Nadine Cohodas

A complete account of the triumphs and difficulties of the brilliant and high-tempered Nina Simone, whose distinctive voice and music occupy a singular place in the canon of American song. One of eight children in a proud North Carolina black family, the prodigiously talented child was trained in classical piano through the charity of a local white woman, then devastatingly rejected by the Curtis Institute of Music--a dream deferred that would forever...

Chess Records--and later Checker, Argo, and Cadet--was crucial in bringing blues artists like Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf to a wider audience.