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Nina Simone

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Nina Simone
Simone in 1965
Simone in 1965
Background information
Birth nameEunice Kathleen Waymon
Born(1933-02-21)February 21, 1933
Tryon, North Carolina, U.S.
DiedApril 21, 2003(2003-04-21) (aged 70)
Carry-le-Rouet, France
Genres
Occupation(s)
  • Singer
  • songwriter
  • pianist
  • composer
  • activist
Instrument(s)
  • Vocals
  • piano
Years active1954–2002
Labels
Websitewww.ninasimone.com Edit this at Wikidata

Eunice Kathleen Waymon (February 21, 1933 – April 21, 2003), known professionally as Nina Simone (/ˌnnə sɪˈmn/),[1] was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, and civil rights activist. Her music spanned styles including classical, folk, gospel, blues, jazz, R&B, and pop.

The sixth of eight children born from a poor family in Tryon, North Carolina, Simone initially aspired to be a concert pianist.[2] With the help of a few supporters in her hometown, she enrolled in the Juilliard School of Music in New York City.[3] She then applied for a scholarship to study at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where, despite a well received audition, she was denied admission,[4] which she attributed to racism. In 2003, just days before her death, the Institute awarded her an honorary degree.[5]

To make a living, Simone started playing piano at a nightclub in Atlantic City. She changed her name to "Nina Simone" to disguise herself from family members, having chosen to play "the devil's music"[4] or so-called "cocktail piano". She was told in the nightclub that she would have to sing to her own accompaniment, which effectively launched her career as a jazz vocalist.[6] She went on to record more than 40 albums between 1958 and 1974, making her debut with Little Girl Blue. She had a hit single in the United States in 1958 with "I Loves You, Porgy".[2] Her piano playing was strongly influenced by baroque and classical music, especially Johann Sebastian Bach,[7] and accompanied expressive, jazz-like singing in her contralto voice.[8][9]

Discover more about Nina Simone related topics

Civil rights movement

Civil rights movement

The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the United States. The movement had its origins in the Reconstruction era during the late 19th century, although it made its largest legislative gains in the 1960s after years of direct actions and grassroots protests. The social movement's major nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience campaigns eventually secured new protections in federal law for the civil rights of all Americans.

Classical music

Classical music

Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical music, as the term "classical music" also applies to non-Western art music. Classical music is often characterized by formality and complexity in its musical form and harmonic organization, particularly with the use of polyphony. Since at least the ninth century it has been primarily a written tradition, spawning a sophisticated notational system, as well as accompanying literature in analytical, critical, historiographical, musicological and philosophical practices. A foundational component of Western Culture, classical music is frequently seen from the perspective of individual or groups of composers, whose compositions, personalities and beliefs have fundamentally shaped its history.

Folk music

Folk music

Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted orally, music with unknown composers, music that is played on traditional instruments, music about cultural or national identity, music that changes between generations, music associated with a people's folklore, or music performed by custom over a long period of time. It has been contrasted with commercial and classical styles. The term originated in the 19th century, but folk music extends beyond that.

Gospel music

Gospel music

Gospel music is a traditional genre of Christian music, and a cornerstone of Christian media. The creation, performance, significance, and even the definition of gospel music varies according to culture and social context. Gospel music is composed and performed for many purposes, including aesthetic pleasure, religious or ceremonial purposes, and as an entertainment product for the marketplace. Gospel music is characterized by dominant vocals and strong use of harmony with Christian lyrics. Gospel music can be traced to the early 17th century.

Blues

Blues

Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African-American culture. The blues form is ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll, and is characterized by the call-and-response pattern, the blues scale, and specific chord progressions, of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes, usually thirds, fifths or sevenths flattened in pitch, are also an essential part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove.

Jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in European harmony and African rhythmic rituals.

Juilliard School

Juilliard School

The Juilliard School is a private performing arts conservatory in New York City. Established in 1905 as the Institute of Musical Art, the school became the Juilliard School of Music in 1946 and was subsequently renamed the Juilliard School with music, dance, and drama programs. It is widely regarded as one of the most elite performing arts schools in the world.

Curtis Institute of Music

Curtis Institute of Music

The Curtis Institute of Music is a private conservatory in Philadelphia. It offers a performance diploma, Bachelor of Music, Master of Music in opera, and a Professional Studies Certificate in opera. All students attend on full scholarship.

Little Girl Blue (album)

Little Girl Blue (album)

Little Girl Blue: Jazz as Played in an Exclusive Side Street Club is the debut album by Nina Simone. Recorded in late 1957, it was eventually released by Bethlehem Records in February 1959. Due to the length of time the album had taken to be released and the lack of any promotional single either immediately before or alongside the album, Simone would become disillusioned with Bethlehem and sign with Colpix Records in April 1959. She recorded the tracks for her second album - what would become The Amazing Nina Simone - the same month. However, in May Bethlehem finally released a single, "I Loves You, Porgy" and gave Simone her first hit later that year, peaking at number 18 on the pop charts, and number 2 on the R&B charts. Helped by the profile of the single, the album too went on to become a chart success.

I Loves You, Porgy

I Loves You, Porgy

"I Loves You, Porgy" is a duet from the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess with music by George Gershwin and lyrics by Ira Gershwin. It was performed in the opera's premiere in 1935 and on Broadway the same year by Anne Brown and Todd Duncan. They recorded the song on volume 2 of the album Selections from George Gershwin's Folk Opera Porgy and Bess in 1942. The duet occurs in act 2, scene 3, Catfish Row, where Porgy promises Bess that he will protect her. Bess has a lover, Crown, who is abusive and continually seduces her.

Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the Brandenburg Concertos; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard works such as the Goldberg Variations and The Well-Tempered Clavier; organ works such as the Schubler Chorales and the Toccata and Fugue in D minor; and vocal music such as the St Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor. Since the 19th-century Bach revival he has been generally regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music.

Contralto

Contralto

A contralto is a type of classical female singing voice whose vocal range is the lowest female voice type.

Biography

1933–1954: Early life

Simone was born on February 21, 1933, in Tryon, North Carolina. Her father, John Divine Waymon, worked as a barber and dry-cleaner as well as an entertainer, and her mother, Mary Kate Irvin, was a Methodist preacher.[10] The sixth of eight children[11] in a poor family, she began playing piano at the age of three or four; the first song she learned was "God Be With You, Till We Meet Again".[12] Demonstrating a talent with the piano, she performed at her local church. Her concert debut, a classical recital, was given when she was 12. Simone later said that during this performance, her parents, who had taken seats in the front row, were forced to move to the back of the hall to make way for white people.[13] She said that she refused to play until her parents were moved back to the front,[14][15] and that the incident contributed to her later involvement in the civil rights movement.[16] Simone's music teacher helped establish a special fund to pay for her education.[17] Subsequently, a local fund was set up to assist her continued education. With the help of this scholarship money, she was able to attend Allen High School for Girls in Asheville, North Carolina.

