Valerie Simpson on Nick Ashford: ‘I’m not used to him not being here yet’

Source: The Chicago Tribune Valerie Simpson says she never really used to think much about posterity. After all, there was still so much work to be done with her musical partner and husband, Nick Ashford. But then Ashford died last August at age 70 of complications from throat cancer, and Simpson, 65, came to grips with mortality, both personal and artistic. "Nick's passing made me realize that one day we'll both be absent," she said in her first major interview since her longtime partner's death. "You see certain things that are happening now because of his passing, and I'm content to know that the music is everlasting. "I didn't think about it before, but now I realize this music has legs way beyond whatever we originally might have thought. The songwriting is the cornerstone of everything else we did. That's the hat we were most proud of wearing as a couple." Ashford's legacy will be honored Saturday when The HistoryMakers nonprofit group holds its annual gala at the Thorne Hall Auditorium at the Northwestern University School of Law. Simpson will be interviewed at the private event, which also will include performances by Patti Austin and Kindred Family Soul for broadcast in February, 2012 on PBS-TV. The HistoryMakers is building a digital archive of African-American innovators  in a wide range of disciplines; it currently includes oral histories of more than 2,000 pioneers, said Julieanna Richardson, founder and executive director of The HistoryMakers in Chicago. “We can’t assume that time is on [...]