Hypnotic: The Reverie of Nina Simone by Lucas Fultz

HYPNOTI C The Reverie of Nina Simone

LUKE FULTZ

HYPNOTIC

HYPNOTIC THE REVERIE OF NINA SIMONE

LUKE FULTZ

FULTZ PRESS

SAN FRANCISCO

First published in 2012 Copyright ÂŠ 2012 by Luke Fultz All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. Fultz Press San Francisco, CA 94132 Publisherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Cataloging-in-Publication data HYPNOTIC The Reverie of Nina Simone / Luke Fultz 1. Music. 2. Civil Rights. 3. Inspirational ISBN 0-525-47433-1 First Edition

To the feeling we get when discovering something new, and not wanting to let go.

CONTENTS MORNING YEARS BABY GENIUS 12 SCRAPED KNEES 22 BOY CRAZY 34

AFTERNOON YEARS NEW NAME, SAME FACE 48 BETWEEN BLACK AND WHITE KEYS 58 MERCURY RISING 68

EVENING YEARS SHOULDERS OF GIANTS WHERE I CALL HOME MUSIC KEEPS SPINNING

80 90 100

MORNING YEARS

Baby Genius

he was one of the most extraordinary artists of the twentieth century, an icon of American music. She

was the consummate musical storyteller, a griot as she would come to learn, who used her remarkable talent to create a legacy of liberation, empowerment, passion, and love through a magnificent body of works. She earned the moniker â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;High Priestess of Soulâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; for she could weave a spell so seductive and hypnotic that the listener lost track of time and space as they became absorbed in it. 15

HYPNOTIC

She was who the world would come to know as Nina Simone. When Nina Simone died on April 21, 2003, she left a timeless treasure trove of musical magic spanning over four decades from her first hit, the 1959 Top 10 classic “I Loves You Porgy,” to “A Single Woman,” the title cut from her one and only 1993 Elektra album. While thirty-three years separate those recordings, the element of honest emotion is the glue that binds the two together – it is that approach to every piece of work that became Nina’s uncompromising musical trademark. By the end of her life, Nina was enjoying an unprecedented degree of recognition. Her music was enjoyed by the masses due to the CD revolution, discovery on the Internet, and exposure through movies and television. Nina had sold over one million CDs in the last decade of her life, making her a global catalog best-seller.

No one website can fully explore the many nuances and flavors that made up the more than 40 original albums in the Nina Simone library. This site and accompanying radio station contain many of Nina’s finest works. However, we might not have had the chance to witness the breathtaking range of material Nina could cover if she hadn’t taken the path she did. Born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina on February 21st, 1933, Nina’s prodigious talent as a musician was evident early on when she started playing piano by ear at the age of three. Her mother, a Methodist minister, and her father, a handyman and preacher himself, couldn’t ignore young Eunice’s God-given gift of music. Raised in the church on the straight and narrow, her parents taught her right from wrong, to carry herself

with dignity, and to work hard. She played piano – but didn’t sing – in her mother’s church, displaying remarkable talent early in her life. Able to play virtually anything by ear, she was soon studying classical music with an Englishwoman named Muriel Mazzanovich, who had moved to the small southern town. It was from these humble roots that Eunice developed a lifelong love of Johann Sebastian Bach, Chopin, Brahms, Beethoven and Schubert. After graduating valedictorian of her high school class, the community raised money for a scholarship for Eunice to study at Julliard in New York City before applying to the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Her family had already moved to the City Of Brotherly Love, but Eunice’s hopes for a career as a

pioneering African American classical pianist were dashed when the school denied her admission. To the end, she herself would claim that racism was the reason she did not attend. While her original dream was unfulfilled, Eunice ended up with an incredible worldwide career as Nina Simone – almost by default. To survive, she began teaching music to local students. One fateful day in 1954, looking to supplement her income, Eunice auditioned to sing at the Midtown Bar & Grill on Pacific Avenue in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Word spread about this new singer and pianist who was dipping into the songbooks of Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, and the like, transforming popular tunes of the day into a unique synthesis of jazz, blues, and classical music. Her rich, deep velvet vocal tones, combined with her mastery of the keyboard, soon attracted club 16

BABY GENIUS

goers up and down the East Coast. In order to hide the fact that she was singing in bars, Eunice’s mother would refer to the practice as “working in the fires of hell”, overnight Eunice Waymon became Nina Simone by taking the nickname “Nina” meaning “little one” in Spanish and “Simone” after the actress Simone Signoret. At the age of twenty-four, Nina came to the attention of the record industry. After submitting a demo of songs she had recorded during a performance in New Hope, Pennsylvania, she was signed by Syd Nathan, owner of the Ohio-based King Records (home to James Brown), to his Jazz imprint, Bethlehem Records. The boisterous Nathan had insisted on choosing songs for her debut set, but eventually relented and allowed Nina to delve in the repertoire she had been performing at clubs up and down the eastern seaboard. One of Nina’s stated musical

influences was Billie Holiday and her inspired reading of “Porgy” (from “Porgy & Bess”) heralded the arrival of a new talent on the national scene. At the same mammoth 13 hour session in 1957, recorded in New York City, Nina also cut “My Baby Just Cares For Me,” previously recorded by Nate King Cole, Count Basie, and Woody Herman. The song was used by Chanel in a perfume commercial in Europe in the 1980’s and it became a massive hit for Nina, a British chart topper at #5, and thus a staple of her repertoire for the rest of her career. Nina Simone’s stay with Bethlehem Records was short lived and in 1959, after moving to New York City, she was signed by Joyce Selznik, the eastern talent scout for Colpix Records, a division of Columbia Pictures. Months after the release of her debut LP for the label (1959‘s The Amazing Nina Simone), Nina was performing at her

first major New York City venue, the mid-Manhattanlocated Town Hall. Sensing that her live performances would capture the essential spontaneity of her artistry, Colpix opted to record her September 12, 1959 show. “You Can Have Him,” a glorious torch song previously cut by Peggy Lee and Ella Fitzgerald, was one of the highlights of the evening. The song opened with a dazzling keyboard arpeggio that would become her sig-

Born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina on February 21st, 1933, Nina’s prodigious talent as a musician was evident early on when she started playing piano by ear at the age of three.

nature for decades. So momentous was the Town Hall performance that it inspired some of the same musicians, featuring the vocals of Nina’s only daughter, Lisa Simone Kelly, to do a tribute to a sold out audience over forty five years later. As Nina’s reputation as an engaging live performer grew, it wasn’t long before she was asked to perform at the prestigious Newport Jazz Festival. Accompanied on the June 30th,1960 show by Al Schackman, a guitarist who would go on to become Nina’s longest-running musical colleague, bassist Chris White, and drummer Bobby Hamilton, the dynamic show was recorded by the Colpix. The subsequent release in 1961 of the old blues tune

HYPNOTIC

Raised in the church on the straight and narrow, her parents taught her right from wrong, to carry herself with dignity, and to work hard.

BABY GENIUS

“Trouble In Mind” as a single gave Nina her third charted record. Her stay with Colpix resulted in some wonderful albums – nine in all – included Nina’s version of Bessie Smith’s blues classic “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out.” Issued as a single in 1960, it became Nina’s second charted Pop and R&B hit and one of two Colpix tracks to achieve such a feat during her five year stint with the label. Other stand out tracks from that era were the soulful song “Cotton Eyed Joe,” the torch tune “The Other Women,” and the Norwegian folk rendition of “Black Is The Colour Of My True Love’s Hair” – all beautiful examples of Nina Simone at her storytelling best, painting a vivid picture with her skill as a lyrical interpreter. During this time with the label, Nina recorded one civil rights song, Oscar Brown Jr.’s “Brown Baby,” which was included on her fifth album for the label, At

The Village Gate. “Critics started to talk about what sort of music I was playing,” writes Nina in her 1991 autobiography I Put A Spell On You, “and tried to find a neat slot to file it away in. It was difficult for them because I was playing popular songs in a classical style with a classical piano technique influenced by cocktail jazz. On top of that I included spirituals and children’s song in my performances, and those sorts of songs were automatically identified with the folk movement. So, saying what sort of music I played gave the critics problems because there was something from everything in there, but it also meant I was appreciated across the board – by jazz, folk, pop and blues fans as well as admirers of classical music.” Clearly Nina Simone was not an artist who could be easily classified. Nina’s Colpix recordings cemented her appeal to a nightclub based U.S. audience. Once she moved to Phillips, a division of Dutch owned Mercury Records, she was ready to expand her following globally. Her first LP for the

label, 1964’s In Concert, signaled Nina’s undaunting stand for freedom and justice for all, stamping her irrevocably as a pioneer and inspirational leader in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. Her own original “Mississippi Goddam” was banned throughout the South but such a response made no difference in Nina’s unyielding commitment to liberty; subsequent groundbreaking recordings for Philips like “Four Women” (recorded September 1965) and “Strange Fruit” continued to keep Nina in the forefront of the few performers willing to use music as a vehicle for social commentary and change. Such risks were seldom taken by artists during that time of such dramatic civil upheaval. For years, Nina felt there was much about the way that she made her living that was less then appealing. One gets a sense of that in the following passage from I Put A Spell on You where she explains

her initial reluctance to perform material that was tied to the Civil Rights Movement. “Nightclubs were dirty, making records was dirty, popular music was dirty and to mix all that with politics seemed senseless and demeaning. And until songs like ‘Mississippi Goddam’ just burst out of me, I had musical problems as well. How can you take the memory of a man like [Civil Rights activist] Medgar Evers and reduce all that he was to three and a half minutes and a simple tune? That was the musical side of it I shied away from; I didn’t like ‘protest music’ because a lot of it was so simple and unimaginative it stripped the dignity away from the people it was trying to celebrate. But the Alabama church bombing and the murder of Medgar Evers stopped that argument and with ‘Mississippi Goddam,’ I realized there was no turning back.” 19

HYPNOTIC Nina was deeply affected by these two events. In 1962, she had befriended noted playwright Lorraine Hansberry and spoke often with her about the Civil Rights Movement. While she was moved by her conversations with Hansberry, it took the killing of Medgar Evers and the four girls in Birmingham to act as catalysts for a transformation of Nina’s career. There were many sides to Nina Simone. Among her most amazing recordings were the original and so-soulful version “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” and “I Put A Spell On You” (which had reached to #23 in the U.S. charts), eerily moody, unrestrained, drama to the max; “Ne Me Quitte Pas” tender, poignant, filled with melancholy; and with gospel-like fervor, the hypnotic voodoo of “See-Line Woman.” In her own unrivaled way, Nina also loved to venture into the more earthy side of life. After she signed with RCA Records in 1967 (a deal her then husband/manager Andy Stroud had negotiated), her very first recordings for the label included the saucy

“Do I Move You?” and the undeniably sexual “I Want A Little Sugar In My Bowl” which were from the concept album entitled Nina Sings The Blues. Backed by a stellar cast of New York CIty session musicians, the album was far and away Nina’s most down-home recording session. By this time, Nina had become central to a circle of African American playwrights, poets, and writers all centered in Harlem along with the previously mentioned Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin and Langston Hughes. The outcome from one of the relationships became a highlight of the LP with the song “Backlash Blues,” a song that’s lyrics originated from the last poem Langston Hughes submitted for publication prior to his death in May, 1967 and gave to Nina. Nina’s seven years with RCA produced some remarkable recordings, ranging from two songs featured in the Broadway musical “Hair” (combined into a medley, “Ain’t Got No – I Got Life,” a #2 British hit in 1968) to a

Simone-ified version of George Harrison’s “Here Comes The Sun,” which remained in Nina’s repertoire all the way through to her final performance in 2002. Along the way at RCA, songs penned by Bob Dylan (“Just Like A Woman”), the brothers Gibb (“To Love Somebody”), and Tina Turner (“Funkier Than A Mosquito’s Tweeter”) took pride of place alongside Nina’s own anthem of empowerment, the classic “To Be Young, Gifted, & Black,” a song written in memory of Nina’s good friend Lorraine Hansberry. The title of the song coming from a play Hansberry had been working on just prior to her death. After Nina left RCA, she spent a good deal of the 1970’s and early 1980’s living in Liberia, Barbados, England, Belgium, France, Switzerland and The Netherlands. In 1978, for the first time since she left RCA, Nina was convinced by U.S. jazz veteran Creed Taylor to make an album for his CTI label. This would be her first new studio

album in six years and she recorded it in Belgium with strings and background vocals cut in New York City. With the kind of “clean” sound that was a hallmark of CTI recordings, the Nina Simone album that emerged was simply brilliant. Nina herself would later claimed that she ”hated” the record but many fans strongly disagreed. With an eighteen piece string section conducted by David Mathews (known for his arrangements on James Brown’s records), the results were spectacular. The title track, Randy Newman’s evocative “Baltimore,” was an inspired Nina Simone choice. It had a beautifully constructed reggae-like beat and used some of the finest musicians producer Creed Taylor could find including Nina’s guitarist and music director, Al Schackman. Aside from 1982′s Fodder On My Wings that Nina recorded for Carrere Records, two albums she made of the independent VPI label in Hollywood (Nina’s Back and Live And Kickin’) in 1985, and a 1987 Live At Vine 20

BABY GENIUS Street set recorded for Verve, Nina Simone did not make another full length album until Elektra A&R executive Michael Alago persuaded her to record again. After much wining and dining, Nina finally signed on the dotted line. Elektra tapped producer Andre Fischer, noted conductor Jeremy Lubbock, and a trio of respected musicians to provide the suitable environment for this highly personal reading of “A Single Woman,” which became the centerpiece and title track for Nina Simone’s final full length album. With two marriages behind her in 1993 she settled in Carry-le-Rout, near Aix-en-Provence in Southern France. She would continue to tour through the 1990’s and became very much ‘the single woman’ she sang about on her last label recording. She rarely traveled without an entourage, but if you were fortunate enough to get to know the woman behind the music you could glimpse the solitary soul that understood the pain of being misunderstood. It was one of Nina’s many abilities to comprehend the bittersweet qualities of life and then parlay them

into a song that made her such an enduring and fascinating person. In her autobiography, Nina Simone writes that her function as an artist is “… to make people feel on a deep level. It’s difficult to describe because it’s not something you can analyze; to get near what it’s about you have to play it. And when you’ve caught it, when you’ve got the audience

Raised in the church on the straight and narrow, her parents taught her right from wrong, to carry herself with dignity, and to work hard.

hooked, you always know because it’s like electricity hanging in the air.” It was that very electricity that made her such an important artist to so many and it will be that electricity that continues to turn on new people all over the world for years to come. Nina Simone died in her sleep at her home in Carry-le-Rout, Bouches-du-Rhone on April 21, 2003. Her funeral service was attended by Miriam Makeba, Patti Labelle, poet Sonia Sanchez, actor Ossie Davis and hundreds of others. Elton John sent a floral tribute with the message, “You were the greatest and I love you”.