After her graduation, Simone spent the summer of 1950 at the Juilliard School as a student of Carl Friedberg, preparing for an audition at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.[18] Her application, however, was denied. Only 3 of 72 applicants were accepted that year,[19] but as her family had relocated to Philadelphia in the expectation of her entry to Curtis, the blow to her aspirations was particularly heavy. For the rest of her life, she suspected that her application had been denied because of racial prejudice, a charge the staff at Curtis have denied.[20] Discouraged, she took private piano lessons with Vladimir Sokoloff, a professor at Curtis, but never could re-apply due to the fact that at the time the Curtis institute did not accept students over 21. She took a job as a photographer's assistant, but also found work as an accompanist at Arlene Smith's vocal studio and taught piano from her home in Philadelphia.[18]

1954–1959: Early success

In order to fund her private lessons, Simone performed at the Midtown Bar & Grill on Pacific Avenue in Atlantic City, New Jersey, whose owner insisted that she sing as well as play the piano, which increased her income to $90 a week. In 1954, she adopted the stage name "Nina Simone". "Nina", derived from niña, was a nickname given to her by a boyfriend named Chico,[18] and "Simone" was taken from the French actress Simone Signoret, whom she had seen in the 1952 movie Casque d'Or.[21] Knowing her mother would not approve of playing "the Devil's music", she used her new stage name to remain undetected. Simone's mixture of jazz, blues, and classical music in her performances at the bar earned her a small but loyal fan base.[22]

In 1958, she befriended and married Don Ross, a beatnik who worked as a fairground barker, but quickly regretted their marriage.[23] Playing in small clubs in the same year, she recorded George Gershwin's "I Loves You, Porgy" (from Porgy and Bess), which she learned from a Billie Holiday album and performed as a favor to a friend. It became her only Billboard top 20 success in the United States, and her debut album Little Girl Blue followed in February 1959 on Bethlehem Records.[24][25][26] Because she had sold her rights outright for $3,000, Simone lost more than $1 million in royalties (notably for the 1980s re-release of her version of the jazz standard "My Baby Just Cares for Me") and never benefited financially from the album's sales.[27]

1959–1964: Burgeoning popularity

After the success of Little Girl Blue, Simone signed a contract with Colpix Records and recorded a multitude of studio and live albums. Colpix relinquished all creative control to her, including the choice of material that would be recorded, in exchange for her signing the contract with them. After the release of her live album Nina Simone at Town Hall, Simone became a favorite performer in Greenwich Village.[28] By this time, Simone performed pop music only to make money to continue her classical music studies and was indifferent about having a recording contract. She kept this attitude toward the record industry for most of her career.[29]

Simone married Andrew Stroud, a New York police detective, in December 1961. In a few years he became her manager and the father of her daughter Lisa, but later he abused Simone psychologically and physically.[4][30][31]

1964–1974: Civil Rights era

In 1964, Simone changed record distributors from Colpix, an American company, to the Dutch Philips Records, which meant a change in the content of her recordings. She had always included songs in her repertoire that drew on her African-American heritage, such as "Brown Baby" by Oscar Brown and "Zungo" by Michael Olatunji on her album Nina at the Village Gate in 1962. On her debut album for Philips, Nina Simone in Concert (1964), for the first time she addressed racial inequality in the United States in the song "Mississippi Goddam". This was her response to the June 12, 1963, murder of Medgar Evers and the September 15, 1963, bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four young black girls and partly blinded a fifth. She said that the song was "like throwing ten bullets back at them", becoming one of many other protest songs written by Simone. The song was released as a single, and it was boycotted in some southern states.[32][33] Promotional copies were smashed by a Carolina radio station and returned to Philips.[34] She later recalled how "Mississippi Goddam" was her "first civil rights song" and that the song came to her "in a rush of fury, hatred and determination". The song challenged the belief that race relations could change gradually and called for more immediate developments: "me and my people are just about due". It was a key moment in her path to Civil Rights activism.[35] "Old Jim Crow", on the same album, addressed the Jim Crow laws. After "Mississippi Goddam", a civil rights message was the norm in Simone's recordings and became part of her concerts. As her political activism rose, the rate of release of her music slowed.

Simone in 1969
Simone in 1969

Simone performed and spoke at civil rights meetings, such as at the Selma to Montgomery marches.[36] Like Malcolm X, her neighbor in Mount Vernon, New York, she supported black nationalism and advocated violent revolution rather than Martin Luther King Jr.'s non-violent approach.[37] She hoped that African Americans could use armed combat to form a separate state, though she wrote in her autobiography that she and her family regarded all races as equal.

In 1967, Simone moved from Philips to RCA Victor. She sang "Backlash Blues" written by her friend, Harlem Renaissance leader Langston Hughes, on her first RCA album, Nina Simone Sings the Blues (1967). On Silk & Soul (1967), she recorded Billy Taylor's "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free" and "Turning Point". The album 'Nuff Said! (1968) contained live recordings from the Westbury Music Fair of April 7, 1968, three days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. She dedicated the performance to him and sang "Why? (The King of Love Is Dead)", a song written by her bass player, Gene Taylor.[38] In 1969, she performed at the Harlem Cultural Festival in Harlem's Mount Morris Park, which was recorded in Questlove's 2021 documentary Summer of Soul.[39][40]

Simone and Weldon Irvine turned the unfinished play To Be Young, Gifted and Black by Lorraine Hansberry into a civil rights song of the same name. She credited her friend Hansberry with cultivating her social and political consciousness. She performed the song live on the album Black Gold (1970). A studio recording was released as a single, and renditions of the song have been recorded by Aretha Franklin (on her 1972 album Young, Gifted and Black) and Donny Hathaway.[32] When reflecting on this period, she wrote in her autobiography, "I felt more alive then than I feel now because I was needed, and I could sing something to help my people".[41]

1974–1993: Later life

In an interview for Jet magazine, Simone stated that her controversial song "Mississippi Goddam" harmed her career. She claimed that the music industry punished her by boycotting her records.[42] Hurt and disappointed, Simone left the US in September 1970, flying to Barbados and expecting her husband and manager Stroud to communicate with her when she had to perform again. However, Stroud interpreted Simone's sudden disappearance, and the fact that she had left behind her wedding ring, as an indication of her desire for a divorce. As her manager, Stroud was in charge of Simone's income.

Simone at a concert in Morlaix, France, May 1982
Simone at a concert in Morlaix, France, May 1982

When Simone returned to the United States, she learned that a warrant had been issued for her arrest for unpaid taxes (allegedly unpaid as a protest against her country's involvement with the Vietnam War) and fled to Barbados to evade the authorities and prosecution.[43] Simone stayed in Barbados for quite some time and had a lengthy affair with the Prime Minister, Errol Barrow.[44][45] A close friend, singer Miriam Makeba, then persuaded her to go to Liberia. When Simone relocated, she abandoned her daughter Lisa in Mount Vernon.[46] Lisa eventually reunited with Simone in Liberia, but, according to Lisa, her mother was physically and mentally abusive.[47] The abuse was so unbearable that Lisa became suicidal and she moved back to New York to live with her father Andrew Stroud.[46][47] Simone recorded her last album for RCA, It Is Finished, in 1974, and did not make another record until 1978, when she was persuaded to go into the recording studio by CTI Records owner Creed Taylor. The result was the album Baltimore, which, while not a commercial success, was fairly well received critically and marked a quiet artistic renaissance in Simone's recording output.[48] Her choice of material retained its eclecticism, ranging from spiritual songs to Hall & Oates' "Rich Girl". Four years later, Simone recorded Fodder on My Wings on a French label, Studio Davout.

During the 1980s, Simone performed regularly at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in London, where she recorded the album Live at Ronnie Scott's in 1984. Although her early on-stage style could be somewhat haughty and aloof, in later years, Simone particularly seemed to enjoy engaging with her audiences sometimes, by recounting humorous anecdotes related to her career and music and by soliciting requests. By this time she stayed everywhere and nowhere. She lived in Liberia, Barbados and Switzerland and eventually ended up in Paris. There she regularly performed in a small jazz club called Aux Trois Mailletz for relatively small financial reward. The performances were sometimes brilliant and at other times Nina Simone gave up after fifteen minutes. Often she was too drunk to sing or play the piano properly. At other times she scolded the audience. The end of Nina Simone seemed in sight.[49] Manager Raymond Gonzalez, guitarist Al Schackman and Gerrit de Bruin, a Dutch friend of hers, decided to intervene.

