Post by Lauren Curtis on Jan 1, 2007 18:49:43 GMT -5
Nina Simone (February 21, 1933–April 21, 2003), was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, and civil rights activist.
Although she disliked being categorized, Simone is generally is classified as a jazz musician. Her work covers an eclectic variety of musical styles, such as jazz, soul, folk, R&B, gospel, and even pop music. Her vocal style is characterized by passion, breathiness, and tremolo. Simone recorded over 40 live and studio albums, the biggest body of her work being released between 1958 (when she made her debut with Little Girl Blue) and 1974.
Youth (1933–1954)
Simone was born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina, one of eight children. She began singing at her local church and showed prodigious talent as a pianist. Her public debut, a piano recital, was made at the age of ten. 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. Simone refused to play until her parents were moved back. This incident contributed to her later involvement in the civil rights movement.
Simone's mother, Mary Kate Waymon (who lived into her late 90s) was a strict Methodist minister; her father, John Divine Waymon, was a handyman and sometime barber who suffered bouts of ill-health. Mrs. Waymon worked as a maid and her employer, hearing of Nina's talent, provided funds for piano lessons for the little girl. Subsequently, a local fund was set up to assist in Eunice's continued education.
At seventeen, Simone moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she taught piano and accompanied singers to fund her own studying as a classical pianist at New York City's Juilliard School of Music. With the help of a private tutor she studied for an interview to further study piano at the Curtis Institute, but she was rejected. Simone believed that this rejection was because she was a black woman and it fueled her hatred of the racial injustice in the United States. It seemed that her dream, to become the first African-American classical pianist, would not be fulfilled.
Early success (1954–1959)
Cover of Simone's debut album Little Girl Blue (1958), also known as Jazz as Played in an Exclusive Side Street ClubSimone played at the Midtown Bar & Grill on Pacific Avenue in Atlantic City to fund her studying. The owner said that she would have to sing as well as play the piano in order to get the job. She took on the stagename "Nina Simone" in 1954 because she didn't want her mother to know that she was playing "the devil's music". "Nina" (meaning "little one" in Spanish) was a nickname a boyfriend had given to her and "Simone" was after the French actress Simone Signoret, which she had seen in the movie Casque d'or.[1] Simone played and sang a mixture of jazz, blues and classical music at the bar, and by doing so she created a small but loyal fan base.[2]
After playing in small clubs she recorded a rendition of George Gershwin's "I Loves You Porgy" (from Porgy and Bess) in 1958. It became her only Billboard top 40 hit in the United States, and her debut album Little Girl Blue soon followed on Bethlehem Records. Simone would never benefit financially from the album, because she sold the rights for 3000 dollars. It meant that she missed out on more than 1 million dollars of royalties (mainly because of the successful re-release of "My Baby Just Cares for Me" in the 1980s). After the success of Little Girl Blue, Simone signed a contract with the bigger label Colpix Records, followed by a string of studio and live albums (Simone, 1992; Brun-Lambert, 2006).
Performing live
Simone's regal bearing and commanding stage presence earned her the title the "High Priestess of Soul". Her live performances were regarded not as mere concerts, but as happenings. In a single concert she could be a singer, pianist, dancer, actress and activist all simultaneously. On stage Simone's versatility became truly evident, as she moved from gospel to blues, jazz and folk, to numbers infused with European classical stylings, and counterpoint fugues. She incorporated monologues and dialogues with the audience into the program, and often used silence as a musical element. Nina says about this herself:
"It's like mass hypnosis. I use it all the time" [3]
Many recordings exist of her concerts, expressing fragments of her on-stage power, wit, sensuality and occasional menace. Throughout most of her live and recording career she was accompanied by percussionist Leopoldo Flemming and guitarist and musical director Al Shackman.
Civil rights era (1964–1974)
Nina Simone, by Cuban artist Mario Perez.Simone was made aware of the severity of racial prejudice in America by her friends Langston Hughes, James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry (author of the play Raisin in the Sun). In 1964, she changed record labels, from the American Colpix to the Dutch Philips, which also meant a change in the contents of her recordings. Simone had always included songs in her repertoire that hinted to her African-American origins (such as "Brown Baby" and "Zungo" on Nina at the Village Gate in 1962). But on her debut album for Philips, Nina Simone In Concert (live recording, 1964), Simone for the first time openly addresses the racial inequality that was prevalent in the United States with the song "Mississippi Goddam". It was her response to the murder of Medgar Evers and the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four black children. The song was released as a single, being boycotted in certain southern states.[4] With "Old Jim Crow" on the same album she reacts to the Jim Crow Laws.