She was one of the most extraordinary artists of the twentieth century, an icon of American music. She was the consummate musical storyteller, a griot as she would come to learn, who used her remarkable talent to create a legacy of liberation, empowerment, passion, and love through a magnificent body of works. She earned the moniker ‘High Priestess of Soul’ for she could weave a spell so seductive and hypnotic that the listener lost track of time and space as they became absorbed in the moment. She was who the world would come to know as Nina Simone. When Nina Simone died on April 21, 2003, she left a timeless treasure trove of musical magic spanning over four decades from her first hit, the 1959 Top 10 classic “I Loves You Porgy,” to “A Single Woman,” the title cut from her one and only 1993 Elektra album. While thirty-three years separate those recordings, the element of honest emotion is the glue that binds the two together – it is that approach to every piece of work that became Nina’s uncompromising musical trademark. 21

HYPNOTIC

By the end of her life, Nina was enjoying an unprecedented degree of recognition. Her music was enjoyed by the masses due to the CD revolution, discovery on the Internet, and exposure through movies and television. Nina had sold over one million CDs in the last decade of her life, making her a global catalog best-seller. No one website can fully explore the many nuances and flavors that made up the more than 40 original albums in the Nina Simone library. This site and accompanying radio station contain many of Nina’s finest works. However, we might not have had the chance to witness the breathtaking range of material Nina could cover if she hadn’t taken the path she did. Born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina on February 21st, 1933, Nina’s prodigious talent as a musician was evident early on when she started playing piano by ear at the age of three. Her mother, a Methodist

minister, and her father, a handyman and preacher himself, couldn’t ignore young Eunice’s God-given gift of music. Raised in the church on the straight and narrow, her parents taught her right from wrong, to carry herself with dignity, and to work hard. She played piano – but didn’t sing – in her mother’s church, displaying remarkable talent early in her life. Able to play virtually anything by ear, she was soon studying classical music with an Englishwoman named Muriel Mazzanovich, who had moved to the small southern town. It was from these humble roots that Eunice developed a lifelong love of Johann Sebastian Bach, Chopin, Brahms, Beethoven and Schubert. After graduating valedictorian of her high school class, the community raised money for a scholarship for Eunice to study at Julliard in New

York City before applying to the Philadelphia. Her family had albut Eunice’s hopes for classical pianist admission. racism was her origiended

prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in ready moved to the City Of Brotherly Love, a career as a pioneering African American were dashed when the school denied her To the end, she herself would claim that the reason she did not attend. While nal dream was unfulfilled, Eunice up with an incredible worldwide

career as Nina Simone – almost by default. To survive, she began teaching music to local students. One fateful day in 1954, looking to supplement her income, Eunice auditioned to sing at the 22

BABY GENIUS

Midtown Bar & Grill on Pacific Avenue in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Word spread about this new singer and pianist who was dipping into the songbooks of Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, and the like, transforming popular tunes of the day into a unique synthesis of jazz, blues, and classical music. Her rich, deep velvet vocal tones, combined with her mastery of the keyboard, soon attracted club goers up and down the East Coast. In order to hide the fact that she was singing in bars, Eunice’s mother would refer to the practice as “working in the fires of hell”, overnight Eunice Waymon became Nina Simone by taking the nickname “Nina” meaning “little one” in Spanish and “Simone” after the actress Simone Signoret. At the age of twenty-four, Nina came to the attention of the record industry. After submitting a demo of songs she had recorded during a performance in New Hope, Pennsylvania, she was signed by Syd Nathan, owner of

the Ohio-based King Records (home to James Brown), to his Jazz imprint, Bethlehem Records. The boisterous Nathan had insisted on choosing songs for her debut set, but eventually relented and allowed Nina to delve in the repertoire she had been performing at clubs up and down the eastern seaboard. One of Nina’s stated musical influences was Billie Holiday and her inspired reading of “Porgy” (from “Porgy & Bess”) heralded the arrival of a new talent on the national scene. At the same mammoth 13 hour session in 1957, recorded in New York City, Nina also cut “My Baby Just Cares For Me,” previously recorded by Nate King Cole, Count Basie, and Woody Herman. The song was used by Chanel in a perfume commercial in Europe in the 1980’s and it became a massive hit for Nina, a British chart topper at #5, and thus a staple of her repertoire for the rest of her career. Nina Simone’s stay with Bethlehem Records was short lived and in 1959, after moving to New York City, she was signed by Joyce Selznik, the eastern talent scout for Colpix Records, a division of Columbia Pictures. Months

after the release of her debut LP for the label (1959‘s The Amazing Nina Simone), Nina was performing at her first major New York City venue, the mid-Manhattan-located Town Hall. Sensing that her live performances would capture the essential spontaneity of her artistry, Colpix opted to record her September 12, 1959 show.

Scraped Knees

er mother, a Methodist minister, and her father, a handyman and preacher himself, couldn’t

ignore young Eunice’s God-given gift of music. Raised in the church on the straight and narrow, her parents taught her right from wrong, to carry herself with dignity, and to work hard. She played piano – but didn’t sing – in her mother’s church, displaying remarkable talent early in her life. Able to play virtually anything by ear, she was soon studying classical music. 25

HYPNOTIC

honest emotion is the glue that binds the two together – it is that approach to every piece of work that became Nina’s uncompromising musical trademark. By the end of her life, Nina was enjoying an unprecedented degree of recognition. Her music was enjoyed by the masses due to the CD revolution, discovery on the Internet, and exposure through movies and television. Nina had sold over one million CDs in the last decade of her life, making her a global catalog best-seller. No one website can fully explore the many nuances and flavors that made up the more than 40 original albums in the Nina Simone library. This site and accompanying radio station contain many of Nina’s finest works. However, we might not have had the chance to witness the breathtaking range of material Nina could cover.

Born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina on February 21st, 1933, Nina’s prodigious talent as a musician was evident early on when she started playing piano by ear at the age of three. Her mother, a Methodist minister, and her father, a handyman and preacher himself, couldn’t ignore young Eunice’s God-given gift of music. Raised in the church on the straight and narrow, her parents taught her right from wrong, to carry herself with dignity, and to work hard. She played piano – but didn’t sing – in her mother’s church, displaying remarkable talent early in her life. Able to play virtually anything by ear, she was soon studying classical music with an Englishwoman named Muriel Mazzanovich, who had moved to the small southern town. It was from these humble roots that Eunice developed a lifelong love of Johann Sebastian Bach, Chopin, Brahms, Beethoven and Schubert. 26

SCRAPED KNEES

After graduating valedictorian of her high school class, the community raised money for a scholarship for Eunice to study at Julliard in New York City before applying to the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Her family had already moved to the City Of Brotherly Love, but Eunice’s hopes for a career as a pioneering African American classical pianist were dashed when the school denied her admission. To the end, she herself would claim that racism was the reason she did not attend. While her original dream was unfulfilled, Eunice ended up with an incredible worldwide career as Nina Simone – almost by default. To survive, she began teaching music to local students. One fateful day in 1954, looking to supplement her income, Eunice auditioned to sing at the Midtown Bar & Grill on Pacific Avenue in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Word spread about this new singer and pianist who was dipping into the songbooks of Gershwin, Cole Porter,

It was from these humble roots that Eunice developed a lifelong love of Johann Sebastian Bach, Chopin, Brahms, Beethoven and Schubert.

Richard Rodgers, and the like, transforming popular tunes of the day into a unique synthesis of jazz, blues, and classical music. Her rich, deep velvet vocal tones, combined with her mastery of the keyboard, soon attracted club goers up and down the East Coast. In order to hide the fact that she was singing in bars, Eunice’s mother would refer to the practice as

“working in the fires of hell”, overnight Eunice Waymon became Nina Simone by taking the nickname “Nina” meaning “little one” in Spanish and “Simone” after the actress Simone Signoret. At the age of twenty-four, Nina came to the attention of the record industry. After submitting a demo of songs she had recorded during a performance in New Hope, Pennsylvania, she was signed by Syd Nathan, owner of the Ohio-based King Records (home to James Brown), to his Jazz imprint, Bethlehem Records. The boisterous Nathan had insisted on choosing songs for her debut set, but eventually relented and allowed Nina to delve in the repertoire she had been performing at clubs up and down the eastern seaboard. One of Nina’s stated musical influences was Billie Holiday and her inspired reading of “Porgy” (from “Porgy & Bess”) heralded the arrival of a 27

HYPNOTIC

new talent on the national scene. At the same mammoth 13 hour session in 1957, recorded in New York City, Nina also cut “My Baby Just Cares For Me,” previously recorded by Nate King Cole, Count Basie, and Woody Herman. The song was used by Chanel in a perfume commercial in Europe in the 1980’s and it became a massive hit for Nina, a British chart topper at #5, and thus a staple of her repertoire.

Nina Simone’s stay with Bethlehem Records was short lived and in 1959, after moving to New York City, she was signed by Joyce Selznik, the eastern talent scout for Colpix Records, a division of Columbia Pictures. Months after the release of her debut LP for the label (1959‘s The Amazing Nina Simone), Nina was performing at her first major New York City venue, the

mid-Manhattan-located Town Hall. Sensing that her live performances would capture the essential spontaneity of her artistry, Colpix opted to record her September 12, 1959 show. “You Can Have Him,” a glorious torch song previously cut by Peggy Lee and Ella Fitzgerald, was one of the highlights of the evening. The song opened with a dazzling keyboard arpeggio that would become her signature for decades. So momentous was the Town Hall performance that it inspired some of the same musicians, featuring the vocals of Nina’s only daughter, Lisa Simone Kelly, to do a tribute to a sold out audience over forty five years later. As Nina’s reputation as an engaging live performer grew, it wasn’t long before she was asked to perform at the prestigious Newport Jazz Festival. Accompanied on the June 30th,1960 show by Al Schackman, a guitarist 28

SCRAPED KNEES

who would go on to become Nina’s longest-running musical colleague, bassist Chris White, and drummer Bobby Hamilton, the dynamic show was recorded by the Colpix. The subsequent release in 1961 of the old blues tune “Trouble In Mind” as a single gave Nina her third charted record. Her stay with Colpix resulted in some wonderful albums – nine in all – included Nina’s version of Bessie Smith’s blues classic “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out.” Issued as a single in 1960, it became Nina’s second charted Pop and R&B hit and one of two Colpix tracks to achieve such a feat during her five year stint with the label. Other stand out tracks from that era were the soulful song “Cotton Eyed Joe,” the torch tune “The Other Women,” and the Norwegian folk rendition of “Black Is The Colour Of My True Love’s Hair” – all beautiful examples of Nina Simone at her storytelling best, painting a vivid picture with her skill as a lyrical

interpreter. During this time with the label, Nina recorded one civil rights song, Oscar Brown Jr.’s “Brown Baby,” which was included on her fifth album for the label, At The Village Gate. “Critics started to talk about what sort of music I was playing,” writes Nina in her 1991 autobiography I Put A Spell On You, “and tried to find a neat slot to file it away in. It was difficult for them because I was playing popular songs in a classical style with a classical piano technique influenced by cocktail jazz. On top of that I included spirituals and children’s song in my performances, and those sorts of songs were automatically identified with the folk movement. So, saying what sort of music I played gave the critics

problems because there was something from everything in there, but it also meant I was appreciated across the board – by jazz, folk, pop and blues fans as well as admirers of classical music.” Clearly Nina Simone was not an artist who could be easily classified. Nina’s Colpix recordings cemented her appeal to a nightclub based U.S. audience. Once she moved to Phillips, a division of Dutch owned Mercury Records, she was ready to expand her following globally. Her first LP for the label, 1964’s In Concert, signaled Nina’s undaunting stand for freedom and 29

HYPNOTIC

justice for all, stamping her irrevocably as a pioneer and inspirational leader in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. Her own original “Mississippi Goddam” was banned throughout the South but such a response made no difference in Nina’s unyielding commitment to liberty; subsequent groundbreaking recordings for Philips like “Four Women” (recorded September 1965) and “Strange Fruit” continued to keep Nina in the forefront of the few performers willing to use music as a vehicle for social commentary and change. Such risks were seldom taken by artists during that time of such dramatic civil upheaval. For years, Nina felt there was much about the way that she made her living that was less then appealing. One gets a sense of that in the following passage from I Put A Spell on You where she explains her initial reluctance to perform material that was tied to the Civil Rights Movement.

“Nightclubs were dirty, making records was dirty, popular music was dirty and to mix all that with politics seemed senseless and demeaning. And until songs like ‘Mississippi Goddam’ just burst out of me, I had musical problems as well. How can you take the memory of a man like [Civil Rights activist] Medgar Evers and reduce all that he was to three and a half minutes and a simple tune? That was the musical side of it I shied away from; I didn’t like ‘protest music’ because a lot of it was so simple and unimaginative it stripped the dignity away from the people it was trying to celebrate. But the Alabama church bombing and the murder of Medgar Evers stopped that argument and with ‘Mississippi Goddam,’ I realized there was no turning back.” Nina was deeply affected by these two events. In 1962, she had befriended noted playwright Lorraine

Hansberry and spoke often with her about the Civil Rights Movement. While she was moved by her conversations with Hansberry, it took the killing of Medgar Evers and the four girls in Birmingham to act as catalysts for a transformation of Nina’s career. There were many sides to Nina Simone. Among her most amazing recordings were the original and so-soulful version “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” and “I Put A Spell On You” (which had reached to #23 in the U.S. charts), eerily moody, unrestrained, drama to the max; “Ne Me Quitte Pas” tender, poignant, filled with melancholy; and with gospel-like fervor, the hypnotic voodoo of “See-Line Woman.” In her own unrivaled way, Nina also loved to venture into the more earthy side of life. After she signed with RCA Records in 1967 (a deal her 30

SCRAPED KNEES

Her mother, a Methodist minister, and her father, a handyman and preacher himself, couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t ignore young Euniceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s God-given gift of music. 31

HYPNOTIC

then husband/manager Andy Stroud had negotiated), her very first recordings for the label included the saucy “Do I Move You?” and the undeniably sexual “I Want A Little Sugar In My Bowl” which were

from the concept album entitled Nina Sings The Blues. Backed by a stellar cast of New York CIty session musicians, the album was far and away Nina’s most down-home recording session. By

this time, Nina had become central to a circle of African American playwrights, poets, and writers all centered in Harlem along with the previously mentioned Lorraine Hansberry, 32

It was difficult for them because I was playing popular songs in a classical style with a classical piano technique influenced by cocktail jazz. On top of that I included spirituals and children’s song in my performances, and those sorts of songs were automatically identified with the folk movement.

SCRAPED KNEES

James Baldwin and Langston Hughes. The outcome from one of the relationships became a highlight of the LP with the song “Backlash Blues,” a song that’s lyrics originated from the last poem Langston Hughes submitted for publication prior to his death in May, 1967 and gave to Nina. Nina’s seven years with RCA produced some remarkable recordings, ranging from two songs featured in the Broadway musical “Hair” (combined into a medley, “Ain’t Got No – I Got Life,” a #2 British hit in 1968) to a Simone-ified version of George Harrison’s “Here Comes The Sun,” which remained in Nina’s repertoire all the way through to her final performance in 2002. Along the way at RCA, songs penned by Bob Dylan (“Just Like A Woman”), the brothers Gibb (“To Love Somebody”), and Tina Turner (“Funkier Than A Mosquito’s Tweeter”) took pride of place alongside Nina’s own anthem of empowerment, the classic “To Be Young, Gifted, & Black,”

a song written in memory of Nina’s good friend Lorraine Hansberry. The title of the song coming from a play Hansberry had been working on just prior to her death. After Nina left RCA, she spent a good deal of the 1970’s and early 1980’s living in Liberia, Barbados, England, Belgium, France, Switzerland and The Netherlands. In 1978, for the first time since she left RCA, Nina was convinced by U.S. jazz veteran Creed Taylor to make an album for his CTI label. This would be her first new studio album in six years and she recorded it in Belgium with strings and background vocals cut in New York City. With the kind of “clean” sound that was a hallmark of CTI recordings, the Nina Simone album that emerged was simply brilliant. Nina herself would later claimed that she ”hated” the record but many fans strongly disagreed. With

an eighteen piece string section conducted by David Mathews (known for his arrangements on James Brown’s records), the results were spectacular. The title track, Randy Newman’s evocative “Baltimore,” was an inspired Nina Simone choice. It had a beautifully constructed reggae-like beat and used some of the finest musicians around at the time. Aside from 1982′s Fodder On My Wings that Nina recorded for Carrere Records, two albums she made of the independent VPI label in Hollywood (Nina’s Back and Live And Kickin’) in 1985, and a 1987 Live At Vine Street set recorded for Verve, Nina Simone did not make another full length album until Elektra A&R executive Michael Alago persuaded her to record again. After much wining and dining, Nina finally signed on the dotted 33

HYPNOTIC

line. Elektra tapped producer Andre Fischer, noted conductor Jeremy Lubbock, and a trio of respected musicians to provide the suitable environment for this highly personal reading of “A Single Woman,” which became the centerpiece and title track for Nina Simone’s final full length album. With two marriages behind her in 1993 she settled in Carry-le-Rout, near Aix-en-Provence in Southern France. She would continue to tour through the 1990’s and became very much ‘the single woman’ she sang about on her last label recording. She rarely traveled without an entourage, but if you were fortunate enough to get to know the woman behind the music you could glimpse the solitary soul that understood the pain of being misunderstood. It was one of Nina’s many abilities to comprehend the bittersweet qualities of life and then parlay them into a song that made her such an enduring and fascinating person.