Hotel Belvoir Nijmegen, Netherlands. Apartment of Nina Simone was next to this   building between 1988 and 1991
Hotel Belvoir Nijmegen, Netherlands. Apartment of Nina Simone was next to this building between 1988 and 1991

In 1987, Simone scored a huge European hit with the song "My Baby Just Cares for Me". Recorded by her for the first time in 1958, the song was used in a commercial for Chanel No. 5 perfume in Europe, leading to a re-release of the recording. This stormed to number 4 on the UK's NME singles chart, giving Simone a brief surge in popularity in the UK and elsewhere.[49]

In the spring of 1988, Simone moved to Nijmegen in the Netherlands. She bought an apartment next to the Belvoir Hotel with view of the Waalbrug and Ooijpolder, with the help of her friend Gerrit de Bruin, who lived with his family a few corners away and kept an eye on her. The idea was to bring Simone to Nijmegen to relax and get back on track. A daily caretaker, Jackie Hammond from London, was hired for her. She was known for her temper and outbursts of aggression. Unfortunately, the tantrums followed her to Nijmegen. Simone was diagnosed with bipolar disorder by a friend of De Bruin, who prescribed Trilafon for her. Despite the illness, it was generally a happy time for Simone in Nijmegen, where she could lead a fairly anonymous life. Only a few recognized her, but most Nijmegen people did not know who she was. Slowly but surely her life started to improve, and she was even able to make money from the Chanel commercial after a legal battle. In 1991 Nina Simone exchanged Nijmegen for the more lively Amsterdam, where she lived for two years with friends and Hammond.[50][51]

1993–2003: Final years, illness and death

In 1993, Simone settled near Aix-en-Provence in southern France (Bouches-du-Rhône).[52] In the same year, her final album, A Single Woman, was released. She variously contended that she married or had a love affair with a Tunisian around this time, but that their relationship ended because, "His family didn't want him to move to France, and France didn't want him because he's a North African."[53] During a 1998 performance in Newark, she announced, "If you're going to come see me again, you've got to come to France, because I am not coming back."[54] She suffered from breast cancer for several years before she died in her sleep at her home in Carry-le-Rouet (Bouches-du-Rhône), on April 21, 2003. Her Catholic funeral service at the local parish was attended by singers Miriam Makeba and Patti LaBelle, poet Sonia Sanchez, actors Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, and hundreds of others. Simone's ashes were scattered in several African countries. Her daughter Lisa Celeste Stroud is an actress and singer who took the stage name Simone, and who has appeared on Broadway in Aida.[55]

Discover more about Biography related topics

Civil rights movement

Civil rights movement

The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the United States. The movement had its origins in the Reconstruction era during the late 19th century, although it made its largest legislative gains in the 1960s after years of direct actions and grassroots protests. The social movement's major nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience campaigns eventually secured new protections in federal law for the civil rights of all Americans.

Allen School

Allen School

The Allen School, also known as Allen High School, was a private school in Asheville, North Carolina for African-American students. Originally known as the Allen Industrial Training School, and later as Allen Home High School, it opened in 1887 and closed in 1974. Built on land donated by Mr. and Mrs. L. M. Pease and later named for Marriage Allen, an English Quaker philanthropist, who donated money for the construction of a dormitory building, the school was directed by the Woman’s Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, later the United Methodist Church.

Asheville, North Carolina

Asheville, North Carolina

Asheville is a city in, and the county seat of, Buncombe County, North Carolina. Located at the confluence of the French Broad and Swannanoa rivers, it is the largest city in Western North Carolina, and the state's 11th-most populous city. According to the 2020 census, the city's population was 94,589, up from 83,393 in the 2010 census. It is the principal city in the four-county Asheville metropolitan area, which had a population of 424,858 in 2010, and of 469,015 in 2020.

Carl Friedberg

Carl Friedberg

Carl Rudolf Hermann Friedberg was a German pianist and teacher of Jewish origin.

Curtis Institute of Music

Curtis Institute of Music

The Curtis Institute of Music is a private conservatory in Philadelphia. It offers a performance diploma, Bachelor of Music, Master of Music in opera, and a Professional Studies Certificate in opera. All students attend on full scholarship.

Atlantic City, New Jersey

Atlantic City, New Jersey

Atlantic City, sometimes referred to by its initials A.C., is a coastal resort city in Atlantic County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. The city is known for its casinos, boardwalk, and beaches. Atlantic City inspired the U.S. version of the board game Monopoly, which uses various Atlantic City street names and destinations in the game. In 1976, New Jersey voters legalized casino gambling in Atlantic City, and the first casino opened in 1978. Atlantic City had been the home of the Miss America pageant from 1921 to 2004, and returned to the city from 2013 to 2018.

Casque d'Or

Casque d'Or

Casque d'Or is a 1952 French historical drama film directed by Jacques Becker. It is a Belle Époque tragedy, the story of an ill-fated love affair between characters played by Simone Signoret and Serge Reggiani. The story was loosely based on an infamous love triangle between the prostitute Amélie Élie and the Apache gang leaders Manda and Leca, which was the subject of much sensational newspaper reporting during 1902.

Blues

Blues

Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African-American culture. The blues form is ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll, and is characterized by the call-and-response pattern, the blues scale, and specific chord progressions, of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes, usually thirds, fifths or sevenths flattened in pitch, are also an essential part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove.

Beatnik

Beatnik

Beatniks were members of a social movement in the 1950s who subscribed to an anti-materialistic lifestyle.

Barker (occupation)

Barker (occupation)

A barker, often a carnival barker, is a person who attempts to attract patrons to entertainment events, such as a circus or funfair, by exhorting passing members of the public, announcing attractions of the show, and emphasizing variety, novelty, beauty, or some other enticing feature of the show. A barker would often conduct a brief free show, introducing performers and describing acts to be given at the feature performance. Professional barkers strongly disliked the term and generally refer to themselves and each other as "talkers".

George Gershwin

George Gershwin

George Gershwin was an American composer and pianist whose compositions spanned popular, jazz and classical genres. Among his best-known works are the orchestral compositions Rhapsody in Blue (1924) and An American in Paris (1928), the songs "Swanee" (1919) and "Fascinating Rhythm" (1924), the jazz standards "Embraceable You" (1928) and "I Got Rhythm" (1930), and the opera Porgy and Bess (1935), which included the hit "Summertime".

I Loves You, Porgy

I Loves You, Porgy

"I Loves You, Porgy" is a duet from the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess with music by George Gershwin and lyrics by Ira Gershwin. It was performed in the opera's premiere in 1935 and on Broadway the same year by Anne Brown and Todd Duncan. They recorded the song on volume 2 of the album Selections from George Gershwin's Folk Opera Porgy and Bess in 1942. The duet occurs in act 2, scene 3, Catfish Row, where Porgy promises Bess that he will protect her. Bess has a lover, Crown, who is abusive and continually seduces her.

Activism

Influence

Simone's consciousness on the racial and social discourse was prompted by her friendship with black playwright Lorraine Hansberry.[56] Simone stated that during her conversations with Hansberry "we never talked about men or clothes. It was always Marx, Lenin and revolution – real girls' talk".[57] The influence of Hansberry planted the seed for the provocative social commentary that became an expectation in Simone's repertoire. One of Nina's more hopeful activism anthems, "To Be Young, Gifted and Black", was written with collaborator Weldon Irvine in the years following the playwright's passing, acquiring the title of one of Hansberry's unpublished plays. Simone's social circles included notable black activists such as James Baldwin, Stokely Carmichael and Langston Hughes: the lyrics of her song "Backlash Blues" were written by Hughes.[57]

Beyond the civil rights movement

Simone's social commentary was not limited to the civil rights movement; the song "Four Women" exposed the eurocentric appearance standards imposed on black women in America,[58] as it explored the internalized dilemma of beauty that is experienced between four black women with skin tones ranging from light to dark. She explains in her autobiography I Put a Spell on You that the purpose of the song was to inspire black women to define beauty and identity for themselves without the influence of societal impositions.[59] Chardine Taylor-Stone has noted that, beyond the politics of beauty, the song also describes the stereotypical roles that many black women have historically been restricted to: the mammy, the tragic mulatto, the sex worker and the angry black woman.[57]

Discover more about Activism related topics

Lorraine Hansberry

Lorraine Hansberry

Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was a playwright and writer. She was the first African-American female author to have a play performed on Broadway. Her best-known work, the play A Raisin in the Sun, highlights the lives of black Americans in Chicago living under racial segregation. The title of the play was taken from the poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes: "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?" At the age of 29, she won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award — making her the first African-American dramatist, the fifth woman, and the youngest playwright to do so. Hansberry's family had struggled against segregation, challenging a restrictive covenant in the 1940 US Supreme Court case Hansberry v. Lee.

