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In her Los Angeles Tribune article published in 1959, Almena Lomax reviews the newly release<\/span>d<\/span>\u00a0debut album <\/span>Little Girl Blue<\/span><\/i> by Nina Simone. In this review, she traces Simon<\/span>e\u2019s influences to several big-name jazzers at the time including, but certainly not limited<\/span>\u00a0to Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, and Louis Armstrong. The article also notes of how Simone draws upon her classical piano studies and how she freely dances across the lines of classical and jazz styles, combining them in such a way as to never stray too deep into one of those musical territories, but consciously being aware of the genre mixture she was playing with. In this respect she also can be compared to George Gershwin, from who she also draws much inspiration, this is evident by her cover of \u201cI Loves You, Porgy\u201d from Gershwin\u2019s <\/span>Porgy and Bess<\/span><\/i>. The article further goes to suggest that Nina Simone is \u201c<\/span> an ethnic American Negro who is so \u2018ethnic American Negro\u2019 that we feel like the expression was coined for her. Already ecstatic about her quick rise to fame, little did the author know that Nina Simone would eventually become a common household name and her music a staple in the American Jazz idiom. Now we face the question: was Lomax right? On the one hand, to say that N![\"\"](\"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/593\/2017\/10\/Screen-Shot-2017-10-09-at-16.23.05.png\")
<\/a>ina Simone\u2019s music is a holistic representation of African American music is certainly inaccurate. However, Simone\u2019s influence over not only African American music but all of American popular music from the time she first released her <\/span>Little Girl Blue<\/span><\/i> even to the present day still goes strong. We can see this through numerous recordings and live performances of her music put on by contemporary jazz and popular musicians today.<\/span><\/p>\n