In her autobiography, Nina Simone writes that her function as an artist is “…to make people feel on a deep level. It’s difficult to describe because it’s not something you can analyze; to get near what it’s about you have to play it. And when you’ve caught it, when you’ve got the audience hooked, you always know because it’s like electricity hanging in the air.” It was that very electricity that made her such an important artist to so many and it will be that electricity that continues to turn on new people all over the world for years to come. Nina Simone died in her sleep at her home in Carry-le-Rout, Bouches-du-Rhone on April 21, 2003. Her funeral service was attended by Miriam Makeba, Patti Labelle, poet Sonia Sanchez, actor Ossie Davis and hundreds of others. Elton John sent a floral tribute with the message, “You were the greatest and I love you”. .

She was one of the most extraordinary artists of the twentieth century, an icon of American music. She was the consummate musical storyteller, a griot as she would come to learn, who used her remarkable talent to create a legacy of liberation, empowerment, passion, and love through a magnificent body of works.She earned the moniker ‘High Priestess of Soul’ for she could weave a spell so seductive and hypnotic that the listener lost track of time and space as they became absorbed in the moment. She was who the world would come to know as Nina Simone. When Nina Simone died on April 21, 2003, she left a timeless treasure trove of musical magic spanning over four decades from her first hit, the 1959 Top 10 classic “I Loves You Porgy,” to “A Single Woman,” the title cut 34

SCRAPED KNEES

from her one and only 1993 Elektra album. While thirty-three years separate those recordings, the element of honest emotion is the glue that binds the two together – it is that approach to every piece of work that became Nina’s uncompromising musical trademark. By the end of her life, Nina was enjoying an unprecedented degree of recognition. Her music was enjoyed by the masses due to the CD revolution, discovery on the Internet, and exposure through movies and television. Nina had sold over one million CDs in the last decade of her life, making her a global catalog best-seller. No one website can fully explore the many nuances and flavors that made up the more than 40 original albums in the Nina Simone library. This site and accompanying radio station contain many of Nina’s finest works. However, we might not have had the chance to witness the breathtaking range of material Nina could cover.

Schubert. After graduating valedictorian of her high school class, the community raised money for a scholarship for Eunice to study at Julliard in New York City before applying to the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Her family had already moved to the City Of Brotherly Love, but Eunice’s hopes for a career as a pioneering African American classical pianist were dashed when the school denied her admission. To the end, she herself would claim that racism was the reason she did not attend. While her original dream was unfulfilled, Eunice ended up with an incredible worldwide career as Nina Simone – almost by default.

Boy Crazy

unice made so much progress that in 1943, when she was ten, she gave her first piano recital at the

town library. There she not only experienced her first applause, but also had her first encounter with racism: during the recital her parents were removed from the first row to accommodate some whites. This episode was a traumatic experience for her and may be the origin of her commitment to the fight for freedom and civil rights. With the financial help of some local supporters, Eunice left 37

HYPNOTIC

North Carolina in 1950 and attend a summer course at the Juilliard School of Music in New York, the same school that Miles Davis attended. After New York her family moved to Philadelphia. She auditioned at the prestigious Curtis Institute in Philadelphia but was rejected, so she took private lessons from Vladimir Sokoloff, who was for many years head of the accompanying department at the Curtis Institute. In order to support herself and pay for further lessons she became an accompanist for a singing teacher. Later, in 1954, she took a job as a singer-pianist in the Midtown Bar and Grill in Atlantic City, adopting the stage name Nina Simone. Nina was a pet name that a boyfriend gave her (niña means “girl” in Spanish), and Simone was chosen for its dignified sound (from the French actress Simone Signoret) .

It was at Midtown Bar, where Nina Simone sang, played and improvised, that her career took off. Subsequently she played in several Philadelphia clubs. Recognized as a talented pianist, she was given a recording session with Bethlehem Records in 1957, where she recorded 14 tracks. Simone’s first album Little Girl Blue (11 tracks), published in 1958 and also known as Jazz as played in an Exclusive Side Street Club, was a great success, first in Philadelphia and New York, and then in the whole USA. The single released from that recording (featuring “I Loves You Porgy” and “He Needs Me”) became a national Rhythm & Blues hit (placing 13th) in the summer of 1959, selling over a million copies. Thirty years later another selection from the same album, “My Baby Just Cares for Me” was adopted as the theme for a British television advert for Chanel No 5 perfume, and reached 5th place on the English pop

charts. Bethlehem make use of the remaining three tracks recorded by Nina for the collective album And Her Friends, released when Nina have already signed with Colpix. In 1958 Nina Simone briefly married Don Ross, and divorced him the next year. Thanks to the success of her first recordings, in 1959 Simone signed with Colpix (Columbia Pictures Records), a collaboration that would last until 1964. Nina recorded 10 albums while signed to Colpix: six studio and four “live” albums. She recorded some songs of Columbia film soundtracks (including “Wild Is The Wind”, “Sayonara”, “Samson and Delilah”) as well as a new version of the Bethlehem hit “I Loves You Porgy”. In 1961 she recorded the traditional song “The House of the Rising Sun”. The same song was recorded by Bob Dylan in his debut album, issued in March 1962 and subsequently by the Animals in 1963. In the summer of

BOY CRAZY

1964, “The House of the Rising Sun” by the Animals was at the top of the American and English charts, on the eve of the band’s USA tour (part of the “British invasion”). In 1961 Nina marries Andy Stroud, a New York detective and the following year their daughter Lisa Celeste Stroud is born. Their marriage will end in divorce in 1970. In 1964, Nina Simone began her association with Philips, a Mercury subsidiary. This collaboration lasted for three years during which Nina recorded seven albums. One of the first songs recorded during the Philips period is “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood”, from then on associated with her name. The songs is covered by the Animals in 1965, the same year in which Nina publishes “I Put a Spell on You”, a 1956’s song by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. This song is also immediately covered (August 1965) by the Alan Price Set, the group founded by organist Alan Price after his departures from the Animals.

During her association with Philips, and after the jazz and black periods, Nina wrote her first protest song “Mississippi Goddam!” following the murders of Medgar Evers in Mississippi (June 1963) and four black schoolchildren in Alabama (September 1963). In 1966 Nina switches to RCA (her last long-term affiliation with an American label and where she wouls stay until 1974) in a deal negotiated by her husband who acted as her manager and to whom some compositions were credited. From the summer of 1968 through the end of 1969, “all of her recordings were produced by her husband-manager, although we can assume that it was really Nina who was making the final selections of repertoire and essentially masterminding the sessions” according to David Nathan.

HYPNOTIC

Little Girl Blue Sit there And count your fingers What can you do Old girl you’re through Sit there Count your little fingers Unhappy little girl blue Sit there Count the raindrops Falling on you It’s time you knew All you can ever count on Are the raindrops That fall on little girl blue Won’t you just sit there Count the little raindrops Falling on you Cos it’s time you knew All you can ever count on Are the raindrops That fall on little girl blue No use old girl You might as well surrender Cos your hopes Are getting slender and slender Why won’t somebody send A tender blue boy To cheer up little girl blue

BOY CRAZY

In 1974 she leaves RCA. In 1978 Nina was arrested, and soon released, for withholding taxes in 1971-73 in protest at her government’s undeclared war in Vietnam. The same year she made the LP Baltimore for the CTI label and in 1982 the LP Fodder on my Wings for a Swiss label. In 1985 she records Nina’s back and Live and Kickin in US. In 1987 her previously-mentioned European success with “My Baby Just Cares For Me” brought Nina back into the public eye: her music was featured in 1992 movie Point Of No Return, with the lead character using Nina as inspiration. The same year she records Let It Be Me at The Vine Street Bar & Grill in Hollywood for Verve Records. Nina moved to the southern French town of Bouc-Bel-Air near Aix-en-Provence, France in 1993 and died April 21st, 2003 in Carry-le-Rouet, Bouches-du-Rhône, France.

A protest singer, jazz singer, pianist, arranger and composer, Nina Simone is a great artist who defies easy classification. She is all of these: a jazz-rock-pop-folk-black musician. In fact, we can find her biography in jazz, rock, pop, black and soul literature. Her style and her hits provided many singers and groups with material for hits of their own. Eunice Kathleen Waymon was born on February 21st 1933 in Tryon, North Carolina, USA, the sixth of eight children (four boys and four girls). Early on in life she revealed a prodigious musical talent playing the piano and singing with her sisters in their mother’s choir at the local church. In 1939 at the age of six, a benefactor paid for her first piano lessons. Eunice made so much progress that in 1943, when she was ten, she gave her first piano recital at the town library. There she not only experienced her first applause, but also had her first encounter with

racism: during the recital her parents were removed from the first row to accommodate some whites. This episode was a traumatic experience for her and may be the origin of her commitment to the fight for freedom and civil rights. With the financial help of some local supporters, Eunice left North Carolina in 1950 and attend a summer course at the Juilliard School of Music in New York, the same school that Miles Davis attended. After New York her family moved to Philadelphia. She auditioned at the prestigious Curtis Institute in Philadelphia but was rejected, so she took private lessons from Vladimir Sokoloff, who was for many years head of the accompanying department at the Curtis Institute. In order to support herself and pay for further lessons she became an accompanist 41

HYPNOTIC

for a singing teacher. Later, in 1954, she took a job as a singer-pianist in the Midtown Bar and Grill in Atlantic City, adopting the stage name Nina Simone. Nina was a pet name that a boyfriend gave her (niña means “girl” in Spanish), and Simone was chosen for its dignified sound (from the French actress Simone Signoret) . It was at Midtown Bar, where Nina Simone sang, played and improvised, that her career took off. Subsequently she played in several Philadelphia clubs. Recognized as a talented pianist, she was given a recording session with Bethlehem Records in 1957, where she recorded 14 tracks. Simone’s first album Little Girl Blue (11 tracks), published in 1958 and also known as Jazz as played in an Exclusive Side Street Club, was a great success, first in Philadelphia and New York, and then in the whole USA.

The single released from that recording (featuring “I Loves You Porgy” and “He Needs Me”) became a national Rhythm & Blues hit (placing 13th) in the summer of 1959, selling over a million copies. Thirty years later another selection from the same album, “My Baby Just Cares for Me” was adopted as the theme for a British television advert for Chanel No 5 perfume, and reached 5th place on the English pop charts. Bethlehem make use of the remaining three tracks recorded by Nina for the collective album And Her Friends, released when Nina have already signed with Colpix. In 1958 Nina Simone briefly married Don Ross, and divorced him the next year. Thanks to the success of her first recordings, in 1959 Simone signed with Colpix (Columbia Pictures Records), a collaboration that would last until 1964. Nina recorded 10 albums while signed to Colpix: six studio and

four “live” albums. She recorded some songs of Columbia film soundtracks (including “Wild Is The Wind”, “Sayonara”, “Samson and Delilah”) as well as a new version of the Bethlehem hit “I Loves You Porgy”. In 1961 she recorded the traditional song “The House of the Rising Sun”. The same song was recorded by Bob Dylan in his debut album, issued in March 1962 and subsequently by the Animals in 1963. In the summer of 1964, “The House of the Rising Sun” by the Animals was at the top of the American and English charts, on the eve of the band’s USA tour (part of the “British invasion”). In 1961 Nina marries Andy Stroud, a New York detective and the following year their daughter Lisa Celeste Stroud is born. Their marriage will end in divorce in 1970.

BOY CRAZY

I wanted him from the moment I saw him. I might not have been able to say exactly what I felt when I looked over at Edney but I knew that what ever it was, I wanted more.

HYPNOTIC

In 1964, Nina Simone began her association with Philips, a Mercury subsidiary. This collaboration lasted for three years during which Nina recorded seven albums. One of the first songs recorded during the Philips period is “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood”, from then on associated with her name. The songs is covered by the Animals in 1965, the same year in which Nina publishes “I Put a Spell on You”, a 1956’s song by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. This song is also immediately covered (August 1965) by the Alan Price Set, the group founded by organist Alan Price after his departures from the Animals. During her association with Philips, and after the jazz and black periods, Nina wrote her first protest song “Mississippi Goddam!” following the murders of Medgar Evers in Mississippi (June 1963) and four black schoolchildren in Alabama (September 1963).

In 1966 Nina switches to RCA (her last long-term affiliation with an American label and where she wouls stay until 1974) in a deal negotiated by her husband who acted as her manager and to whom some compositions were credited. From the summer of 1968 through the end of 1969, “all of her recordings were produced by her husband-manager, although we can assume that it was really Nina who was making the final selections of repertoire and essentially masterminding the sessions” according to David Nathan.

BOY CRAZY

Embittered by racism, Nina renounced her homeland in 1969 and became a wanderer, roaming the world. She lived in Barbados, Liberia (with the encouragement of Miriam Makeba), Switzerland, France, Trinidad, Netherlands, Belgium and UK at various times. In 1970 she and Stroud split up, and Nina attempt to manage herself and work with her brother Sam Waymon. In 1974 she leaves RCA. In 1978 Nina was arrested, and soon released, for withholding taxes in 1971-73 in protest at her government’s undeclared war in Vietnam. The same year she made the LP Baltimore for the CTI label and in 1982 the LP Fodder on my Wings for a Swiss label. In 1985 she records Nina’s back and Live and Kickin in US. In 1987 her previously-mentioned European success with “My Baby Just Cares For Me” brought Nina back into the public eye: her music was featured in 1992

movie Point Of No Return, with the lead character using Nina as inspiration. The same year she records Let It Be Me at The Vine Street Bar & Grill in Hollywood for Verve Records. Nina moved to the southern French town of Bouc-Bel-Air near Aix-en-Provence, France in 1993 and died April 21st, 2003 in Carry-le-Rouet, Bouches-duRhône, France. Traveling was a part of her life and she met many people along the way. Africa was another place that she had fond memories for. Her music traveled far and wide and would make people anxious to meet this legend. Like the globe of many different terains, Nina also covered many terains throughout her career. A protest singer, jazz singer, pianist, arranger and composer, Nina Simone is a great artist who defies easy classification. She is all of these: a jazz-rock-pop-folk-black musician. In fact, we can find her biography in jazz, rock, pop, black and soul literature. 45

HYPNOTIC

With the financial help of some local supporters, Eunice left North Carolina in 1950 and attend a summer course at the Juilliard School of Music in New York, the same school that Miles Davis attended. After New York her family moved to Philadelphia. She auditioned at the prestigious Curtis Institute in Philadelphia but was rejected, so she took private lessons from Vladimir Sokoloff, who was for many years head of the accompanying department at the Curtis Institute. In order to support herself and pay for further lessons she became an accompanist for a singing teacher. Later, in 1954, she took a job as a singer-pianist in the Midtown Bar and Grill in Atlantic City, adopting the stage name Nina Simone. Nina was a pet name that a boyfriend gave her (niña means “girl” in Spanish), and Simone was chosen for its dignified sound (from the French actress Simone Signoret) .