Nina Simone in Concert

Nina Simone in Concert

Nina Simone in Concert is an album by the jazz singer Nina Simone. It is her first album for the record label Philips, composed of three live recordings made at Carnegie Hall, New York City, in March and April 1964. Simone recorded Nina Simone at Carnegie Hall in 1963 for Colpix. This album marked the beginning of Simone's explicitly Civil Rights oriented music and she incorporated civil rights messaging into her performances. Included on the album are unambiguous political songs such as "Mississippi Goddamn", released as a single at the time. However, songs such as "Old Jim Crow", "Go Limp", and "Pirate Jenny" contributed to the political and civil rights messaging in a more covert or metaphorical way. The album was rated as the 94th best album of the 1960s by Pitchfork.

James Baldwin

James Baldwin

James Arthur Baldwin was an American writer. He garnered acclaim for his work across several mediums, including essays, novels, plays, and poems. His first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, was published in 1953; decades later, Time magazine included the novel on its list of the 100 best English-language novels released from 1923 to 2005. His first essay collection, Notes of a Native Son, was published in 1955.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes

James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. One of the earliest innovators of the literary art form called jazz poetry, Hughes is best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance. He famously wrote about the period that "the Negro was in vogue", which was later paraphrased as "when Harlem was in vogue."

Nina Simone Sings the Blues

Nina Simone Sings the Blues

Sings the Blues is an album by singer/pianist/songwriter Nina Simone. This was Simone's first album for RCA Records after previously recording for Colpix Records and Philips Records. The album was also reissued in 2006 with bonus tracks, and re-packaged in 1991 by RCA/Novus as a 17-track compilation under the title The Blues.

Civil rights movement

Civil rights movement

The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the United States. The movement had its origins in the Reconstruction era during the late 19th century, although it made its largest legislative gains in the 1960s after years of direct actions and grassroots protests. The social movement's major nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience campaigns eventually secured new protections in federal law for the civil rights of all Americans.

Four Women (song)

Four Women (song)

"Four Women" is a song written by jazz singer, composer, pianist and arranger Nina Simone, released on the 1966 album Wild Is the Wind. It tells the story of four African American women. Each of the four characters represents an African-American stereotype in society. Thulani Davis of The Village Voice called the song "an instantly accessible analysis of the damning legacy of slavery, that made iconographic the real women we knew and would become."

Eurocentrism

Eurocentrism

Eurocentrism is a worldview that is centered on Western civilization or a biased view that favors it over non-Western civilizations. The exact scope of Eurocentrism varies from the entire Western world to just the continent of Europe or even more narrowly, to Western Europe. When the term is applied historically, it may be used in reference to an apologetic stance toward European colonialism and other forms of imperialism.

I Put a Spell on You (book)

I Put a Spell on You (book)

I Put A Spell On You: The Autobiography of Nina Simone is the 1992 autobiography by Nina Simone (1933–2003), written with Stephen Cleary.

Mammy stereotype

Mammy stereotype

A mammy is a U.S. historical stereotype depicting black women who work in a white family and nurse the family's children. The fictionalized mammy character is often visualized as a fat, dark-skinned woman with a motherly personality. The origin of the mammy figure stereotype is rooted in the history of slavery in the United States, as black slave women were often tasked with domestic and childcare work in white American slaveholding households. The mammy caricature was used to create a narrative of black women being happy within slavery or within a role of servitude. The mammy stereotype associates black women with domestic roles and it has been argued it, combined with segregation and discrimination, limited job opportunities for black women during the Jim Crow era, approximately 1877 to 1966.

Sex worker

Sex worker

A sex worker is a person who provides sex work, either on a regular or occasional basis. The term is used in reference to those who work in all areas of the sex industry.

Angry black woman

Angry black woman

The angry black woman stereotype is a racial trope in American society and media that portrays Black American women as inherently ill-mannered and ill-tempered. Related concepts are the "Sapphire" or "Jezebel".

Artistry

Simone standards

Throughout her career, Simone assembled a collection of songs that became standards in her repertoire. Some were songs that she wrote herself, while others were new arrangements of other standards, and others had been written especially for the singer. Her first hit song in America was her rendition of George Gershwin's "I Loves You, Porgy" (1958). It peaked at number 18 on the Billboard magazine Hot 100 chart.[60]

During that same period Simone recorded "My Baby Just Cares for Me", which would become her biggest success years later, in 1987, after it was featured in a 1986 Chanel No. 5 perfume commercial.[61] A music video was also created by Aardman Studios.[62] Well-known songs from her Philips albums include "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" on Broadway-Blues-Ballads (1964); "I Put a Spell on You", "Ne me quitte pas" (a rendition of a Jacques Brel song), and "Feeling Good" on I Put a Spell On You (1965); and "Lilac Wine" and "Wild Is the Wind" on Wild is the Wind (1966).[63]

"Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" and her takes on "Sinnerman" (Pastel Blues, 1965) and "Feeling Good" have remained popular in cover versions (most notably a version of the former song by The Animals), sample usage, and their use on soundtracks for various movies, television series, and video games. "Sinnerman" has been featured in the films The Crimson Pirate (1952), The Thomas Crown Affair (1999), High Crimes (2002), Cellular (2004), Déjà Vu (2006), Miami Vice (2006), Golden Door (2006), Inland Empire (2006), Harriet (2019) and Licorice Pizza (2021), as well as in TV series such as Homicide: Life on the Street (1998, "Sins of the Father"), Nash Bridges (2000, "Jackpot"), Scrubs (2001, "My Own Personal Jesus"), Boomtown (2003, "The Big Picture"), Person of Interest (2011, "Witness"), Shameless (2011, "Kidnap and Ransom"), Love/Hate (2011, "Episode 1"), Sherlock (2012, "The Reichenbach Fall"), The Blacklist (2013, "The Freelancer"), Vinyl (2016, "The Racket"), Lucifer (2017, "Favorite Son"), and The Umbrella Academy (2019, "Extra Ordinary"), and sampled by artists such as Talib Kweli (2003, "Get By"), Timbaland (2007, "Oh Timbaland"), and Flying Lotus (2012, "Until the Quiet Comes"). The song "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" was sampled by Devo Springsteen on "Misunderstood" from Common's 2007 album Finding Forever, and by little-known producers Rodnae and Mousa for the song "Don't Get It" on Lil Wayne's 2008 album Tha Carter III. "See-Line Woman" was sampled by Kanye West for "Bad News" on his album 808s & Heartbreak. The 1965 rendition of "Strange Fruit", originally recorded by Billie Holiday, was sampled by Kanye West for "Blood on the Leaves" on his album Yeezus.

Simone's years at RCA-Victor spawned many singles and album tracks that were popular, particularly in Europe. In 1968, it was "Ain't Got No, I Got Life", a medley from the musical Hair from the album 'Nuff Said! (1968) that became a surprise hit for Simone, reaching number 2 on the UK Singles Chart and introducing her to a younger audience.[64][65] In 2006, it returned to the UK Top 30 in a remixed version by Groovefinder.

