37. She began playing the organ when she was just two and a half
Nina’s home was poor, but musical. Her pious parents had a keen appreciation of music, and the tiny, overcrowded family home was full of religious songs. Aged just two and a half, the intrepid Nina learned not only to climb up onto the organ stool at St Luke Church, where her mother preached, but taught herself to play the instrument. One day she even surprised her mother by playing her favorite hymn, ‘God Be with You Till We Meet Again‘. ‘We knew she was a genius by the time she was just three’, recalled her brother Carrol.