It was at Midtown Bar, where Nina Simone sang, played and improvised, that her career took off. Subsequently she played in several Philadelphia clubs. Recognized as a talented pianist, she was given a recording sesion with Bethlehem Records in 1957, where she recorded 14 tracks. Simone’s first album Little Girl Blue (11 tracks), published in 1958 and also known as Jazz as played in an Exclusive Side Street Club, was a great success, first in Philadelphia and New York, and then in the whole USA. The single released from that recording (featuring “I Loves You Porgy” and “He Needs Me”) became a national Rhythm & Blues hit (placing 13th) in the summer of 1959, selling over a million copies. Thirty years later another selection from the same album, “My Baby Just Cares for Me” was adopted as the theme for a British television advert for Chanel No 5 perfume, and reached 5th place on the English pop

BOY CRAZY

1964, “The House of the Rising Sun” by the Animals was at the top of the American and English charts, on the eve of the band’s USA tour (part of the “British invasion”). In 1961 Nina marries Andy Stroud, a New York detective and the following year their daughter Lisa Celeste Stroud is born. Their marriage will end in divorce in 1970.In 1964, Nina Simone began her association with Philips, a Mercury subsidiary. This collaboration lasted for three years during which Nina recorded seven albums. One of the first songs recorded during the Philips period is “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood”, from then on associated with her name. The songs is covered by the Animals in 1965, the same year in which Nina publishes “I Put a Spell on You”, a 1956’s song by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. This song is also immediately covered (August 1965) by the Alan Price Set, the group founded by organist Alan Price after his departures from the Animals.

Got Life”, a medley from the 60s musical Hair, got to N. 2 in UK and her soul version of “To Love Somebody” by the Bee Gees was a UK top 10 hit in the Spring of 1969. “To Be Young, Gifted And Black”, inspired by a play of the same name by Lorraine Hansberr (a friend of Nina’s) was recorded by Aretha Franklin in 1972. Embittered by racism, Nina renounced her homeland in 1969 and became a wanderer, roaming the world. She lived in Barbados, Liberia (with the encouragement of Miriam Makeba), Switzerland, France, Trinidad, Netherlands, Belgium and UK at various times. In 1970 she and Stroud split up, and Nina attempt to manage herself and work with her brother Sam Waymon. 47

AFTERNOON YEARS

New Name, Same Face

n order to support herself and pay for further lessons she became an accompanist for a singing teacher. Later,

in 1954, she took a job as a singer-pianist in the Midtown Bar and Grill in Atlantic City, adopting the stage name Nina Simone. Nina was a pet name that a boyfriend gave her (niña means “girl” in Spanish), and Simone was chosen for its dignified sound (from the French actress Simone Signoret) . It was at Midtown Bar, where Nina Simone sang, played and improvised, that her career 51

HYPNOTIC took off. She was one of the most extraordinary artists of the twentieth century, an icon of American music. She was the consummate musical storyteller, a griot as she would come to learn, who used her remarkable talent to create a legacy of liberation, empowerment, passion, and love through a magnificent body of works. She earned the moniker ‘High Priestess of Soul’ for she could weave a spell so seductive and hypnotic that the listener lost track of time and space as they became absorbed in the moment. She was who the world would come to know as Nina Simone.

When Nina Simone died on April 21, 2003, she left a timeless treasure trove of musical magic spanning over four decades from her first hit, the 1959 Top 10 classic “I Loves You Porgy,” to “A Single Woman,” the title cut from her one and only 1993 Elektra album. While thirty-three years separate those recordings, the element of honest emotion is the glue that binds the two together – it is that approach to every piece of work that became Nina’s uncompromising musical trademark.

works. However, we might not have had the chance to witness the breathtaking range of material Nina could cover if she hadn’t taken the path she did. Born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina on February 21st, 1933, Nina’s prodigious talent as a musician was evident early on when she started playing piano by ear at the age of three. Her mother, a Methodist minister, and her father, a handyman and preacher himself, couldn’t ignore young Eunice’s

NEW NAME, SAME FACE

God-given gift of music. Raised in the church on the straight and narrow, her parents taught her right from wrong, to carry herself with dignity, and to work hard. She played piano – but didn’t sing – in her mother’s church, displaying remarkable talent early in her life. Able to play virtually anything by ear, she was soon studying classical music with an Englishwoman named Muriel Mazzanovich, who had moved to the small southern town. It was from these humble roots that

a pioneering African American classical pianist were dashed when the school denied her admission. To the end, she herself would claim that racism was the reason she did not attend. While her original dream was unfulfilled, Eunice ended up with an incredible worldwide career as Nina Simone – almost by default. To survive, she began teaching music to local students. One fateful day in 1954, looking to supplement her income, Eunice auditioned to sing at the Midtown

Eunice developed a lifelong love of Johann Sebastian Bach, Chopin, Brahms, Beethoven and Schubert. After graduating valedictorian of her high school class, the community raised money for a scholarship for Eunice to study at Julliard in New York City before applying to the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Her family had already moved to the City Of Brotherly Love, but Eunice’s hopes for a career as

Bar & Grill on Pacific Avenue in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Word spread about this new singer and pianist who was dipping into the songbooks of Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, and the like, transforming popular tunes of the day into a unique synthesis of jazz, blues, and classical music. Her rich, deep velvet vocal tones, combined with her mastery of the keyboard, soon attracted club goers up and down the East Coast. 53

HYPNOTIC

In order to hide the fact that she was singing in bars, Eunice’s mother would refer to the practice as “working in the fires of hell”, overnight Eunice Waymon became Nina Simone by taking the nickname “Nina” meaning “little one” in Spanish and “Simone” after the actress Simone Signoret. At the age of twenty-four, Nina came to the attention of the record industry. After submitting a demo of songs she had recorded during a performance in New

Hope, Pennsylvania, she was signed by Syd Nathan, owner of the Ohio-based King Records (home to James Brown), to his Jazz imprint, Bethlehem Records. The boisterous Nathan had insisted on choosing songs for her debut set, but eventually relented and allowed Nina to delve in the repertoire she had been performing at clubs up and down the eastern seaboard. One of Nina’s stated musical influences was Billie Holiday and 54

NEW NAME, SAME FACE

her inspired reading of “Porgy” (from “Porgy & Bess”) heralded the arrival of a new talent on the national scene. At the same mammoth 13 hour session in 1957, recorded in New York City, Nina also cut “My Baby Just Cares For Me,” previously recorded by Nate King Cole, Count Basie, and Woody Herman. The song was used by Chanel in a perfume commercial in Europe in the 1980’s and it became a massive hit for Nina, a British chart topper at #5, and

thus a staple of her repertoire for the rest of her career. Nina Simone’s stay with Bethlehem Records was short lived and in 1959, after moving to New York City, she was signed by Joyce Selznik, the eastern talent scout for Colpix Records, a division of Columbia Pictures. Months after the release of her debut LP for the label (1959‘s The Amazing Nina Simone), Nina was performing at her first major New York City venue, the mid-Manhattan-located Town Hall. Sensing that

HYPNOTIC

her live performances would capture the essential spontaneity of her artistry, Colpix opted to record her September 12, 1959 show. “You Can Have Him,” a glorious torch song previously cut by Peggy Lee and Ella Fitzgerald, was one of the highlights of the evening. The song opened with a dazzling keyboard arpeggio that would become her signature for decades. So momentous was the Town Hall performance that it inspired some of the same musicians, featuring the vocals

the Colpix. The subsequent release in 1961 of the old blues tune “Trouble In Mind” as a single gave Nina her third charted record. Her stay with Colpix resulted in some wonderful albums – nine in all – included Nina’s version of Bessie Smith’s blues classic “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out.” Issued as a single in 1960, it became Nina’s second charted Pop and R&B hit and one of two Colpix tracks to achieve such a feat during her five year

of Nina’s only daughter, Lisa Simone Kelly, to do a tribute to a sold out audience over forty five years later. As Nina’s reputation as an engaging live performer grew, it wasn’t long before she was asked to perform at the prestigious Newport Jazz Festival. Accompanied on the June 30th,1960 show by Al Schackman, a guitarist who would go on to become Nina’s longest-running musical colleague, bassist Chris White, and drummer Bobby Hamilton, the dynamic show was recorded by

stint with the label. Other stand out tracks from that era were the soulful song “Cotton Eyed Joe,” the torch tune “The Other Women,” and the Norwegian folk rendition of “Black Is The Colour Of My True Love’s Hair” – all beautiful examples of Nina Simone at her storytelling best, painting a vivid picture with her skill as a lyrical interpreter. During this time with the label, Nina recorded one civil rights song, Oscar Brown Jr.’s “Brown Baby,” which was included on her fifth album

NEW NAME, SAME FACE

Word spread about this new singer and pianist who was dipping into the songbooks of Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, and the like, transforming popular tunes of the day into a unique synthesis of jazz, blues, and classical music.

for the label, At The Village Gate. “Critics started to talk about what sort of music I was playing,” writes Nina in her 1991 autobiography I Put A Spell On You, “and tried to find a neat slot to file it away in. It was difficult for them because I was playing popular songs in a classical style with a classical piano technique influenced by cocktail jazz. On top of that I included spirituals and children’s song in my performances, and those sorts of songs were automatically identified with the

folk movement. So, saying what sort of music I played gave the critics problems because there was something from everything in there, but it also meant I was appreciated across the board – by jazz, folk, pop and blues fans as well as admirers of classical music.” Clearly Nina Simone was not an artist who could be easily classified. Nina’s Colpix recordings cemented her appeal to a nightclub based U.S. audience. Once she moved to 57

HYPNOTIC

Nina was performing at her first major New York City venue, the mid-Manhattan-located Town Hall. Sensing that her live performances would capture the essential spontaneity of her artistry, Colpix opted to record her September 12, 1959 show. 58

NEW NAME, SAME FACE Phillips, a division of Dutch owned Mercury Records, she was ready to expand her following globally. Her first LP for the label, 1964’s In Concert, signaled Nina’s undaunting stand for freedom and justice for all, stamping her irrevocably as a pioneer and inspirational leader in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. Her own original “Mississippi Goddam” was banned throughout the South but such a response made no difference in Nina’s unyielding commitment to liberty; subsequent groundbreaking recordings for Philips like “Four Women” (recorded September 1965) and “Strange Fruit” contin-

Rights Movement. “Nightclubs were dirty, making records was dirty, popular music was dirty and to mix all that with politics seemed senseless and demeaning. And until songs like ‘Mississippi Goddam’ just burst out of me, I had musical problems as well. How can you take the memory of a man like [Civil Rights activist] Medgar Evers and reduce all that he was to three and a half minutes and a simple tune? That was the musical side of it I shied away from; I didn’t like ‘protest music’ because a lot of it was so simple and unimaginative it stripped the dignity away

ued to keep Nina in the forefront of the few performers willing to use music as a vehicle for social commentary and change. Such risks were seldom taken by artists during that time of such dramatic civil upheaval. For years, Nina felt there was much about the way that she made her living that was less then appealing. One gets a sense of that in the following passage from I Put A Spell on You where she explains her initial reluctance to perform material that was tied to the Civil

from the people it was trying to celebrate. But the Alabama church bombing and the murder of Medgar Evers stopped that argument and with ‘Mississippi Goddam,’ I realized there was no turning back.” Nina was deeply affected by these two events. In 1962, she had befriended noted playwright Lorraine Hansberry.

Between The Keys

n 1961 she recorded the traditional song “The House of the Rising Sun”. The same song was recorded by Bob

Dylan in his debut album, issued in March 1962 and subsequently by the Animals in 1963. In the summer of 1964, “The House of the Rising Sun” by the Animals was at the top of the American and English charts, on the eve of the band’s USA tour (part of the “British invasion”). In 1961 Nina marries Andy Stroud, a New York detective and the following year their daughter Lisa Celeste 61

HYPNOTIC Stroud is born. Eunice Kathleen Waymon was born on February 21st 1933 in Tryon, North Carolina, USA, the sixth of eight children (four boys and four girls). Early on in life she revealed a prodigious musical talent playing the piano and singing with her sisters in their mother’s choir at the local church. In 1939 at the age of six, a benefac-

of Music in New York, the same school that Miles Davis attended. After New York her family moved to Philadelphia. She auditioned at the prestigious Curtis Institute in Philadelphia but was rejected, so she took private lessons from Vladimir Sokoloff, who was for many years head of the accompanying department at the Curtis.

tor paid for her first piano lessons. Eunice made so much progress that in 1943, when she was ten, she gave her first piano recital at the town library. There she not only experienced her first applause, but also had her first encounter with racism: during the recital her parents were removed from the first

In order to support herself and pay for further lessons she became an accompanist for a singing teacher. Later, in 1954, she took a job as a singer-pianist in the Midtown Bar and Grill in Atlantic City, adopting the stage name Nina Simone. Nina was a pet name that a boyfriend gave her (niña means “girl” in

recording session with Bethlehem Records in 1957, where she recorded 14 tracks. Simone’s first album Little Girl Blue (11 tracks), published in 1958 and also known as Jazz as played in an Exclusive Side Street Club, was a great success, first in Philadelphia and New York, and then in the whole USA. The single released

row to accommodate some whites. This episode was a traumatic experience for her and may be the origin of her commitment to the fight for freedom and civil rights. With the financial help of some local supporters, Eunice left North Carolina in 1950 and attend a summer course at the Juilliard School

Spanish), and Simone was chosen for its dignified sound (from the French actress Simone Signoret) . It was at Midtown Bar, where Nina Simone sang, played and improvised, that her career took off. Subsequently she played in several Philadelphia clubs. Recognized as a talented pianist, she was given a

from that recording (featuring “I Loves You Porgy” and “He Needs Me”) became a national Rhythm & Blues hit (placing 13th) in the summer of 1959, selling over a million copies. Thirty years later another selection from the same album, “My Baby Just Cares for Me” was ad-

opted as the theme for a British television advert for Chanel No 5 perfume, and reached 5th place on the English pop charts. Bethlehem make use of the remaining three tracks recorded by Nina for the collective album And Her Friends, released when Nina have signed. In 1958 Nina Simone briefly

BETWEEN THE KEYS Stroud, a New York detective and the following year their daughter Lisa Celeste Stroud is born. Their marriage will end in divorce in 1970. In 1964, Nina Simone began her association with Philips, a Mercury subsidiary. This collaboration lasted for three years during which Nina recorded seven albums. One

in Mississippi (June 1963) and four black schoolchildren in Alabama (September 1963). In 1966 Nina switches to RCA (her last long-term affiliation with an American label and where she wouls stay until 1974) in a deal negotiated by her husband who acted as her manager and to whom some compositions were credited.

married Don Ross, and divorced him the next year. Thanks to the success of her first recordings, in 1959 Simone signed with Colpix (Columbia Pictures Records), a collaboration that would last until 1964. Nina recorded 10 albums while signed to Colpix: six studio and four “live” albums. She recorded some songs

of the first songs recorded during the Philips period is “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood”, from then on associated with her name. The songs is covered by the Animals in 1965, the same year in which Nina publishes “I Put a Spell on You”, a 1956’s song by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. This song is also immedi-

From the summer of 1968 through the end of 1969, “all of her recordings were produced by her husbandmanager, although we can assume that it was really Nina who was making the final selections of repertoire and essentially masterminding the sessions” according to David Nathan. While at RCA Nina records

of Columbia film soundtracks (including “Wild Is The Wind”, “Sayonara”, “Samson and Delilah”) as well as a new version of the Bethlehem hit “I Loves You Porgy”. In 1961 she recorded the traditional song “The House of the Rising Sun”. The same song was recorded by Bob Dylan in his debut

ately covered (August 1965) by the Alan Price Set, the group founded by organist Alan Price after his departures from the Animals. During her association with Philips, and after the jazz and black periods, Nina wrote her first protest song “Mississippi Goddam!” following the murders of Medgar Evers

nine albums and some of her most popular songs. Her version of “Ain’t Got No/I Got Life”, a medley from the 60s musical Hair, got to N. 2 in UK and her soul version of “To Love Somebody” by the Bee Gees was a UK top 10 hit in the Spring of 1969. “To Be Young, Gifted And

album, issued in March 1962 and subsequently by the Animals in 1963. In the summer of 1964, “The House of the Rising Sun” by the Animals was at the top of the American and English charts, on the eve of the band’s USA tour (part of the “British invasion”). In 1961 Nina marries Andy

HYPNOTIC She was one of the most extraordinary artists of the twentieth century, an icon of American music. She was the consummate musical storyteller, a griot as she would come to learn, who used her remarkable talent to create a legacy of liberation, empowerment, passion, and love through a magnificent body of works.