The following single, a rendition of the Bee Gees' "To Love Somebody", also reached the UK Top 10 in 1969. "The House of the Rising Sun" was featured on Nina Simone Sings the Blues in 1967, but Simone had recorded the song in 1961 and it was featured on Nina at the Village Gate (1962).[66][67]

Performance style

Simone at the 1986 Playboy Jazz Festival
Simone at the 1986 Playboy Jazz Festival

Simone's bearing and stage presence earned her the title "the High Priestess of Soul".[68] She was a pianist, singer and performer, "separately, and simultaneously."[30] As a composer and arranger, Simone moved from gospel to blues, jazz, and folk, and to numbers with European classical styling. Besides using Bach-style counterpoint, she called upon the particular virtuosity of the 19th-century Romantic piano repertoire—Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff, and others. Jazz trumpeter Miles Davis spoke highly of Simone, deeply impressed by her ability to play three-part counterpoint (her two hands on the piano and her voice each providing a separate but complementary melody line).[20] Onstage, she incorporated monologs and dialogues with the audience into the program, and often used silence as a musical element.[69] Throughout most of her life and recording career she was accompanied by percussionist Leopoldo Fleming and guitarist and musical director Al Schackman.[70] She was known to pay close attention to the design and acoustics of each venue, tailoring her performances to individual venues.[20]

Simone was perceived as a sometimes difficult or unpredictable performer, occasionally hectoring the audience if she felt they were disrespectful. Schackman would try to calm Simone during these episodes, performing solo until she calmed offstage and returned to finish the engagement. Her early experiences as a classical pianist had conditioned Simone to expect quiet attentive audiences, and her anger tended to flare up at nightclubs, lounges, or other locations where patrons were less attentive.[20] Schackman described her live appearances as hit or miss, either reaching heights of hypnotic brilliance or on the other hand mechanically playing a few songs and then abruptly ending concerts early.

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George Gershwin

George Gershwin

George Gershwin was an American composer and pianist whose compositions spanned popular, jazz and classical genres. Among his best-known works are the orchestral compositions Rhapsody in Blue (1924) and An American in Paris (1928), the songs "Swanee" (1919) and "Fascinating Rhythm" (1924), the jazz standards "Embraceable You" (1928) and "I Got Rhythm" (1930), and the opera Porgy and Bess (1935), which included the hit "Summertime".

I Loves You, Porgy

I Loves You, Porgy

"I Loves You, Porgy" is a duet from the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess with music by George Gershwin and lyrics by Ira Gershwin. It was performed in the opera's premiere in 1935 and on Broadway the same year by Anne Brown and Todd Duncan. They recorded the song on volume 2 of the album Selections from George Gershwin's Folk Opera Porgy and Bess in 1942. The duet occurs in act 2, scene 3, Catfish Row, where Porgy promises Bess that he will protect her. Bess has a lover, Crown, who is abusive and continually seduces her.

Chanel No. 5

Chanel No. 5

Chanel No. 5 was the first perfume launched by French couturier Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel in 1921. The scent formula for the fragrance was compounded by French-Russian chemist and perfumer Ernest Beaux. The design of its bottle has been an important part of the product's branding. Coco Chanel was the first face of the fragrance, appearing in the advertisement published by Harper's Bazaar in 1937.

Music video

Music video

A music video, sometimes abbreviated to M/V, is a video of variable duration that integrates a song or an album with imagery that is produced for promotional or musical artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a music marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings. These videos are typically shown on music television and on streaming video sites like YouTube, or more rarely shown theatrically. They can be commercially issued on home video, either as video albums or video singles.

Aardman Animations

Aardman Animations

Aardman Animations Limited is a British animation studio based in Bristol, England. It is known for films made using stop-motion and clay animation techniques, particularly those featuring its plasticine characters Wallace and Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, and Morph. After some experimental computer-animated short films during the late 1990s, beginning with Owzat (1997), Aardman entered the computer animation market with Flushed Away (2006). As of February 2020, it had earned $1.1 billion worldwide, with an average $134.7 million per film.

Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood

Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood

"Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" is a song written by Bennie Benjamin, Horace Ott and Sol Marcus for the American singer-songwriter and pianist Nina Simone, who recorded the first version in 1964. "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" has been covered by many artists. Two of the covers were transatlantic hits, the first in 1965 by The Animals, which was a blues rock version; and a 1977 by the disco group Santa Esmeralda, which was a four-on-the-floor rearrangement. A 1986 cover by new wave musician Elvis Costello found success in Britain and Ireland.

Broadway-Blues-Ballads

Broadway-Blues-Ballads

Broadway-Blues-Ballads is an album by the singer/pianist/songwriter Nina Simone, released in 1964.

Jacques Brel

Jacques Brel

Jacques Romain Georges Brel was a Belgian singer and actor who composed and performed theatrical songs. He generated a large, devoted following—initially in Belgium and France, but later throughout the world. He is considered a master of the modern chanson.

Feeling Good

Feeling Good

"Feeling Good" is a song written by English composers Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse for the musical The Roar of the Greasepaint – The Smell of the Crowd. It was first performed on stage in 1964 by Cy Grant on the UK tour and by Gilbert Price in 1965 with the original Broadway cast.

I Put a Spell on You (album)

I Put a Spell on You (album)

I Put a Spell on You is a studio album by American jazz singer, songwriter, and pianist Nina Simone. Recorded in 1964 and 1965 in New York City, it was released by Philips Records in 1965. It peaked at number 99 on the Billboard 200 chart and number 9 on the UK Albums Chart. The title track "I Put a Spell on You" peaked at number 23 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart and number 28 on the UK Singles Chart.

Lilac Wine

Lilac Wine

"Lilac Wine" is a song written by James Shelton in 1950. It was introduced by Hope Foye in the short-lived theater musical revue, Dance Me a Song. The song has since been recorded by many artists.

Cover version

Cover version

In popular music, a cover version, cover song, remake, revival, or simply cover, is a new performance or recording by a musician other than the original performer or composer of the song. Originally, it referred to a version of a song released around the same time as the original in order to compete with it. Now, it refers to any subsequent version performed after the original.

Critical reputation

Simone is regarded as one of the most influential recording artists of 20th-century jazz, cabaret and R&B genres.[71] According to Rickey Vincent, she was a pioneering musician whose career was characterized by "fits of outrage and improvisational genius". Pointing to her composition of "Mississippi Goddam", Vincent said Simone broke the mold, having the courage as "an established black musical entertainer to break from the norms of the industry and produce direct social commentary in her music during the early 1960s".[72]

In naming Simone the 29th-greatest singer of all time, Rolling Stone wrote that "her honey-coated, slightly adenoidal cry was one of the most affecting voices of the civil rights movement", while making note of her ability to "belt barroom blues, croon cabaret and explore jazz—sometimes all on a single record."[73] In the opinion of AllMusic's Mark Deming, she was "one of the most gifted vocalists of her generation, and also one of the most eclectic".[74] Creed Taylor, who annotated the liner notes for Simone's 1978 Baltimore album, said the singer possessed a "magnificent intensity" that "turns everything—even the most simple, mundane phrase or lyric—into a radiant, poetic message".[75] Jim Fusilli, music critic for The Wall Street Journal, writes that Simone's music is still relevant today: "it didn't adhere to ephemeral trends, it isn't a relic of a bygone era; her vocal delivery and technical skills as a pianist still dazzle; and her emotional performances have a visceral impact."[76]

"She is loved or feared, adored or disliked", Maya Angelou wrote in 1970, "but few who have met her music or glimpsed her soul react with moderation".[77] Robert Christgau, who disliked Simone, wrote that her "penchant for the mundane renders her intensity as bogus as her mannered melismas and pronunciation (move over, Inspector Clouseau) and the rote flatting of her vocal improvisations."[75] Regarding her piano playing, he dismissed Simone as a "middlebrow keyboard tickler ... whose histrionic rolls insert unconvincing emotion into a song".[78] He later attributed his generally negative appraisal to Simone's consistent seriousness of manner, depressive tendencies, and classical background.[79]

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Rickey Vincent

Rickey Vincent

Rickey Vincent is an American author, historian, and radio host based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is the author of Funk: The Music, the People and the Rhythm of The One, which encompasses the history of funk music, and won the ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor Award for Music Writing in 1997.

