Nina Simone, singer, 1933, Tryon, NC
Nina studied piano at the Juilliard School of Music, but her career quickly turned to singing rather than performing on piano. She signed with Bethlehem Records and produced several hits early in her career, including an emotional version of "I Love You Porgy". She recorded some popular songs with various groups, but always returned to jazz. Aretha Franklin, RobertaFlack, and Laura Nyro were all influenced by Nina. She actually considered herself more of a folk singer than a jazz artist, and her singing owed an unmistakable debt to black gospel music. During the 1960s she was very active with the civil rights movement. At times she was more famous for her social consciousness than she was for her music. During the 1970s her music fell out of fashion in the U.S. She divorced her husband and manager, Andy Stroud, and left the country in 1973, living in Liberia and Barbados before settling in France. In a 1998 interview, she said she had left the U.S. because of the racial situation which she called "worse than ever". Nina Simone died in 2003.
Warren Vache, Cornet, 1951, Rahway, NJ
Warren began his career playing traditional jazz with his father, a bass player. He studied trumpet with Pee Wee Erwin from 1970 to 1980. Warren first gained critical acclaim by re-creating solos by Bix Beiderbecke while working with the New York Jazz Repertory Company at Carnegie Hall in 1975. Between 1975 and 1985 he worked intermittently with Benny Goodman and was a member of the house band at Eddie Condon's club. He next formed a long-lasting association with Scott Hamilton that lasted into the 1980s. Vache is the first major trumpeter since Ruby Braff to be inspired by the work of Louis Armstrong. He has also taken elements from the playing of Clifford Brown and other musicians and formed them into a style that is strictly his own.