Black”, inspired by a play of the same name by Lorraine Hansberr (a friend of Nina’s) was recorded by Aretha Franklin in 1972. Embittered by racism, Nina renounced her homeland in 1969 and became a wanderer, roaming the world. She lived in Barbados, Liberia (with the encouragement of Miriam Makeba), Switzerland,

and Live and Kickin in US. In 1987 her previously-mentioned European success with “My Baby Just Cares For Me” brought Nina back into the public eye: her music was featured in 1992 movie Point Of No Return, with the lead character using Nina as inspiration. The same year she records Let It Be Me at The Vine Street Bar & Grill in Hollywood for

France, Trinidad, Netherlands, Belgium and UK at various times. In 1970 she and Stroud split up, and Nina attempt to manage herself and work with her brother Sam Waymon. In 1974 she leaves RCA. In 1978 Nina was arrested, and soon

Verve Records. Nina moved to the southern French town of Bouc-BelAir near Aix-en-Provence, France in 1993 and died April 21st, 2003 in Carry-le-Rouet, Bouches-duRhône, France. A protest singer, jazz singer, pianist, arranger and composer,

released, for withholding taxes in 1971-73 in protest at her government’s undeclared war in Vietnam. The same year she made the LP Baltimore for the CTI label and in 1982 the LP Fodder on my Wings for a Swiss label. In 1985 she records Nina’s back

Nina Simone is a great artist who defies easy classification. She is all of these: a jazz-rock-pop-folk-black musician. In fact, we can find her biography in jazz, rock, pop, black and soul literature. One should sample her albums from each year. Her style and her hits prove this.

She earned the moniker ‘High Priestess of Soul’ for she could weave a spell so seductive and hypnotic that the listener lost track of time and space as they became absorbed in the moment. She was who the world would come to know as Nina Simone. When Nina Simone died on April 21, 2003,

BETWEEN THE KEYS

HYPNOTIC

Images She does not know her beauty, She thinks her brown glory She thinks her brown body has no glory If she could dance naked, Under palm trees And see her image in the river She would know yes she would know But there are no palm trees in the street, No palm trees in the street, And dish water gives back no images She does not know her beauty, She thinks her brown body has no glory If she could dance naked, Under palm trees And see her image in the river She would know yes she would know But there are no palm trees in the street, No palm trees in the street, And dish water gives back no images she left a timeless treasure trove of musical magic spanning over four decades from her first hit, the 1959 Top 10 classic “I Loves You Porgy,” to “A Single Woman,” the title cut from her one and only 1993 Elektra album. While thirty-three years separate those recordings, the element of honest emotion is the

glue that binds the two together – it is that approach to every piece of work that became Nina’s uncompromising musical trademark. By the end of her life, Nina was enjoying an unprecedented degree of recognition. Her music was enjoyed by the masses due to the CD revolution, discovery on the

Internet, and exposure through movies and television. Nina had sold over one million CDs in the last decade of her life, making her a global catalog best-seller. No one website can fully explore the many nuances and flavors that made up the more than 40 original albums in the Nina Simone library.

This site and accompanying radio station contain many of Nina’s finest works. However, we might not have had the chance to witness the breathtaking range of material Nina could cover if she hadn’t taken the path she did. Born Eunice Kathleen Waymon 66

BETWEEN THE KEYS

in Tryon, North Carolina on February 21st, 1933, Nina’s prodigious talent as a musician was evident early on when she started playing piano by ear at the age of three. Her mother, a Methodist minister, and her father, a handyman and preacher himself, couldn’t ignore young Eunice’s God-given

virtually anything by ear, she was soon studying classical music with an Englishwoman named Muriel Mazzanovich, who had moved to the small southern town. It was from these humble roots that Eunice developed a lifelong love of Johann Sebastian Bach, Chopin, Brahms, Beethoven and Schubert. After graduating valedictorian

To survive, she began teaching music to local students. One fateful day in 1954, looking to supplement her income, Eunice auditioned to sing at the Midtown Bar & Grill on Pacific Avenue in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Word spread about this new singer and pianist who was dipping into the songbooks of Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard

of her high school class, the community raised money for a scholarship for Eunice to study at Julliard in New York City before applying to the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Her family had already moved to the City Of Brotherly Love, but Eunice’s hopes for a career as a pioneering African

Rodgers, and the like, transforming popular tunes of the day into a unique synthesis of jazz, blues, and classical music. Her rich, deep velvet vocal tones, combined with her mastery of the keyboard, soon attracted club goers up and down the East Coast. In order to hide the fact that she was singing in bars,

American classical pianist were dashed when the school denied her admission. To the end, she herself would claim that racism was the reason she did not attend. While her original dream was unfulfilled, Eunice ended up with an incredible worldwide career as Nina Simone – almost by default.

Eunice’s mother would refer to the practice as “working in the fires of hell”, overnight Eunice Waymon became Nina Simone by taking the nickname “Nina” meaning “little one” in Spanish and “Simone” after the actress Simone Signoret. At the age of twenty-four, Nina came to the attention of the record

gift of music. Raised in the church on the straight and narrow, her parents taught her right from wrong, to carry herself with dignity, and to work hard. She played piano – but didn’t sing – in her mother’s church, displaying remarkable talent early in her life. Able to play 67

HYPNOTIC

York City, she was signed by Joyce Selznik, the eastern talent scout for Colpix Records, a division of Columbia Pictures. Months after the release of her debut LP for the label (1959‘s The Amazing Nina Simone), Nina was performing at her first major New York City venue, the mid-Manhattan-located Town Hall. Sensing that her live

industry. After submitting a demo of songs she had recorded during a performance in New Hope, Pennsylvania, she was signed by Syd Nathan, owner of the Ohiobased King Records (home to James Brown), to his Jazz imprint, Bethlehem Records. The boisterous Nathan had insisted on choosing

heralded the arrival of a new talent on the national scene. At the same mammoth 13 hour session in 1957, recorded in New York City, Nina also cut “My Baby Just Cares For Me,” previously recorded by Nate King Cole, Count Basie, and Woody Herman. The song was used by Chanel in a perfume commer-

songs for her debut set, but eventually relented and allowed Nina to delve in the repertoire she had been performing at clubs up and down the eastern seaboard. One of Nina’s stated musical influences was Billie Holiday and her inspired reading of “Porgy” (from “Porgy & Bess”)

cial in Europe in the 1980’s and it became a massive hit for Nina, a British chart topper at #5, and thus a staple of her repertoire for the rest of her career. Nina Simone’s stay with Bethlehem Records was short lived and in 1959, after moving to New

BETWEEN THE KEYS performances would capture the essential spontaneity of her artistry, Colpix opted to record her September 12, 1959 show. “You Can Have Him,” a glorious torch song previously cut by Peggy Lee and Ella Fitzgerald, was one of the highlights of the evening. The song opened with a dazzling keyboard arpeggio that would become her sig-

long before she was asked to perform at the prestigious Newport Jazz Festival. Accompanied on the June 30th,1960 show by Al Schackman, a guitarist who would go on to become Nina’s longest-running musical colleague, bassist Chris White, and drummer Bobby Hamilton, the dynamic show was recorded by the

“Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out.” Issued as a single in 1960, it became Nina’s second charted Pop and R&B hit and one of two Colpix tracks to achieve such a feat during her five year stint with the label. Other stand out tracks from that era were the soulful song “Cotton Eyed Joe,” the torch

Colpix. The subsequent release in 1961 of the old blues tune “Trouble In Mind” as a single gave Nina her third charted record. Her stay with Colpix resulted in some wonderful albums – nine in all – included Nina’s version of Bessie Smith’s blues classic

tune “The Other Women,” and the Norwegian folk rendition of “Black Is The Colour Of My True Love’s Hair” . “Baltimore,” was an inspired Nina Simone choice. It had a beautifully constructed reggae-like beat and used some of the finest musicians. 69

Mercury Rising

uring her association with Philips, and after the jazz and black periods, Nina wrote her first

protest song â&#x20AC;&#x153;Mississippi Goddam!â&#x20AC;? following the murders of Medgar Evers in Mississippi (June 1963) and four black schoolchildren in Alabama (September 1963). In 1966 Nina switches to RCA (her last long-term affiliation with an American label and where she would stay until 1974) in a deal negotiated by her husband at the time, who acted as her manager. 71

prodigious talent as a musician was evident early on when she started playing piano by ear at the age of three. Her mother, a Methodist minister, and her father, a handyman and preacher himself, couldn’t ignore young Eunice’s God-given gift of music. Raised in the church on the straight and narrow, her parents taught her right from wrong, to carry herself with dignity, and

Priestess of Soul’ for she could weave a spell so seductive and hypnotic that the listener lost track of time and space as they became absorbed in the moment. She was who the world would come to know as Nina Simone. When Nina Simone died on April 21, 2003, she left a timeless

binds the two together – it is that approach to every piece of work that became Nina’s uncompromising musical trademark. By the end of her life, Nina was enjoying an unprecedented degree of recognition. Her music was enjoyed by the masses due to the CD revolution, discovery on the Internet, and exposure through

to work hard. She played piano – but didn’t sing – in her mother’s church, displaying remarkable talent early in her life. Able to play virtually anything by ear, she was soon studying classical music with an Englishwoman named Muriel Mazzanovich, who had moved to the small southern town. It

treasure trove of musical magic spanning over four decades from her first hit, the 1959 Top 10 classic “I Loves You Porgy,” to “A Single Woman,” the title cut from her one and only 1993 Elektra album. While thirty-three years separate those recordings, the element of honest emotion is the glue that

movies and television. Nina had sold over one million CDs in the last decade of her life, making her a global catalog best-seller. No one website can fully explore the many nuances and flavors that made up the more than 40 original albums in the Nina Simone library. This site and accompanying radio

was from these humble roots that Eunice developed a lifelong love of Johann Sebastian Bach, Chopin, Brahms, Beethoven and Schubert. After graduating valedictorian of her high school class, the community raised money for a scholarship for Eunice to study at Julliard in New York City before applying

station contain many of Nina’s finest works. However, we might not have had the chance to witness the breathtaking range of material Nina could cover if she hadn’t taken the path she did. Born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina on February 21st, 1933, Nina’s

MERCURY RISING velvet vocal tones, combined with her mastery of the keyboard, soon attracted club goers up and down the East Coast. In order to hide the fact that she was singing in bars, Eunice’s mother would refer to the practice as “working in the fires of hell”, overnight Eunice Waymon became Nina Simone by taking the nickname “Nina” meaning “little one” in Spanish and “Simone” after

to the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Her family had already moved to the City Of Brotherly Love, but Eunice’s hopes for a career as a pioneering African American classical pianist were dashed when the school denied her admission. To the end, she herself would claim that racism was the reason she did not attend. While

the actress Simone Signoret. At the age of twenty-four, Nina came to the attention of the record industry. After submitting a demo of songs she had recorded during a performance in New Hope, Pennsylvania, she was signed by Syd Nathan, owner of the Ohiobased King Records (home to

Holiday and her inspired reading of “Porgy” (from “Porgy & Bess”) heralded the arrival of a new talent on the national scene. At the same mammoth 13 hour session in 1957, recorded in New York City, Nina also cut “My Baby Just Cares For Me,” previously recorded by Nate King Cole, Count Basie, and Woody Herman. The song was used

her original dream was unfulfilled, Eunice ended up with an incredible worldwide career as Nina Simone – almost by default. To survive, she began teaching music to local students. One fateful day in 1954, looking to supplement her income, Eunice auditioned to sing at the Midtown Bar & Grill

by Chanel in a perfume commercial in Europe in the 1980’s and it became a massive hit for Nina, a British chart topper at #5, and thus a staple of her repertoire for the rest of her career. Nina Simone’s stay with Bethlehem Records was short lived and in 1959, after moving to New

on Pacific Avenue in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Word spread about this new singer and pianist who was dipping into the songbooks of Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, and the like, transforming popular tunes of the day into a unique synthesis of jazz, blues, and classical music. Her rich, deep

HYPNOTIC

mississippi goddam The name of this tune is Mississippi Goddam And I mean every word of it Alabama’s got me so upset Tennessee made me lose my rest And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam Alabama’s got me so upset Tennessee made me lose my rest And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam Can’t you see it can’t you feel it It’s all in the air I can’t stand the pressure much longer Somebody say a prayer Alabama’s got me so upset Tennessee made me lose my rest And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam This is a show tune But the show hasn’t been written for it yet Hound dogs on my trail Schoolchildren sitting in jail Black cat crossed my path I think every day’s gonna be my last Lord have mercy on this land of mine We’re all gonna get it in due time I don’t belong here I don’t belong there I’ve even stopped believing in prayer Don’t tell me I tell you Me and my people just about do I’ve been there so I know Keep on saying go slow But that’s just the trouble too slow Washing the windows too slow Picking the cotton too slow You’re just plain rotten too slow Too damn lazy too slow Thinking’s crazy too slow Where am I going What am I doing I don’t know I don’t know Just try to do your very best Stand up be counted with all the rest Cos everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam I bet you thought I was kidding didn’t you Picket lines school boycots They try to say it’s a communist plot All I want is equality For my sister my brother my people and me Yes you lied to me all these years You told me to wash and clean my ears And talk real fine just like a lady And you’d stop calling me Sister Sady Oh but this whole country is full of lies You’re all gonna die and die like flies I don’t trust you anymore You keep on saying go slow go slow But that’s just the trouble too slow Desegregation too slow Mass participation too slow Unification too slow Do things gradually too slow Will bring more tragedy too slow Why don’t you see it why don’t you feel it I don’t know I don’t know You don’t have to live next to me Just give me my equality And everybody knows about Mississippi Everybody knows about Alabama Everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam That’s it

MERCURY RISING

Town Hall. Sensing that her live performances would capture the essential spontaneity of her artistry, Colpix opted to record her September 12, 1959 show. “You Can Have Him,” a glorious torch song previously cut by Peggy Lee and Ella Fitzgerald, was one of the highlights of the evening. The song

in all – included Nina’s version of Bessie Smith’s blues classic “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out.” Issued as a single in 1960, it became Nina’s second charted Pop and R&B hit and one of two Colpix tracks to achieve such a feat during her five year stint with the label. Other stand out

performances, and those sorts of songs were automatically identified with the folk movement. So, saying what sort of music I played gave the critics problems because there was something from everything in there, but it also meant I was appreciated across the board – by jazz, folk, pop and blues fans as well as admirers

opened with a dazzling keyboard arpeggio that would become her signature for decades. So momentous was the Town Hall performance that it inspired some of the same musicians, featuring the vocals of Nina’s only daughter, Lisa Simone Kelly, to do a tribute to a sold out audience over forty five years later. As Nina’s reputation as an engag-

tracks from that era were the soulful song “Cotton Eyed Joe,” the torch tune “The Other Women,” and the Norwegian folk rendition of “Black Is The Colour Of My True Love’s Hair” – all beautiful examples of Nina Simone at her storytelling best, painting a vivid picture with her skill as a lyrical interpreter. During this time with the label,

of classical music.” Clearly Nina Simone was not an artist who could be easily classified. Nina’s Colpix recordings cemented her appeal to a nightclub based U.S. audience. Once she moved to Phillips, a division of Dutch owned Mercury Records, she was ready to expand her following globally. Her first LP for the label, 1964’s In

ing live performer grew, it wasn’t long before she was asked to perform at the prestigious Newport Jazz Festival. Accompanied on the June 30th,1960 show by Al Schackman, a guitarist who would go on to become Nina’s longest-running musical colleague, bassist Chris White,

Nina recorded one civil rights song, Oscar Brown Jr.’s “Brown Baby,” which was included on her fifth album for the label, At The Village Gate. “Critics started to talk about what sort of music I was playing,” writes Nina in her 1991 autobiog-

Concert, signaled Nina’s undaunting stand for freedom and justice for all, stamping her irrevocably as a pioneer and inspirational leader in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. Her own original “Mississippi Goddam” was banned throughout the South but such a response made

and drummer Bobby Hamilton, the dynamic show was recorded by the Colpix. The subsequent release in 1961 of the old blues tune “Trouble In Mind” as a single gave Nina her third charted record. Her stay with Colpix resulted in some wonderful albums – nine

raphy I Put A Spell On You, “and tried to find a neat slot to file it away in. It was difficult for them because I was playing popular songs in a classical style with a classical piano technique influenced by cocktail jazz. On top of that I included spirituals and children’s song in my

no difference in Nina’s unyielding commitment to liberty; subsequent groundbreaking recordings for Philips like “Four Women” (recorded September 1965) and “Strange Fruit” continued to keep Nina in the forefront of the few performers willing to use music as a vehicle 75

HYPNOTIC

MERCURY RISING demeaning. And until songs like ‘Mississippi Goddam’ just burst out of me, I had musical problems as well. How can you take the memory of a man like [Civil Rights activist] Medgar Evers and reduce all that he was to three and a half minutes and a simple tune? That was the musical side of it I shied away from; I didn’t like ‘protest music’ because a

lot of it was so simple and unimaginative it stripped the dignity away from the people it was trying to celebrate. But the Alabama church bombing and the murder of Medgar Evers stopped that argument and with ‘Mississippi Goddam,’ I realized there was no turning back.” Nina was deeply affected by these

for social commentary and change. Such risks were seldom taken by artists during that time of such dramatic civil upheaval. For years, Nina felt there was much about the way that she made her living that was less then appealing. One gets a sense of that in the following passage from I Put A

Spell on You where she explains her initial reluctance to perform material that was tied to the Civil Rights Movement. “Nightclubs were dirty, making records was dirty, popular music was dirty and to mix all that with politics seemed senseless and

two events. In 1962, she had befriended noted playwright Lorraine Hansberry and spoke often with her about the Civil Rights Movement. While she was moved by her conversations with Hansberry, it took the killing of Medgar Evers and the four girls in Birmingham to act as catalysts for a transformation of Nina’s career.