Mississippi Goddam

Mississippi Goddam

"Mississippi Goddam" is a song written and performed by American singer and pianist Nina Simone, who later announced the anthem to be her "first civil rights song". The song was released on her album Nina Simone in Concert in 1964, which was based on recordings of three concerts she gave at Carnegie Hall earlier that year. The album was her first release for the Dutch label Philips Records and is indicative of the more political turn her recorded music took during this period.

Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first known for its coverage of rock music and political reporting by Hunter S. Thompson. In the 1990s, the magazine broadened and shifted its focus to a younger readership interested in youth-oriented television shows, film actors, and popular music. It has since returned to its traditional mix of content, including music, entertainment, and politics.

AllMusic

AllMusic

AllMusic is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the database was first made available on the Internet in 1994. AllMusic is owned by RhythmOne.

Creed Taylor

Creed Taylor

Creed Bane Taylor V was an American record producer, best known for his work with CTI Records, which he founded in 1967. His career also included periods at Bethlehem Records, ABC-Paramount Records, Verve, and A&M Records. In the 1960s, he signed bossa nova artists from Brazil to record in the US including Antonio Carlos Jobim, Eumir Deodato, João Gilberto, Astrud Gilberto, and Airto Moreira.

Baltimore (album)

Baltimore (album)

Baltimore is the fourteenth studio album by American singer-songwriter and pianist Nina Simone, released in January 1978 by CTI Records. It was a commercial failure, failed to chart, and also received mixed reviews from critics.

Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou was an American memoirist, popular poet, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees. Angelou is best known for her series of seven autobiographies, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up to the age of 17 and brought her international recognition and acclaim.

Robert Christgau

Robert Christgau

Robert Thomas Christgau is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most well-known and influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and later became an early proponent of musical movements such as hip hop, riot grrrl, and the import of African popular music in the West. Christgau spent 37 years as the chief music critic and senior editor for The Village Voice, during which time he created and oversaw the annual Pazz & Jop critics poll. He has also covered popular music for Esquire, Creem, Newsday, Playboy, Rolling Stone, Billboard, NPR, Blender, and MSN Music, and was a visiting arts teacher at New York University. CNN senior writer Jamie Allen has called Christgau "the E. F. Hutton of the music world – when he talks, people listen."

Melisma

Melisma

Melisma is the singing of a single syllable of text while moving between several different notes in succession. Music sung in this style is referred to as melismatic, as opposed to syllabic, in which each syllable of text is matched to a single note. An informal term for melisma is a vocal run. The term roulade is also sometimes used interchangeably with melisma.

Inspector Clouseau

Inspector Clouseau

Inspector Jacques Clouseau, later granted the rank of Chief Inspector, is a fictional character in Blake Edwards' farcical The Pink Panther series. He is portrayed by Peter Sellers in the original series, and also by Alan Arkin in the 1968 film Inspector Clouseau and, in a cameo, by Roger Moore in the 1983 film Curse of the Pink Panther. In the 2006 remake and its 2009 sequel, Clouseau is portrayed by Steve Martin.

Flat (music)

Flat (music)

In music, flat means "lower in pitch". Flat is the opposite of sharp, which is a raising of pitch. In musical notation, flat means "lower in pitch by one semitone ", notated using the symbol ♭ which is derived from a stylised lowercase 'b'. For instance, the music below has a key signature with three flats and the note, D♭, has a flat accidental.

Middlebrow

Middlebrow

The term middlebrow describes middlebrow art, which is easily accessible art, usually popular literature, and middlebrow people who use the arts to acquire the social capital of “culture and class” and thus a good reputation. First used in the British satire magazine Punch in 1925, the term middlebrow is the intellectual, intermediary brow between the highbrow and the lowbrow forms of culture; the terms highbrow and lowbrow are borrowed from the pseudoscience of phrenology.

Mental health

Simone was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in the late 1980s.[80] She was known for her temper and outbursts of aggression.[81] In 1985, Simone fired a gun at a record company executive, whom she accused of stealing royalties. Simone said she "tried to kill him" but "missed".[82] In 1995 while living in France, she shot and wounded her neighbor's son with an air gun after the boy's laughter disturbed her concentration and she perceived his response to her complaints as racial insults;[83][84] she was sentenced to eight months in jail, which was suspended pending a psychiatric evaluation and treatment.[20]

According to a biographer, Simone took medication from the mid-1960s onward, although this was supposedly only known to a small group of intimates.[85] After her death the medication was confirmed as the anti-psychotic Trilafon, which Simone's friends and caretakers sometimes surreptitiously mixed into her food when she refused to follow her treatment plan.[20] This fact was kept out of public view until 2004 when a biography, Break Down and Let It All Out, written by Sylvia Hampton and David Nathan (of her UK fan club), was published posthumously.[86] Singer-songwriter Janis Ian, a one-time friend of Simone's, related in her own autobiography, Society's Child: My Autobiography, two instances to illustrate Simone's volatility: one incident in which she forced a shoe store cashier at gunpoint to take back a pair of sandals she'd already worn; and another in which Simone demanded a royalty payment from Ian herself as an exchange for having recorded one of Ian's songs, and then ripped a pay telephone out of its wall when she was refused.[87]

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Bipolar disorder

Bipolar disorder

Bipolar disorder, previously known as manic depression, is a mental disorder characterized by periods of depression and periods of abnormally elevated mood that each last from days to weeks. If the elevated mood is severe or associated with psychosis, it is called mania; if it is less severe, it is called hypomania. During mania, an individual behaves or feels abnormally energetic, happy or irritable, and they often make impulsive decisions with little regard for the consequences. There is usually also a reduced need for sleep during manic phases. During periods of depression, the individual may experience crying and have a negative outlook on life and poor eye contact with others. The risk of suicide is high; over a period of 20 years, 6% of those with bipolar disorder died by suicide, while 30–40% engaged in self-harm. Other mental health issues, such as anxiety disorders and substance use disorders, are commonly associated with bipolar disorder.

Royalty payment

Royalty payment

A royalty payment is a payment made by one party to another that owns a particular asset, for the right to ongoing use of that asset. Royalties are typically agreed upon as a percentage of gross or net revenues derived from the use of an asset or a fixed price per unit sold of an item of such, but there are also other modes and metrics of compensation. A royalty interest is the right to collect a stream of future royalty payments.

Air gun

Air gun

An air gun or airgun is a gun that fires projectiles using energy from compressed air or other gases that are mechanically pressurized. This is in contrast to a firearm, which fires projectiles using energy created by burning combustible propellants, i.e. gunpowder.

David Nathan (music writer)

David Nathan (music writer)

David Nathan is an English-born biographer, journalist, authority on soul music, and singer. In the 1960s and 1970s, he was the co-founder of the Soul City record label and a contributing editor to Blues & Soul magazine. Living in the US between 1975 and 2009, he wrote several biographies of musicians as well as hundreds of articles and liner notes, and founded the website soulmusic.com. He has also recorded and performed as a jazz and blues singer, both under his own name and as his alter ego Nefer Davis.

Janis Ian

Janis Ian

Janis Ian is an American singer-songwriter who was most commercially successful in the 1960s and 1970s. Her signature songs are the 1966/67 hit "Society's Child " and the 1975 Top Ten single "At Seventeen", from her LP Between the Lines, which in September 1975 reached no. 1 on the Billboard album chart.

Payphone

Payphone

A payphone is typically a coin-operated public telephone, often located in a telephone booth or in high-traffic outdoor areas, with prepayment by inserting money or by billing a credit or debit card, or a telephone card. Prepaid calling cards also facilitate establishing a call by first calling the provided toll-free telephone number, entering the card account number and PIN, then the desired telephone number. An equipment usage fee may be charged as additional units, minutes or tariff fee to the collect/third-party, debit, credit, telephone or prepaid calling card when used at payphones. By agreement with the landlord, either the phone company pays rent for the location and keeps the revenue, or the landlord pays rent for the phone and shares the revenue.

