with everything from Broadway standards to R&B numbers and folk songs transformed into sacred texts. A superb pianist and a singer of exceptional intensity, Simone created music that was by turns somber, celebratory, angry, and transcendent. From the tenderness of "I Loves You Porgy" to the defiance of "Mississippi Goddam" and beyond, her recordings continue to astound and inspire.