There were many sides to Nina Simone. Among her most amazing recordings were the original and so-soulful version “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” and “I Put A Spell On You” (which had reached to #23 in the U.S. charts), eerily moody, unrestrained, drama to the max; “Ne Me Quitte Pas” tender,

poignant, filled with melancholy; and with gospel-like fervor, the hypnotic voodoo of “See-Line Woman.” In her own unrivaled way, Nina also loved to venture into the more earthy side of life. After she signed with RCA Records in 1967 (a deal her then husband/ 77

HYPNOTIC featured in the Broadway musical “Hair” (combined into a medley, “Ain’t Got No – I Got Life,” a #2 British hit in 1968) to a Simoneified version of George Harrison’s “Here Comes The Sun,” which remained in Nina’s repertoire all the way through to her final performance in 2002. Along the way at RCA, songs penned by Bob Dylan

manager Andy Stroud had negotiated), her very first recordings for the label included the saucy “Do I Move You?” and the undeniably sexual “I Want A Little Sugar In My Bowl” which were from the concept album entitled Nina Sings The Blues. Backed by a stellar cast of New York CIty session musicians, the album was far and away Nina’s

most down-home recording session. By this time, Nina had become central to a circle of African American playwrights, poets, and writers all centered in Harlem along with the previously mentioned Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin and Langston Hughes. The outcome from one of the relationships

became a highlight of the LP with the song “Backlash Blues,” a song that’s lyrics originated from the last poem Langston Hughes submitted for publication prior to his death in May, 1967 and gave to Nina. Nina’s seven years with RCA produced some remarkable recordings, ranging from two songs 78

(“Just Like A Woman”), the brothers Gibb (“To Love Somebody”), and Tina Turner (“Funkier Than A Mosquito’s Tweeter”) took pride of place alongside Nina’s own anthem of empowerment, the classic “To Be Young, Gifted, & Black,” a song written in memory of Nina’s good friend Lorraine Hansberry. The

title of the song coming from a play Hansberry had been working on just prior to her death. After Nina left RCA, she spent a good deal of the 1970’s and early 1980’s living in Liberia, Barbados, England, Belgium, France, Switzerland and The Netherlands.

In 1978, for the first time since she left RCA, Nina was convinced by U.S. jazz veteran Creed Taylor to make an album for his CTI label. This would be her first new studio album in six years and she recorded it in Belgium with strings and background vocals cut in New York City. With the kind of “clean” sound that was a hallmark of CTI record-

ings, the Nina Simone album that emerged was simply brilliant. Nina herself would later claimed that she ”hated” the record but many fans strongly disagreed. With an eighteen piece string section conducted by David Mathews (known for his arrangements on James Brown’s records), the results were spectacular.

The title track, Randy Newman’s evocative “Baltimore,” was an inspired Nina Simone choice. It had a beautifully constructed reggae-like beat and used some of the finest musicians producer Creed Taylor could find including Nina’s guitarist and music director, Al Schackman. Aside from 1982′s Fodder On

MERCURY RISING My Wings that Nina recorded for Carrere Records, two albums she made of the independent VPI label in Hollywood (Nina’s Back and Live And Kickin’) in 1985, and a 1987 Live At Vine Street set recorded for Verve, Nina Simone did not make another full length album until Elektra A&R executive Michael Alago persuaded her

to record again. After much wining and dining, Nina finally signed on the dotted line. Elektra tapped producer Andre Fischer, noted conductor Jeremy Lubbock, and a trio of respected musicians to provide the suitable environment for this highly personal reading of “A Single Woman,” which became the centerpiece and title track for Nina

were fortunate enough to get to know the woman behind the music you could glimpse the solitary soul that understood the pain of being misunderstood. It was one of Nina’s many abilities to comprehend the bittersweet qualities of life and then parlay them into a song that made her such an enduring and fascinating person. She was a true master.

Simone’s final full length album. With two marriages behind her in 1993 she settled in Carry-leRout, near Aix-en-Provence in Southern France. She would continue to tour through the 1990’s and became very much ‘the single woman’ she sang about on her last label recording. She rarely traveled without an entourage, but if you

electricity hanging in the air.” It was that very electricity that made her such an important artist to so many and it will be that electricity that continues to turn on new people all over the world for years to come. Nina Simone dreamed in her sleep at her home in Carry-le-

Rout, Bouches-du-Rhone on April 21, 2003. Her funeral service was attended by Miriam Makeba, Patti Labelle, poet Sonia Sanchez, actor Ossie Davis and hundreds of others. Elton John sent a floral tribute with a message. 79

EVENING YEARS

Shoulders of Giants

hile at RCA Nina records nine albums and some of her most popular songs.

Her version of “Ain’t Got No/I Got Life”, a medley from the 60s musical Hair, got to N. 2 in UK and her soul version of “To Love Somebody” by the Bee Gees was a UK top 10 hit in the Spring of 1969. “To Be Young, Gifted And Black”, inspired by a play of the same name by Lorraine Hansberr (a friend of Nina’s) was recorded by the talented Aretha Franklin in 1972. 83

HYPNOTIC

could cover if she hadn’t taken the path she did. Born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina on February 21st, 1933, Nina’s prodigious talent as a musician was evident early on when she started playing piano

By this time, Nina had become central to a circle of African American playwrights, poets, and writers all centered in Harlem along with the previously mentioned Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin and Langston Hughes. and exposure through movies and television. Nina had sold over one million CDs in the last decade of her life, making her a global catalog best-seller. No one website can fully explore the many nuances and flavors that made up the more than 40 original albums in the Nina Simone library. This site and accompanying radio station contain many of Nina’s finest works. However, we might not have had the chance to witness the breathtaking range of material Nina

by ear at the age of three. Her mother, a Methodist minister, and her father, a handyman and preacher himself, couldn’t ignore young Eunice’s God-given gift of music. Raised in the church on the straight and narrow, her parents taught her right from wrong, to carry herself with dignity, and to work

hard. She played piano – but didn’t sing – in her mother’s church, displaying remarkable talent early in her life. Able to play virtually anything by ear, she was soon studying classical music with an Englishwoman named Muriel Mazzanovich, who had moved to the small southern town. It was from these humble roots that Eunice developed a lifelong love of Johann Sebastian Bach, Chopin, Brahms, Beethoven and Schubert. After graduating valedictorian of her high school class, the community raised money for a scholarship for Eunice to study at Julliard in New York City before applying to the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Her family had already moved to the City Of Brotherly Love, but Eunice’s hopes for a career as a pioneering African American classical pianist were dashed when the school denied her admission. To the end, she herself would claim that racism was the reason she did not attend. While her original dream was unfulfilled, Eunice ended up with an incredible worldwide career as Nina Simone – almost by default. To survive, she began teaching music to local students. One fateful day in 1954, looking to

SHOULDERS OF GIANTS

supplement her income, Eunice auditioned to sing at the Midtown Bar & Grill on Pacific Avenue in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Word spread about this new singer and pianist who was dipping into the songbooks of Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, and the like, transforming popular tunes of the day into a unique synthesis of jazz, blues, and classical music. Her rich, deep velvet vocal tones, combined with her mastery of the keyboard, soon attracted club goers up and down the East Coast. In order to hide the fact that she was singing in bars, Eunice’s mother would refer to the practice as “working in the fires of hell”, overnight Eunice Waymon became Nina Simone by taking the nickname “Nina” meaning “little one” in Spanish and “Simone” after the actress Simone Signoret.

At the age of twentyfour, Nina came to the attention of the record industry. After submitting a demo of songs she had recorded during a performance in New Hope, Pennsylvania, she was signed by Syd Nathan, owner of the Ohio-based King Records (home to James Brown), to his Jazz imprint, Bethlehem Records. The boisterous Nathan had insisted on choosing songs for her debut set, but eventually relented and allowed Nina to delve in the repertoire she had been performing at clubs up and down the eastern seaboard. One of Nina’s stated musical influences was Billie Holiday and her inspired reading of “Porgy” (from “Porgy & Bess”) heralded the arrival of a new talent on the national scene. At the same mammoth 13 hour session in 1957, recorded in New York City, Nina also cut “My Baby Just Cares For Me,” previously recorded by Nate King Cole, Count Basie, and Woody Herman. The song was used by Chanel in a perfume commercial in Europe in the 1980’s and it became a massive hit for Nina, a British chart topper at #5, and thus a staple of her repertoire for the rest of her career. Nina Simone’s stay with Bethlehem Records was short lived and in 1959, after moving to

New York City, she was signed by Joyce Selznik, the eastern talent scout for Colpix Records, a division of Columbia Pictures. Months after the release of her debut LP for the label (1959‘s The Amazing Nina Simone), Nina was performing at her first major New York City venue, the mid-Manhattan-located Town Hall. Sensing that her live performances would capture the essential spontaneity of her artistry, Colpix opted to record her September 12, 1959 show. “You Can Have Him,” a glorious torch song previously cut by Peggy Lee and Ella Fitzgerald, was one of the highlights of the evening. The song opened with a dazzling keyboard arpeggio that would become her signature for decades. So momentous was the Town Hall performance that it inspired some of the same musicians, featuring the vocals of Nina’s only

daughter, Lisa Simone Kelly, to do a tribute to a sold out audience over forty five years later. As Nina’s reputation as an engaging live performer grew, it wasn’t long before she was asked to perform at the prestigious Newport Jazz Festival. Accompanied on the June 30th,1960 show by Al Schackman, a guitarist who would go on to become Nina’s longest-running musical colleague, bassist Chris White, and drummer Bobby Hamilton, the dynamic show was recorded by the Colpix. The subsequent release in 1961 of the old blues tune “Trouble In Mind” as a single gave Nina her third charted record. Her stay with Colpix resulted in some wonderful albums – nine in all – included Nina’s version of Bessie Smith’s blues classic “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out.” Issued as a single in 1960, it became Nina’s second charted Pop and R&B hit and one of two Colpix tracks to achieve such a feat during her five year stint with the label. Other stand out tracks from that era were the soulful song “Cotton Eyed Joe,” the torch tune “The Other Women,” and the Norwegian folk rendition of “Black Is The Colour Of My True Love’s Hair” – all beautiful examples of 85

HYPNOTIC

four women My skin is black my arms are long My hair is whooly my back is strong Strong enough to take the pain Inflicted again and again What do they call me My name is Aunt Sarah My name is Aunt Sarah Aunt Sarah Nina Simone at her storytelling best, painting a vivid picture with her skill as a lyrical interpreter. During this time with the label, Nina recorded one civil rights song, Oscar Brown Jr.’s “Brown Baby,” which was included on her fifth album for the label, At The Village Gate. “Critics started to talk about what sort of music I was playing,” writes Nina in her 1991 autobiography I Put A Spell On You, “and tried to find a neat slot to file it away in. It was difficult for them because I was playing popular songs in a classical style with a classical piano technique influenced by cocktail jazz. On top of that I included spirituals and children’s song in my performances, and those sorts of songs were automatically identified

with the folk movement. So, saying what sort of music I played gave the critics problems because there was something from everything in there, but it also meant I was appreciated across the board – by jazz, folk, pop and blues fans as well as admirers of classical music.” Clearly Nina Simone was not an artist who could be easily classified. Nina’s Colpix recordings cemented her appeal to a nightclub based U.S. audience. Once she moved to Phillips, a division of Dutch owned Mercury Records, she was ready to expand her following globally. Her first LP for the label, 1964’s In Concert, signaled Nina’s undaunting stand for freedom and justice for all, stamping her irrevocably as a pioneer and inspirational leader in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. Her own original “Mississippi Goddam” was banned throughout the South but such a response made no difference in Nina’s unyielding commitment to liberty;

subsequent groundbreaking recordings for Philips like “Four Women” (recorded September 1965) and “Strange Fruit” continued to keep Nina in the forefront of the few performers willing to

on You where she explains her initial reluctance to perform material that was tied to the Civil Rights Movement. “Nightclubs were dirty, making records was dirty, popular music was dirty

My skin is yellow my hair is long Between two worlds I do belong My father was rich and white He forced my mother late one night What do they call me My name is Safronia My name is Safronia use music as a vehicle for social commentary and change. Such risks were seldom taken by artists during that time of such dramatic civil upheaval. For years, Nina felt there was much about the way that she made her living that was less then appealing. One gets a sense of that in the following passage from I Put A Spell

and to mix all that with politics seemed senseless and demeaning. And until songs like ‘Mississippi Goddam’ just burst out of me, I had musical problems as well. How can you take the memory of a man like [Civil Rights activist] Medgar Evers and reduce all that he was to three and a half minutes and a simple tune? That was the musical side of it I shied away from; I didn’t like ‘protest music’ because a lot of it was so simple and unimaginative it stripped the dignity away from the people it was trying to celebrate. But the Alabama church bombing

SHOULDERS OF GIANTS and the murder of Medgar Evers stopped that argument and with ‘Mississippi Goddam,’ I realized there was no turning back.” Nina was deeply affected by these two events. In 1962, she had befriended noted playwright Lorraine Hansberry and spoke often with her about the Civil Rights Movement. While she was moved by her conversations with Hansberry, it took the killing of Medgar Evers and the four girls in Birmingham to act as catalysts for a transformation of Nina’s career. There were many sides to Nina Simone. Among her most amazing recordings were the original and so-soulful

her own unrivaled way, Nina also loved to venture into the more earthy side of life. After she signed with RCA Records in 1967 (a deal her then husband/manager Andy Stroud had negotiated), her very first recordings for the label included the saucy “Do I Move You?” and the undeniably sexual “I Want A Little Sugar In My Bowl” which were from the concept album entitled Nina Sings The Blues. Backed by a stel-

My skin is tan my hair is fine My hips invite you my mouth like wine Whose little girl am I Anyone who has money to buy What do they call me My name is Sweet Thing My name is Sweet Thing version “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” and “I Put A Spell On You” (which had reached to #23 in the U.S. charts), eerily moody, unrestrained, drama to the max; “Ne Me Quitte Pas” tender, poignant, filled with melancholy; and with gospel-like fervor, the hypnotic voodoo of “See-Line Woman.” In

lar cast of New York CIty session musicians, the album was far and away Nina’s most down-home recording session. By this time, Nina had become central to a circle of African American playwrights, poets, and writers all centered in Harlem along with the previously mentioned Lorraine

Hansberry, James Baldwin and Langston Hughes. The outcome from one of the relationships became a highlight of the LP with the song “Backlash Blues,” a song that’s lyrics originated from the last poem Langston Hughes submitted for publication prior to his death in May, 1967 and gave to Nina. Nina’s seven years with RCA produced some remarkable recordings, ranging from two songs featured in the Broadway musical “Hair” (combined into a medley, “Ain’t Got No – I Got Life,” a #2 British hit in 1968) to a Simone-ified version of George Harrison’s “Here Comes The Sun,” which remained in Nina’s repertoire all the way through to her final performance in 2002. Along the way at RCA, songs penned by Bob Dylan (“Just Like A Woman”), the brothers Gibb (“To Love Somebody”), and Tina Turner (“Funkier Than A Mosquito’s Tweeter”) took pride of place alongside Nina’s own anthem of empowerment, the classic

“To Be Young, Gifted, & Black,” a song written in memory of Nina’s good friend Lorraine Hansberry. The title of the song coming from a play Hansberry had been working on just prior to her death. After Nina left RCA, she spent a good deal of the 1970’s and early 1980’s living in Liberia, Barbados, England, Belgium, France, Switzerland and The Netherlands. In 1978, for the first time since she left RCA, Nina was convinced by U.S. jazz veteran Creed Taylor to make an album for his CTI label. This would be her first new studio album in six years and she recorded it in Belgium with strings and background vocals cut in New York City, with the kind of “clean” sound that was a hallmark.