Awards and recognition

Simone was the recipient of a Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 2000 for her interpretation of "I Loves You, Porgy". On Human Kindness Day 1974 in Washington, D.C., more than 10,000 people paid tribute to Simone.[88][89] Simone received two honorary degrees in music and humanities, from Amherst College and Malcolm X College.[90][91] She preferred to be called "Dr. Nina Simone" after these honors were bestowed upon her.[92] She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018.[93]

Two days before her death, Simone learned she would be awarded an honorary degree by the Curtis Institute of Music, the music school that had refused to admit her as a student at the beginning of her career.[5]

Simone has received four career Grammy Award nominations,[94] two during her lifetime and two posthumously. In 1968, she received her first nomination for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance for the track "(You'll) Go to Hell" from her thirteenth album Silk & Soul (1967). The award went to "Respect" by Aretha Franklin.

Simone garnered a second nomination in the category in 1971, for her Black Gold album, when she again lost to Franklin for "Don't Play That Song (You Lied)". Franklin would again win for her cover of Simone's "Young, Gifted and Black" two years later in the same category. In 2016, Simone posthumously received a nomination for Best Music Film for the Netflix documentary What Happened, Miss Simone? and in 2018 she received a nomination for Best Rap Song as a songwriter for Jay-Z's "The Story of O.J." from his 4:44 album which contained a sample of "Four Women" by Simone.

In 2018, Simone was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame[95] by fellow R&B artist Mary J. Blige.[96]

In 2019, "Mississippi Goddam" was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[97] Simone was inducted into the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame in 2021.[98]

Discover more about Awards and recognition related topics

I Loves You, Porgy

I Loves You, Porgy

"I Loves You, Porgy" is a duet from the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess with music by George Gershwin and lyrics by Ira Gershwin. It was performed in the opera's premiere in 1935 and on Broadway the same year by Anne Brown and Todd Duncan. They recorded the song on volume 2 of the album Selections from George Gershwin's Folk Opera Porgy and Bess in 1942. The duet occurs in act 2, scene 3, Catfish Row, where Porgy promises Bess that he will protect her. Bess has a lover, Crown, who is abusive and continually seduces her.

Human Kindness Day

Human Kindness Day

Human Kindness Day was a day of events held in Washington, D.C. in late spring from 1972 to 1975 to celebrate local artists and national performers "who have added to humanity and national community togetherness." It was the culmination of a month-long celebration organized by Compared to What? Inc., along with the National Park Service and DC Recreation. Human Kindness Day took place within the context of the new District of Columbia home rule, which shifted the District of Columbia from Congressional rule to democracy with an elected mayor, Council, and small-scale Advisory Neighborhood Commissions.

Honorary degree

Honorary degree

An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases honoris causa or ad honorem . The degree is typically a doctorate or, less commonly, a master's degree, and may be awarded to someone who has no prior connection with the academic institution or no previous postsecondary education. An example of identifying a recipient of this award is as follows: Doctorate in Business Administration (Hon. Causa).

Amherst College

Amherst College

Amherst College is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. Founded in 1821 as an attempt to relocate Williams College by its then-president Zephaniah Swift Moore, Amherst is the third oldest institution of higher education in Massachusetts. The institution was named after the town, which in turn had been named after Jeffery, Lord Amherst, Commander-in-Chief of British forces of North America during the French and Indian War. Originally established as a men's college, Amherst became coeducational in 1975.

Malcolm X College

Malcolm X College

Malcolm X College, one of the City Colleges of Chicago, is a two-year college located on the Near West Side of Chicago, Illinois. It was founded as Crane Junior College in 1911 and was the first of the City Colleges. Crane ceased operations at the beginning of the Great Depression and was reopened in as Theodore Herzl Junior College, located in the North Lawndale neighborhood on Chicago's West Side in 1934. Needing a new campus in the late 1960s, Herzel's building was changed into an elementary school. In 1969, the school was named in honor of civil rights advocate and orator Malcolm X on its move to a new campus in the Near West Side.

Curtis Institute of Music

Curtis Institute of Music

The Curtis Institute of Music is a private conservatory in Philadelphia. It offers a performance diploma, Bachelor of Music, Master of Music in opera, and a Professional Studies Certificate in opera. All students attend on full scholarship.

Respect (song)

Respect (song)

"Respect" is a song written and originally recorded by American soul singer Otis Redding. It was released in 1965 as a single from his third album Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul and became a crossover hit for Redding.

Aretha Franklin

Aretha Franklin

Aretha Louise Franklin was an American singer, songwriter and pianist. Referred to as the "Queen of Soul", she has twice been placed ninth in Rolling Stone's "100 Greatest Artists of All Time". With global sales of over 75 million records, Franklin is one of the world's best-selling music artists.

Black Gold (Nina Simone album)

Black Gold (Nina Simone album)

Black Gold is a live album by American jazz musician Nina Simone recorded in 1969 at the Philharmonic Hall, New York City. She got a 1971 nomination for a Grammy Award for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance, but lost to Aretha Franklin.

Don't Play That Song (You Lied)

Don't Play That Song (You Lied)

"Don't Play That Song " is a song written by Ahmet Ertegun and Betty Nelson, the wife of soul singer Ben E. King. It was first recorded by King and was the title track on his third album Don't Play That Song! (1962). The song reached number 2 on the U.S. R&B singles chart and number 11 on the pop chart when released as a single on Atco Records in 1962. In Europe, it ranked at #10 in Italy on FIMI National Charts between 1962 and 1963.

Grammy Award for Best Music Film

Grammy Award for Best Music Film

The Grammy Award for Best Music Film is an accolade presented at the Grammy Awards, a ceremony that was established in 1958 and originally named the Gramophone Awards, to performers, directors, and producers of quality videos or musical programs.

Netflix

Netflix

Netflix, Inc. is an American media company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it operates the over-the-top subscription video on-demand service Netflix brand, which includes original films and television series commissioned or acquired by the company, and third-party content licensed from other distributors. Netflix is a member of the Motion Picture Association—having become the first streaming company to become a member.

Legacy and influence

Music

Musicians who have cited Simone as important for their own musical upbringing include Elton John (who named one of his pianos after her), Madonna, Aretha Franklin, Adele, David Bowie, Patti LaBelle, Boy George, Emeli Sandé, Antony and the Johnsons, Dianne Reeves, Sade, Janis Joplin, Nick Cave, Van Morrison, Christina Aguilera, Elkie Brooks, Talib Kweli, Mos Def, Kanye West, Olivia Newton-John, Lena Horne, Bono, John Legend, Elizabeth Fraser, Cat Stevens, Anna Calvi, Cat Power, Lykke Li, Peter Gabriel, Justin Hayward, Maynard James Keenan, Cedric Bixler-Zavala, Mary J. Blige, Fantasia Barrino, Michael Gira, Angela McCluskey, Lauryn Hill, Patrice Babatunde, Alicia Keys, Alex Turner, Lana Del Rey, Hozier, Matt Bellamy, Ian MacKaye, Kerry Brothers, Jr., Krucial, Amanda Palmer, Steve Adey, and Jeff Buckley.[32][99][100][101][102][103] John Lennon cited Simone's version of "I Put a Spell on You" as a source of inspiration for the Beatles' song "Michelle".[103] American singer Meshell Ndegeocello released her own tribute album Pour une Âme Souveraine: A Dedication to Nina Simone in 2012. The following year, experimental band Xiu Xiu released a cover album, Nina. In late 2019, American rapper Wale released an album titled Wow... That's Crazy, containing a track called "Love Me Nina/Semiautomatic" which contains audio clips from Simone.

