Problem: Nina Simone (; born Eunice Kathleen Waymon; February 21, 1933 - April 21, 2003) was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger, and activist in the Civil Rights Movement. Simone employed a broad range of musical styles including classical, jazz, blues, folk, R&B, gospel, and pop. Born in North Carolina, the sixth child of a preacher, Waymon aspired to be a concert pianist.

Simone was known for her temper and frequent outbursts.  Simone abandoned her daughter Lisa Simone Kelly for years in Mount Vernon after relocating to Liberia. When they reunited in West Africa, Simone became abusive. "She went from being my comfort to the monster in my life. Now she was the person doing the beating, and she was beating me." The abuse became so unbearable that Kelly became suicidal and moved back to New York to stay with her father, Andrew Stroud.  In 1985, she fired a gun at a record company executive, whom she accused of stealing royalties. Simone said she "tried to kill him" but "missed". In 1995, she shot and wounded her neighbor's son with an air gun after the boy's laughter disturbed her concentration. According to a biographer, Simone took medication for a condition from the mid-1960s on. All this was only known to a small group of intimates, and kept out of public view for many years, until the biography Break Down and Let It All Out written by Sylvia Hampton and David Nathan revealed this in 2004, after her death. Singer-songwriter Janis Ian, a one-time friend of Simone's, related in her own autobiography, Society's Child: My Autobiography, two instances to illustrate Simone's volatility: one incident in which she forced a shoe store cashier, at gunpoint, to take back a pair of sandals she'd already worn; and another in which Simone demanded a royalty payment from Ian herself as an exchange for having recorded one of Ian's songs, and then ripped a pay telephone out of its wall when she was refused.

What was her temperament?

Answer with quotes: Simone was known for her temper and frequent outbursts.


Problem: Patsy Cline (born Virginia Patterson Hensley; September 8, 1932 - March 5, 1963) was an American country music singer and part of the Nashville sound during the late 1950s and early 1960s. She successfully "crossed over" to pop music and was one of the most influential, successful, and acclaimed vocalists of the 20th century. She died at age 30 in the crash of a private airplane. Cline was known for her rich tone, emotionally expressive and bold contralto voice, and her role as a country music pioneer.

Patsy Cline was born Virginia Patterson Hensley on September 8, 1932 in Winchester, Virginia, in the city's Memorial Hospital. She was the eldest child of seamstress Hilda Virginia (nee Patterson, 1916-1998) and blacksmith Samuel Lawrence Hensley (1889-1956). She had a brother Samuel Jr. (1939-2004) and a sister Sylvia. The family moved often before finally settling in Winchester, Virginia when Patsy was 16. Sam Hensley deserted his family in 1947, but the children's home was reportedly happy nonetheless.  When Patsy was 13, she was hospitalized with a throat infection and rheumatic fever. She later said, "The fever affected my throat and when I recovered I had this booming voice like Kate Smith."  Cline enrolled at John Handley High School but never attended classes. To help her mother support their family, she worked as a soda jerk at Gaunt's Drug Store and a waitress at the Triangle Diner. She watched performers through the window at the local radio station, and she asked WINC (AM) disc jockey Jimmy McCoy if she could sing on his show. Her performance in 1947 was well received and she was asked back. This led to appearances at local nightclubs wearing fringed Western outfits that her mother made from Patsy's designs.  Cline performed in variety and talent shows in the Winchester and Tri-State areas, and she gained a large following through the shows and local radio appearances. Jimmy Dean was already a country star in 1954, and she became a regular with him on Connie B. Gay's Town and Country Jamboree radio show on WAVA (AM) in Arlington County, Virginia.

Did that lead to other opportunities?

Answer with quotes: This led to appearances at local nightclubs wearing fringed Western outfits that her mother made from Patsy's designs.


Problem: Georgette Heyer (; 16 August 1902 - 4 July 1974) was an English historical romance and detective fiction novelist. Her writing career began in 1921, when she turned a story for her younger brother into the novel The Black Moth.

While holidaying with her family in December 1920, Heyer met George Ronald Rougier, who was two years her senior. The two became regular dance partners while Rougier studied at the Royal School of Mines to become a mining engineer. In the spring of 1925, shortly after the publication of her fifth novel, they became engaged. One month later, Heyer's father died of a heart attack. He left no pension, and Heyer assumed financial responsibility for her brothers, aged 19 and 14. Two months after her father's death, on 18 August, Heyer and Rougier married in a simple ceremony.  In October 1925 Rougier was sent to work in the Caucasus Mountains, partly because he had learned Russian as a child. Heyer remained at home and continued to write. In 1926, she released These Old Shades, in which the Duke of Avon courts his own ward. Unlike her first novel, These Old Shades focused more on personal relationships than on adventure. The book appeared in the midst of the 1926 United Kingdom general strike; as a result, the novel received no newspaper coverage, reviews, or advertising. Nevertheless, the book sold 190,000 copies. Because the lack of publicity had not harmed the novel's sales, Heyer refused for the rest of her life to promote her books, even though her publishers often asked her to give interviews. She once wrote to a friend that "as for being photographed at Work or in my Old World Garden, that is the type of publicity which I find nauseating and quite unnecessary. My private life concerns no one but myself and my family."  Rougier returned home in the summer of 1926, but within months he was sent to the East African territory of Tanganyika. Heyer joined him there the following year. They lived in a hut made of elephant grass located in the bush; Heyer was the first white woman her servants had ever seen. While in Tanganyika, Heyer wrote The Masqueraders; set in 1745, the book follows the romantic adventures of siblings who pretend to be of the opposite sex in order to protect their family, all former Jacobites. Although Heyer did not have access to all of her reference material, the book contained only one anachronism: she placed the opening of White's a year too early. She also wrote an account of her adventures, titled "The Horned Beast of Africa", which was published in 1929 in the newspaper The Sphere.  In 1928, Heyer followed her husband to Macedonia, where she almost died after a dentist improperly administered an anaesthetic. She insisted they return to England before starting a family. The following year Rougier left his job, making Heyer the primary breadwinner. After a failed experiment running a gas, coke, and lighting company, Rougier purchased a sports shop in Horsham with money they borrowed from Heyer's aunts. Heyer's brother Boris lived above the shop and helped Rougier, while Heyer continued to provide the bulk of the family's earnings with her writing.

Were they there for a long time?

Answer with quotes:
They lived in a hut made of elephant grass located in the bush; Heyer was the first white woman her servants had ever seen.