My skin is brown my manner is tough I’ll kill the first mother I see My life has been rough I’m awfully bitter these days Because my parents were slaves What do they call me My name is Peaches 87

HYPNOTIC

only 1993 Elektra album. While thirty-three years separate those recordings, the element of honest emotion is the glue that binds the two together – it is that approach to every piece of work that became Nina’s uncompromising musical trademark. By the end of her life, Nina was enjoying an unprecedented degree of recognition. Her music was enjoyed by the masses due to the CD revolution, discovery on the Internet, and exposure through movies and television. Nina had sold over one million CDs in the last decade of her life, making her a global catalog best-seller. No one website can fully explore the many nuances and flavors that made up the more than 40 original albums in the Nina Simone library. This site and accompanying radio station contain

many of Nina’s finest works. However, we might not have had the chance to witness the breathtaking range of material Nina could cover if she hadn’t taken the path she did. Born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina on February 21st, 1933, Nina’s prodigious talent as a musician was evident early on when she started playing piano by ear at the age of three. Her mother, a Methodist minister, and her father, a handyman and preacher himself, couldn’t ignore young Eunice’s God-given gift of music. Raised in the church on the straight and narrow, her parents taught her right from wrong, to carry herself with dignity, and to work hard. She played piano – but didn’t sing – in her mother’s church, displaying remarkable talent early in her life. Able to play virtually anything by ear, she was soon studying

classical music with an Englishwoman named Muriel Mazzanovich, who had moved to the small southern town. It was from these humble roots that Eunice developed a lifelong love of Johann Sebastian Bach, Chopin, Brahms, Beethoven and Schubert. After graduating valedictorian of her high school class, the community raised money for a scholarship for Eunice to study at Julliard in New York City before applying to the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Her family had already moved to the City Of Brotherly Love, but Eunice’s hopes for a career as a pioneering African American classical pianist were dashed when the school denied her admission. To the end, she herself would claim that racism was the reason she did not attend. While her original dream

SHOULDERS OF GIANTS

HYPNOTIC was unfulfilled, Eunice ended up with an incredible worldwide career as Nina Simone – almost by default. To survive, she began teaching music to local students. One fateful day in 1954, looking to supplement her income, Eunice auditioned to sing at the Midtown Bar & Grill on Pacific Avenue in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Word spread about this new singer and pianist who was dipping into the songbooks of Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, and the like, transforming popular tunes of the day into a unique synthesis of jazz, blues, and classical music. Her rich, deep velvet vocal tones, combined with her mastery of the keyboard, soon attracted club goers up and down the East Coast. In order to hide the fact that she was singing in bars, Eunice’s mother would refer to the practice as “working in the fires of hell”, overnight Eunice Waymon became Nina Simone by taking the nickname “Nina” meaning “little one” in Spanish and

“Simone” after the actress Simone Signoret. At the age of twentyfour, Nina came to the attention of the record industry. After submitting a demo of songs she had recorded during a performance in New Hope, Pennsylvania, she was signed by Syd Nathan, owner of the Ohio-based King Records (home to James Brown), to his Jazz imprint, Bethlehem Records. The boisterous Nathan had insisted on choosing songs for her debut set, but eventually relented and allowed Nina to delve in the repertoire she had been performing at clubs up and down the eastern seaboard. One of Nina’s stated musical influences was Billie Holiday and her inspired reading of “Porgy” (from “Porgy & Bess”) heralded the arrival of a new talent on the national scene. At the same mammoth 13 hour session in 1957, recorded in New York City, Nina also cut “My Baby Just Cares For Me,” previously recorded by Nate King Cole, Count Basie, and Woody Herman. The song was used by Chanel in a perfume commercial

in Europe in the 1980’s and it became a massive hit for Nina, a British chart topper at #5, and thus a staple of her repertoire for the rest of her career. Nina Simone’s stay with Bethlehem Records was short lived and in 1959, after moving to New York City, she was signed by Joyce Selznik, the eastern talent scout for Colpix Records, a division of Columbia Pictures. Months after the release of her debut LP for the label (1959‘s The Amazing Nina Simone), Nina was performing at her first major New York City venue, the mid-Manhattan-located Town Hall. Sensing that her live performances would capture the essential spontaneity of her artistry, Colpix opted to record her September 12, 1959 show. “You Can Have Him,” a glorious torch song previously cut by Peggy Lee and Ella Fitzgerald, was one of the highlights of the evening. The song opened with a dazzling keyboard arpeggio that would become her signature for decades. So momentous was the Town

Hall performance that it inspired some of the same musicians, featuring the vocals of Nina’s only daughter, Lisa Simone Kelly, to do a tribute to a sold out audience over forty five years later. As Nina’s reputation as an engaging live performer grew, it wasn’t long before she was asked to perform at the prestigious Newport Jazz Festival. Accompanied on the June 30th,1960 show by Al Schackman, a guitarist who would go on to become Nina’s longest-running musical colleague, bassist Chris White, and drummer Bobby Hamilton, the dynamic show was recorded by the Colpix. The subsequent release in 1961 of the old blues tune “Trouble In Mind” as a single gave Nina her third charted record. Her stay with Colpix resulted in some wonderful albums – nine in all – included Nina’s version of Bessie Smith’s blues classic “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out.” Issued as a single in 1960, it became Nina’s second charted Pop and R&B hit and one of two

SHOULDERS OF GIANTS Colpix tracks to achieve such a feat during her five year stint with the label. Other stand out tracks from that era were the soulful song “Cotton Eyed Joe,” the torch tune “The Other Women,” and the Norwegian folk rendition of “Black Is The Colour Of My True Love’s Hair” – all beautiful examples of Nina Simone at her storytelling best, painting a vivid picture with her skill as a lyrical interpreter. During this time with the label, Nina recorded one civil rights song, Oscar Brown Jr.’s “Brown Baby,” which was included on her fifth album for the label, At The Village Gate. “Critics started to talk about what sort of music I was playing,” writes Nina in her 1991 autobiography I Put A Spell On You, “and tried to find a neat slot to file it away in. It was difficult for them because I was playing popular songs in a classical style with a classical piano technique influenced by cocktail jazz. On top of that I included spirituals and children’s song in my performances, and those sorts of songs were

automatically identified with the folk movement. So, saying what sort of music I played gave the critics problems because there was something from everything in there, but it also meant I was appreciated across the board – by jazz, folk, pop and blues fans as well as admirers of classical music.” Clearly Nina Simone was not an artist who could be easily classified. Nina’s Colpix recordings cemented her appeal to a nightclub based U.S. audience. Once she moved to Phillips, a division of Dutch owned Mercury Records, she was ready to expand her following globally. Her first LP for the label, 1964’s In Concert, signaled Nina’s undaunting stand for freedom and justice for all, stamping her irrevocably as a pioneer and inspirational leader in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. Her own original “Mississippi Goddam” was banned throughout the South but such a response made no difference in Nina’s unyielding commitment to liberty; subsequent groundbreaking recordings for Philips like

“Four Women” (recorded September 1965) and “Strange Fruit” continued to keep Nina in the forefront of the few performers willing to use music as a vehicle for social commentary and change. Such risks were seldom taken by artists during that time of such dramatic civil upheaval. For years, Nina felt there was much about the way that she made her living that was less then appealing. One gets a sense of that in the following passage from I Put A Spell on You where she explains her initial reluctance to perform material that was tied to the Civil Rights Movement. “Nightclubs were dirty, making records was dirty, popular music was dirty and to mix all that with politics seemed senseless and demeaning. And until songs like ‘Mississippi Goddam’ just burst out of me, I had musical problems as well. How can you take the memory of a man like [Civil Rights activist] Medgar Evers and reduce all that he was to three and a half minutes and a simple tune? That was the

musical side of it I shied away from; I didn’t like ‘protest music’ because a lot of it was so simple and unimaginative it stripped the dignity away from the people it was trying to celebrate. But the Alabama church bombing and the murder of Medgar Evers stopped that argument and with ‘Mississippi Goddam,’ I realized there was no turning back.” Nina was deeply affected by these two events. In 1962, she had befriended noted playwright Lorraine Hansberry and spoke often with her about the Civil Rights Movement. While she was moved by her conversations with Hansberry, it took the killing of Medgar Evers and the four girls in Birmingham to act as catalysts for a transformation of Nina’s career. There were many sides to Nina Simone. Among her most amazing recordings were the original and so-soulful version “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” and “I Put A Spell On You” (which had reached to #23 in the U.S. charts), eerily moody, unrestrained, drama to the max. 91

Where I Call Home

mbittered by racism, Nina renounced her homeland in 1969 and became a wanderer, roaming the

world. She lived in Barbados, Liberia (with the encouragement of Miriam Makeba), Switzerland, France, Trinidad, Netherlands, Belgium and UK at various times. In 1970 she and Stroud split up, and Nina attempt to manage herself and work with her brother Sam Waymon. In 1974 she leaves RCA.Â In 1978 Nina was arrested, and soon released, for withholding taxes in 1971-73 in protest 93

HYPNOTIC at her government’s undeclared war in Vietnam. The same year she made the LP Baltimore for the CTI label and in 1982 the LP Fodder on my Wings for a Swiss

label. In 1985 she records Nina’s back and Live and Kickin in US. In 1987 her previously-mentioned European success with “My Baby Just Cares For Me” brought Nina back

into the public eye: her music was featured in 1992 movie Point Of No Return, with the lead character using Nina as inspiration. The same

year she records Let It Be Me at The Vine Street Bar & Grill in Hollywood for Verve Records.

WHERE I CALL HOME

became absorbed in the moment. She was who the world would come to know as Nina Simone. When Nina Simone died on April 21, 2003, she left a timeless treasure trove of musical magic spanning over four decades from her first hit, the 1959 Top 10 classic “I Loves You Porgy,” to “A Single Woman,” the title cut from her one and only 1993 Elektra album. While thirty-three years separate those recordings, the element of honest emotion is the glue that binds the two together – it is that approach to every piece of work that became Nina’s uncompromising musical trademark. By the end of her life, Nina was enjoying an unprecedented degree of recognition. Her music was enjoyed by the masses due to the CD revolution, discovery on the Internet, and exposure through movies and television. Nina had sold over one million CDs in the last

decade of her life, making her a global catalog best-seller. No one website can fully explore the many nuances and flavors that made up the more than 40 original albums in the Nina Simone library. This site and accompanying radio station contain many of Nina’s finest works. However, we might not have had the chance to witness the breathtaking range of material Nina could cover if she hadn’t taken the path she did. Born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina on February 21st, 1933, Nina’s prodigious talent as a musician was evident early on when she started playing piano by ear at the age of three. Her mother, a Methodist minister, and her father, a handyman and preacher himself, couldn’t ignore young Eunice’s God-given gift of music. Raised in

the church on the straight and narrow, her parents taught her right from wrong, to carry herself with dignity, and to work hard. She played piano – but didn’t sing – in her mother’s church, displaying remarkable talent early in her life. Able to play virtually anything by ear, she was soon studying classical music with an Englishwoman named Muriel Mazzanovich, who had moved to the small southern town. It was from these humble roots that Eunice developed a lifelong love of Johann Sebastian Bach, Chopin, Brahms, Beethoven and Schubert. After graduating valedictorian of her high school class, the community raised money for a scholarship for Eunice to study at Julliard in New York City before applying to the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Her family had already moved to the City Of Brotherly Love, but Eunice’s hopes for a career as a pioneering African American classical pianist were dashed when the school denied her admission. To the 95

HYPNOTIC end, she herself would claim that racism was the reason she did not attend. While her original dream was unfulfilled, Eunice ended up with an incredible worldwide career as Nina Simone – almost by default. To survive, she began teaching music to local students. One fateful day in 1954, looking to supplement her income, Eunice auditioned to sing at the Midtown Bar & Grill on Pacific Avenue in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Word spread about this new singer and pianist who was dipping into the songbooks of Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, and the like, transforming popular tunes of the day into a unique synthesis of jazz, blues, and classical music. Her rich, deep velvet vocal tones, combined with her mastery of the keyboard, soon attracted club goers up and down the East Coast. In order to hide the fact that she was singing in bars, Eunice’s mother would refer to the practice as “working in the fires of hell”, overnight Eunice Waymon

became Nina Simone by taking the nickname “Nina” meaning “little one” in Spanish and “Simone” after the actress Simone Signoret. At the age of twentyfour, Nina came to the attention of the record industry. After submitting a demo of songs she had recorded during a performance in New Hope, Pennsylvania, she was signed by Syd Nathan, owner of the Ohio-based King Records (home to

James Brown), to his Jazz imprint, Bethlehem Records. The boisterous Nathan had insisted on choosing songs for her debut set, but eventually relented and allowed Nina to delve in the repertoire she had been performing at clubs up and down the eastern seaboard. One of Nina’s stated musical influences was Billie Holiday and her inspired reading of “Porgy” (from “Porgy & Bess”) heralded the arrival of a new talent on the national scene. At the same mammoth 13 hour session in 1957, recorded in New York City, Nina also cut “My Baby Just Cares For Me,” previously recorded by Nate

King Cole, Count Basie, and Woody Herman. The song was used by Chanel in a perfume commercial in Europe in the 1980’s and it became a massive hit for Nina, a British chart topper at #5, and thus a staple of her repertoire for the rest of her career. Nina Simone’s stay with Bethlehem Records was short lived and in 1959, after moving to New York City, she was signed by Joyce Selznik, the eastern talent scout for Colpix Records, a division of Columbia Pictures. Months after the release of her debut LP for the label (1959‘s The Amazing Nina Simone), Nina was performing at her first major New York City venue, the mid-Manhattan-located Town Hall. Sensing that her live performances would capture the essential spontaneity of her artistry, Colpix opted to record her September 12, 1959 show. “You Can Have Him,” a glorious torch song previously cut by Peggy Lee and Ella Fitzgerald, was one of the highlights of the evening. The song opened with a

WHERE I CALL HOME

before she was asked to perform at the prestigious Newport Jazz Festival. Accompanied on the June 30th,1960 show by Al