Simone's music has been featured in soundtracks of various motion pictures and video games, including La Femme Nikita (1990), Point of No Return (1993), Shallow Grave (1994), The Big Lebowski (1998), Any Given Sunday (1999), The Thomas Crown Affair (1999), Disappearing Acts (2000), Six Feet Under (2001), The Dancer Upstairs (2002), Before Sunset (2004), Cellular (2004), Inland Empire (2006), Miami Vice (2006), Sex and the City (2008), The World Unseen (2008), Revolutionary Road (2008), Home (2008), Watchmen (2009), The Saboteur (2009), Repo Men (2010), Beyond the Lights (2014), Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016), and Nobody (2021). Frequently her music is used in remixes, commercials, and TV series including "Feeling Good", which featured prominently in the Season Four Promo of Six Feet Under (2004). Simone's "Take Care of Business" is the closing theme of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015), Simone's cover of Janis Ian's "Stars" is played during the final moments of the season 3 finale of BoJack Horseman (2016),[104] and "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free" and "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" were included in the film Acrimony (2018).

Film

The documentary Nina Simone: La légende (The Legend) was made in the 1990s by French filmmakers and based on her autobiography I Put a Spell on You. It features live footage from different periods of her career, interviews with family, various interviews with Simone then living in the Netherlands, and while on a trip to her birthplace. A portion of footage from The Legend was taken from an earlier 26-minute biographical documentary by Peter Rodis, released in 1969 and entitled simply Nina. Her filmed 1976 performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival is available on video courtesy of Mercury Studios and is screened annually in New York City at an event called "The Rise and Fall of Nina Simone: Montreux, 1976" which is curated by Tom Blunt.[105]

Footage of Simone singing "Mississippi Goddam" for 40,000 marchers at the end of the Selma to Montgomery marches can be seen in the 1970 documentary King: A Filmed Record... Montgomery to Memphis and the 2015 Liz Garbus documentary What Happened, Miss Simone?[4]

Plans for a Simone biographical film were released at the end of 2005, to be based on Simone's autobiography I Put a Spell on You (1992) and to focus on her relationship in later life with her assistant, Clifton Henderson, who died in 2006; Simone's daughter, Lisa Simone Kelly, has since refuted the existence of a romantic relationship between Simone and Henderson on account of his homosexuality.[106] Cynthia Mort (screenwriter of Will & Grace and Roseanne), wrote the screenplay and directed the 2016 film Nina, starring Zoe Saldana who has since openly apologized for taking the controversial title role.[107][108][109][110]

In 2015, two documentary features about Simone's life and music were released. The first, directed by Liz Garbus, What Happened, Miss Simone? was produced in cooperation with Simone's estate and her daughter, who also served as the film's executive producer. The film was produced as a counterpoint to the unauthorized Cynthia Mort film (Nina, 2016), and featured previously unreleased archival footage. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2015 and was distributed by Netflix on June 26, 2015.[111] It was nominated on January 14, 2016, for a 2016 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.[112]

The second documentary in 2015, The Amazing Nina Simone is an independent film written and directed by Jeff L. Lieberman, who initially consulted with Simone's daughter, Lisa before going the independent route and then worked closely with Simone's siblings, predominantly Sam Waymon.[113][114] The film debuted in cinemas in October 2015, and has since played more than 100 theaters in 10 countries.[115]

Drama

She is the subject of Nina: A Story About Me and Nina Simone, a one-woman show first performed in 2016 at the Unity Theatre, Liverpool—a "deeply personal and often searing show inspired by the singer and activist Nina Simone"[116]—and which in July 2017 ran at the Young Vic, before being scheduled to move to Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre.[117]

Books

As well as her 1992 autobiography I Put a Spell on You (1992), written with Stephen Cleary, Simone has been the subject of several books. They include Nina Simone: Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood (2002) by Richard Williams; Nina Simone: Break Down and Let It All Out (2004) by Sylvia Hampton and David Nathan; Princess Noire (2010) by Nadine Cohodas; Nina Simone (2004) by Kerry Acker; Nina Simone, Black Is the Color (2005) by Andrew Stroud; and What Happened, Miss Simone? (2016) by Alan Light.

Simone inspired a book of poetry, Me and Nina, by Monica Hand,[118] and is the focus of musician Warren Ellis's book Nina Simone's Gum (2021).[119]

Honors

Nina Simonestraat in Nijmegen, Netherlands
Nina Simonestraat in Nijmegen, Netherlands

In 2002, the city of Nijmegen, Netherlands, named a street after her, as "Nina Simone Street": she had lived in Nijmegen between 1988 and 1990. On August 29, 2005, the city of Nijmegen, the De Vereeniging concert hall, and more than 50 artists (among whom were Frank Boeijen, Rood Adeo, and Fay Claassen)[120] honored Simone with the tribute concert Greetings from Nijmegen.

Simone was inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame in 2009.[121]

In 2010, a statue in her honor was erected on Trade Street in her native Tryon, North Carolina.[122]

The promotion from the French Institute of Political Studies of Lille (Sciences Po Lille), due to obtain their master's degree in 2021, named themselves in her honor. The decision was made that this promotion was henceforth to be known as 'la promotion Nina Simone' after a vote in 2017.[123]

Simone was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018.[124]

The Proms paid a homage to Nina Simone in 2019, an event called Mississippi Goddamn was performed by The Metropole Orkest at Royal Albert Hall led by Jules Buckley. Ledisi, Lisa Fischer and Jazz Trio, LaSharVu provided vocals.[125][126]

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Discography

Source: "Nina Simone", Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, (2023, March 19th), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nina_Simone.

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      Simone: "I had an intense love affair with a Tunisian boy last year, but I don't think I want to get involved for a long time again because he opened me up like a volcano, and it almost put me under."
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      Relevant remarks:
      Sebastian: "You've been married before."
      Simone: "I've been married twice."
      Sebastian: "Have you been unlucky at love?"
      Simone: "Yeah—unlucky at marriages. Not so unlucky at love."
      Sebastian: "Lots of love, few marriages?"
      Simone: "Yes, two marriages."
      Sebastian: "Why didn't they work out?"
      Simone: "The music got in the way in the one where I married the cop from the United States [Andrew Stroud]. The music got in the way, and he treated me like a horse. You know, a nonstop workaholic horse. And the one in Tunisia—well, that was very hot, like a volcano. And his family didn't want him to move to France, and France didn't want him because he's a North African."
      Sebastian: "And the volcano didn't last?"
      Simone: "No, but it lasted long enough for me to never forget it, I'll tell you that."
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Sources
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  • Brun-Lambert, David (October 2006) [2006]. Nina Simone, het tragische lot van een uitzonderlijke zangeres (in Dutch). Introduction by Lisa Celeste Stroud, afterword by Gerrit de Bruin. Zwolle: Sirene. ISBN 90-5831-425-1.
  • Cohodas, Nadine (2010). Princess Noire: The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone. New York: Pantheon Books. ISBN 978-0-375-42401-4.
  • Elliott, Richard (2013). Nina Simone. Icons of Pop Music. Sheffield, UK: Equinox. ISBN 978-1-845-53988-7.
  • Hampton, Sylvia; Nathan, David (2004) [2004]. Nina Simone: Break Down and Let It All Out. Introduction by Lisa Celeste Stroud. London: Sanctuary. ISBN 1-86074-552-0.
  • Light, Alan (2016). What Happened, Miss Simone?: A Biography. New York: Crown Archetype. ISBN 978-1-101-90487-9.
  • Simone, Nina; Stephen Cleary (2003) [1992]. I Put a Spell on You. Introduction by Dave Marsh (2nd ed.). New York: Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-80525-1.
  • Stroud, Andy (2005). Nina Simone, "Black Is the Color...": A Book of Rare Photographs of Adolescence, Family and Early Career with Quotes in Her Own Words. Introduction by Lisa Simone Kelly. Philadelphia: Xlibris. ISBN 978-1-599-26670-1.
  • Todd, Traci N. (2021). Nina: A Story of Nina Simone. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. ISBN 9781524737283.
  • Williams, Richard (2002). Nina Simone: Don't Let Me Be Understood. Edinburgh: Canongate. ISBN 978-1-841-95368-7.
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