Nicholas Laughlin's blog etc.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Nina Simone, whose deep, raspy, forceful voice made her a unique figure in jazz and later helped define the civil rights movement, died Monday at her home in France, according to her personal manager. She was 70.

Read the rest of the AP report here.

Further:

It could be argued that her gifts were always going to be too diverse and too overpowering to make her at ease with the demands of the music business. Embracing jazz, pop, rhythm and blues, show tunes, chansons and gospel, Simone mastered them all. Life, as ever, was a little harder.

--Clive Davis, the jazz critic of the London Times, writing in Tuesday's edition.

Also: read the NY Times obituary (surprisingly short) here.