Come Ye Come ye ye who would have peace Hear me what I say now I say come ye ye who would have peace It’s time to learn how to pray I say come ye ye who have no fear Of what tomorrow brings child Start praying for a better world Of peace and all good things I say come ye ye who still have hope That we can still survive now Let’s work together as we should And fight to stay alive I say come ye ye who would have love It’s time to take a stand Don’t mind the dues it must be paid For the love of your fellow man I say come ye come ye Who would have hope Who would have peace Who would have love Who would have peace dazzling keyboard arpeggio that would become her signature for decades. So momentous was the Town Hall performance that it inspired some of the same musicians, featuring the vocals of Nina’s only daughter, Lisa Simone Kelly, to do a tribute to a sold out audience over forty five years later. As Nina’s reputation as an engaging live performer grew, it wasn’t long

Schackman, a guitarist who would go on to become Nina’s longest-running musical colleague, bassist Chris White, and drummer Bobby

Hamilton, the dynamic show was recorded by the Colpix. The subsequent release in 1961 of the old blues tune “Trouble In Mind” as a single gave Nina her third charted record. Her stay with Colpix resulted in some wonderful albums – nine in all – included Nina’s version of Bessie Smith’s blues classic “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out.” Issued as a single in 1960, it became Nina’s second charted Pop and R&B hit and one of two Colpix tracks to achieve such a feat during her five year stint with the label. Other stand out tracks from that era were the soulful song “Cotton Eyed Joe,” the torch tune “The Other Women,” and the Norwegian folk rendition of “Black Is The Colour Of My True Love’s Hair” – all beautiful examples of Nina Simone at her storytelling best, painting a vivid picture with her skill as a lyrical interpreter. During this time with the label, Nina recorded one civil rights song, Oscar Brown Jr.’s “Brown Baby,” which was included on her fifth album for the label, At The Village Gate. “Critics started to talk about what sort of music I was playing,” writes Nina in her 1991 autobiography I Put A Spell On You,

“and tried to find a neat slot to file it away in. It was difficult for them because I was playing popular songs in a classical style with a classical piano technique influenced by cocktail jazz. On top of that I included spirituals and children’s song in my performances, and those sorts of songs were automatically identified with the folk movement. So, saying what sort of music I played gave the critics problems because there was something from everything in there, but it also meant I was appreciated across the board – by jazz, folk, pop and blues fans as well as admirers of classical music.” Clearly

HYPNOTIC

Nina Simone was not an artist who could be easily classified. Nina’s Colpix recordings cemented her appeal to a nightclub based U.S. audience. Once she moved to Phillips, a division of Dutch owned Mercury Records, she was

ready to expand her following globally. Her first LP for the label, 1964’s In Concert, signaled Nina’s undaunting stand for freedom and justice for all, stamping her irrevocably as a pioneer and inspirational leader in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. Her own original “Mississippi Goddam” was banned throughout the South but such a response made no difference in Nina’s unyielding commitment to liberty; subsequent groundbreaking recordings for Philips like “Four Women” (recorded

September 1965) and “Strange Fruit” continued to keep Nina in the forefront of the few performers willing to use music as a vehicle for social commentary and change. Such risks were seldom taken by artists during that time of such dramatic civil upheaval. For years, Nina felt there was much about the way that she made her living that was less then appealing. One gets a sense of that in the following

passage from I Put A Spell on You where she explains her initial reluctance to perform material that was tied to the Civil Rights Movement. “Nightclubs were dirty, making records was dirty, popular music was dirty and to mix all that with politics seemed senseless and demeaning. And until songs like ‘Mississippi

WHERE I CALL HOME

Goddam’ just burst out of me, I had musical problems as well. How can you take the memory of a man like [Civil Rights activist] Medgar Evers and reduce all that he was to three and a half minutes and a simple tune? That was the musical side of it I shied away from; I didn’t like ‘protest music’ because a lot of it was so simple and unimaginative it stripped the dignity away from the people it was trying to celebrate. But the Alabama church bombing and the murder of Medgar Evers stopped that argument and with ‘Mississippi

Goddam,’ I realized there was no turning back.” Nina was deeply affected by these two events. In 1962, she had befriended noted playwright Lorraine Hansberry and spoke often with her about the Civil Rights Movement. While she was moved by her conversations with Hansberry, it took the killing of Medgar Evers and the four girls in Birmingham to act as catalysts for a transformation of Nina’s career. There

were many sides to Nina Simone. Among her most amazing recordings were the original and so-soulful

version “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” and “I Put A Spell On You” (which had reached to #23 in the

U.S. charts), eerily moody, unrestrained, drama to the max; “Ne Me Quitte Pas” tender, poignant, filled with melancholy; and with gospel-like fervor, the hypnotic voodoo of “See-Line Woman.” In her own unrivaled way, Nina also loved to venture into the more earthy side of life. After she signed with RCA Records in 1967 (a deal her then husband/manager Andy Stroud had negotiated), her very first recordings for the label included the saucy “Do I Move You?” and the undeniably sexual “I Want A Little Sugar In My Bowl” which were from the concept album entitled Nina Sings The Blues. Backed by a stellar cast of New York CIty session musicians, the album was far and away Nina’s most down-home recording session. By this time, Nina had become central to a circle of 99

HYPNOTIC African American playwrights, poets, and writers all centered in Harlem along with the previously mentioned Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin and Langston Hughes. The outcome from one of the relationships became a highlight of the LP with the song “Backlash Blues,” a song that’s lyrics originated from the last poem Langston Hughes submitted for publication prior to his death in May, 1967 and gave to Nina. Nina’s seven years with RCA produced some remarkable recordings, ranging from two songs featured in the Broadway musical “Hair” (combined into a medley, “Ain’t Got No – I Got Life,” a #2 British hit in 1968) to a Simone-ified version of George Harrison’s “Here Comes The Sun,” which remained in Nina’s repertoire all the way through to her final performance in 2002. Along the way at RCA, songs penned

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by Bob Dylan (“Just Like A Woman”), the brothers Gibb (“To Love Somebody”), and Tina Turner (“Funkier Than A Mosquito’s Tweeter”) took pride of place alongside Nina’s own anthem of empowerment, the classic “To Be Young, Gifted, & Black,” a song written in memory of Nina’s good friend Lorraine Hansberry. The title of the song coming from a play Hansberry had been working on just prior to her death. After Nina left RCA, she spent a good deal of the 1970’s and early 1980’s living in Liberia, Barbados, England, Belgium, France, Switzerland and The Netherlands. In 1978, for the first time since she left RCA, Nina was convinced by U.S. jazz veteran Creed Taylor to make an album for his CTI label. This would be her first new studio album in six years and she recorded it in Belgium

WHERE I CALL HOME with strings and background vocals cut in New York City. With the kind of “clean” sound that was a hallmark of CTI recordings, the Nina Simone album that emerged was simply brilliant. Nina herself would later claimed that she ”hated” the record but many fans strongly disagreed. With an eighteen piece string section conducted by David Mathews (known for his arrangements on James Brown’s records), the results were spectacular. The title track, Randy Newman’s evocative “Baltimore,” was an inspired Nina Simone choice. It had a beautifully constructed reggae-like beat and used some of the finest musicians producer Creed Taylor could find including Nina’s guitarist and music director, Al Schackman. Aside from 1982′s Fodder On My Wings that Nina recorded for Carrere Records, two albums she made of the independent VPI label in Hollywood (Nina’s Back and Live And Kickin’) in 1985, and a 1987 Live At Vine Street set recorded for Verve, Nina Simone did not make another full length album until Elektra A&R executive Michael Alago persuaded her to record again. After much wining and dining, Nina finally signed on the dotted line. Elektra tapped

producer Andre Fischer, noted conductor Jeremy Lubbock, and a trio of respected musicians to provide the suitable environment for this highly personal reading of “A Single Woman,” which became the centerpiece and title track for Nina Simone’s final full length album. With two marriages behind her in 1993 she settled in Carry-le-Rout, near Aix-en-Provence in Southern France. She would continue to tour through the 1990’s and became very much ‘the single woman’ she sang about on her last label recording. She rarely traveled without an entourage, but if you were fortunate enough to get to know the woman behind the music you could glimpse the solitary soul that understood the pain of being misunderstood. It was one of Nina’s many abilities to comprehend the bittersweet qualities of life and then parlay them into a song that made her such an enduring and fascinating person.

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Music Keeps Spinning

hen Nina Simone died on April 21, 2003, she left a timeless treasure trove of

musical magic spanning over four decades from her first hit, the 1959 Top 10 classic “I Loves You Porgy,” to “A Single Woman,” the title cut from her one and only 1993 Elektra album. While thirty-three years separate those recordings, the element of honest emotion is the glue that binds the two together – it is that approach to every piece of work that became Nina’s trademark. 103

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By the end of her life, Nina was enjoying an unprecedented degree of recognition. Her music was enjoyed by the masses due to the CD revolution, discovery on the Internet, and exposure through movies and television. Nina had sold over one million CDs in the last decade of her life, making her a global catalog best-seller. To say Nina Simone was “one of a kind” is an understatement. Her particular talents and passions absorbed, in seemingly equal measure, Bach, southern spirituals and oddball pop hits. Her activities ranged from the radically political to party animal (she loved to strip off her clothes and dance the night away). Then, of course, there was Simone’s musical genius: that phenomenally expressive yet flat-sounding voice,

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coupled with possibly the best piano hands of her generation. Born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina, in 1933, Simone grew up poor but proud in the best ways. Her parents had been financially comfortable until the privations of the Great Depression, and never ceased striving to improve the lives of their eight children. As Simone herself wrote in her candid and fascinating autobiography I Put A Spell on You (1991, written with Stephen Cleary), “Everything that happened to me as a child involved music.” She was picking out songs on her mother’s upright from the age of two, and soon thereafter began formal classical piano lessons. The rest of Simone’s childhood would have

been amazing enough had she been a boy born with this sort of talent in 19th Century Vienna: she practiced as much as possible, all day, every day, preparing for auditions to classical conservatories. But for a black girl in the Jim Crow south, her devotion and unswerving self-assurance was miraculous. When, in her early 20s, Simone was shocked not to receive admission to Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music, she had to figure out how to make a living. In the course of playing accompaniment and club gigs, she ended up inventing her own musical genre.

The next stage of Simone’s life may be best construed from her musical path. Though she started in the fifties with coolly complex versions of jazz tunes such as “My Baby Just Cares for Me” and “Porgy,” Simone began to write her own songs by the 60s – spurred on by friendships with intellectuals and revolutionaries from James Baldwin to Stokely Carmichael. There’s more black history in the anthems “Young, Gifted and Black,” “Four Women,” and “Mississippi Goddam” than in many textbooks. The years following the Black Power Movement’s peak were not always kind to those who’d been on the front lines. “I’d presumed I could change the world,” Simone wrote, “and had run down a dead-end street leaving my career, child, and husband way behind, neglected.” Pursued by ghosts – and the IRS – she left the United States by the mid-70s, rarely returning for any length of time until her death in 2003. Her last few decades may have been less creatively fertile than those that had come before; even so, she continued to draw soldout crowds around the world.

MUSIC KEEPS SPINNING

Her activities ranged from the radically political to party animal (she loved to strip off her clothes and dance the night away).

Her influence can be heard in artists from Rickie Lee Jones to the Roots, but thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s never been another artist quite like her.

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that day But the rock cried out I can’t hide you The rock cried out I can’t hide you The rock cried out I ain’t gonna Oh hide you gal Sinnerman all on that where’re day you gonna I said rock run to what’s the Sinnerman matter with where’re you rock you gonna Don’t you run to see I need Where’re you rock you gonna Lord Lord run to all Lord all on on that day that day Well I run to the rock So I run to please hide the river it me bleeding Irock run please to thewas I run to hide me Irock run please to the hide me Lord all on 106

MUSIC KEEPS SPINNING

thebleeding sea it was Iitrun to the sea was bleeding all on that day Soriver I runitto the was boiling I run to the I sea it was boiling I run to the sea it was boiling all on that day So I run to the Lordme please hide Lord Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t You see me praying donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t You see me down here praying But the Lord said devil go to the The Lord said go to the devil He said go to the devil all on that day So Ithe randevil to he was waiting I ran to the devil he was waiting 107

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To say Nina Simone was â&#x20AC;&#x153;one of a kindâ&#x20AC;? is an understatement. Her particular talents and passions absorbed, in seemingly equal measure, Bach, southern spirituals and oddball pop hits.

108

MUSIC KEEPS SPINNING

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Bet you

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MUSIC KEEPS SPINNING

thought I was kidding There were many sides to Nina Simone. Among her most amazing recordings were the original and so-soulful version “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” and “I Put A Spell On You” (which had reached to #23 in the U.S. charts), eerily moody, unrestrained, drama to the max; “Ne Me Quitte Pas” tender, poignant, filled with melancholy; and with gospel-like fervor, the hypnotic voodoo of “See-Line Woman.” In her own unrivaled way, Nina also loved to venture into the more earthy side of life. After she signed with RCA Records in 1967 (a deal her then husband/manager Andy Stroud had negotiated), her very first recordings for the label included the saucy “Do I Move You?” and the undeniably sexual “I Want A Little Sugar In My Bowl” which were from the concept album entitled Nina Sings The Blues. Backed by a stellar cast of New York CIty session musicians, the album was far and away Nina’s most down-home recording session. By this time, Nina had become central to a circle of African American playwrights, poets, and writers all centered in Harlem along with the previously mentioned Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin and Langston Hughes. The outcome from one of the relationships became a highlight of the LP with the song “Backlash Blues,” a song that’s lyrics originated from the last poem Langston Hughes submitted for publication prior to his death in May, 1967 and gave to Nina.

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MUSIC KEEPS SPINNING

While at RCA Nina records nine albums and some of her most popular songs. Her version of “Ain’t Got No/I Got Life”, a medley from the 60s musical Hair, got to N. 2 in UK and her soul version of “To Love Somebody” by the Bee Gees was a UK top 10 hit in the Spring of 1969. “To Be Young, Gifted And Black”, inspired by a play of the same name by Lorraine Hansberr (a friend of Nina’s) was recorded by Aretha Franklin in 1972. Embittered by racism, Nina renounced her homeland in 1969 and became a wanderer, roaming the world. She lived in Barbados, Liberia (with the encouragement of Miriam Makeba), Switzerland, France, Trinidad, Netherlands, Belgium and UK at various times. In 1970 she and Stroud split up, and Nina attempt to manage herself and work with her brother Sam Waymon. In 1974 she leaves RCA. In 1978 Nina was arrested, and soon released, for withholding taxes in 1971-73 in protest at her government’s undeclared war in Vietnam. The same year she made the LP Baltimore for the CTI label and in 1982 the LP Fodder on my Wings for a Swiss label. In 1985 she records Nina’s back and Live and Kickin in US. In 1987 her previously-mentioned European success with “My Baby Just Cares For Me” brought Nina back into the public eye: her music was featured in 1992 movie Point Of No Return, with the lead character using Nina as inspiration. The same year she records Let It Be Me at The Vine Street Bar & Grill in Hollywood for Verve Records. Nina moved to the southern French town of Bouc-Bel-Air near Aix-en-Provence, France in 1993 and died April 21st, 2003 in Carry-le-Rouet, Bouches-du-Rhône, France. A protest singer, jazz singer, pianist, arranger and composer, Nina Simone is a great artist who defies easy classification. She is all of these: a jazz-rock-pop-folk-black musician. In fact, we can find her biography in jazz, rock, pop, black and soul literature. Her style and her hits provided many singers and groups with material for hits of their own.

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NOTES BOOKS Simone, N., Cleary, S.(1993). I Put a Spell on You New York:Da Capo Press Lambert, D.B.(2009). Nina Simone The Biography London:Aurum Press Ltd Cohodas, N.(2010). Princess Noire. New York:Pantheon Books

FILM Various(2008). Jazz Icons: Nina Simone: Live in ‘65 & ‘68 Naxos of America DVD

WEB (2012) http://www.ninasimone.com/ (2012) http://www.boscarol.com/ninasimone/pages/php/alb_orig.php (2012) http://www.emusic.com/listen/#/music-news/icon/nina-simone/ (2012) Google Search

MUSIC Too much to write, needs to be listened to.

IMAGES and TEXT Multiple images and text taken from the web for educational purposes only in the making of this book for a class project. Most images were altered for new design.