From then onward, the civil rights message was standard in Simone's recording repertoire, where it had already become a part of her live performances. She covered Billie Holiday's ("Strange Fruit") on Pastel Blues (1965), on the southern hanging of black men, and sang the W.Cuney poem "Images" on Let It All Out (1966), talking about the absence of pride in the African-American woman. Simone wrote the song "Four Women" and sings it on Wild Is the Wind (1966). It is about four different stereotypes of African-American women.
Simone again moved from Philips to RCAvictor in 1967. She sang "Backlash Blues", written by her friend 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 last song illustrates how white children would get indoctrinated with racism at an early age. The album Nuff Said (1968) contains live recordings from the Westbury Music Fair, April 7th 1968, three days after the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King. She dedicated the whole performance to him and sang "Why? (The King Of Love Is Dead)", a song written by her bass player directly after the news of Dr. Kings death had reached them.
Together with Langston Hughes, Simone turned the late Lorraine Hansberrys unfinished play "To Be Young, Gifted and Black" into a civil rights song. She performed it live on Black Gold (1970). A studio recording was released as a single, and the song became the official "National Anthem of Black America" and has been covered by Aretha Franklin (on 1972s Young, Gifted and Black) and Donny Hathaway.[5]
Later life (1978–2003)
Simone impulsively left the United States in September 1970. The continuous performances and decline of the Civil Rights movement had exhausted her. She flew to Barbados, expecting her husband and manager, Andrew Stroud, to contact her when she had to perform again. However, Stroud interpreted Simone's sudden disappearance as a cue for a divorce. As her manager, Stroud was also in charge of Simone's income. This meant that after their separation Simone had no knowledge about how her business was run, and what she was actually worth. Upon returning to the United States she also learned that there were serious problems with the tax authorities, causing her to go back to Barbados again.[6] Simone stayed in Barbados for quite some time, and had a lengthy affair with the Prime Minister, Errol Barrow.[7][8] Her friend, singer Miriam Makeba convinced her to come to Liberia. After that she lived in Switzerland and the Netherlands, before settling in France in 1992. Simone's divorce from her husband and manager can be seen as the end of her most successful years in the American music business, and the beginning of her (partially self-induced) exile and estrangement from the world for the next two decades (Simone & Cleary, 1992; Brun-Lambert, 2006).
After her last album for Colpix Records, It Is Finished (1974), it was not until 1978 that Simone recorded another album, Baltimore.
Simone had a reputation in the music industry for being volatile and sometimes difficult to deal with, a characterization with which she strenuously took issue. In 1995, she reportedly shot and wounded her neighbour's son with a pneumatic pistol after his laughing disturbed her concentration.[9] She also fired at a record company executive whom she accused of stealing royalties.[10]
In the 1980s she performed regularly at Ronnie Scott's jazz club in London. The album Live At Ronnie Scott's was recorded there in 1984. Though her onstage style could be somewhat haughty and aloof, in later years, Simone particularly seemed to enjoy engaging her adoring audiences by recounting sometimes humorous anecdotes related to her career and music and soliciting requests. Her autobiography, I Put a Spell on You, was published in 1992 She recorded her last album A Single Woman in 1993.
In 1993 Simone settled near Aix-en-Provence in the south of France. Simone had been ill with cancer for several years before she died in her sleep at her home in Carry-le-Rouet on April 21, 2003, aged 70. She left behind a daughter Lisa Celeste, now an actress/singer who took on the stagename Simone and has appeared on Broadway in Aida.
Simone received two honorary degrees in music and humanities from the University of Massachusetts and Malcolm X College.[11] She preferred to be called "Dr. Nina Simone" after these honors were bestowed upon her.[12] Only two days before her death, Simone was awarded with a honorary diploma by the Curtis Institute, the school that had turned her down at the start of her career.[13]
Although she disliked being categorized, Simone is generally is classified as a jazz musician. Her work covers an eclectic variety of musical styles, such as jazz, soul, folk, R&B, gospel, and even pop music. Her vocal style is characterized by passion, breathiness, and tremolo. Simone recorded over 40 live and studio albums, the biggest body of her work being released between 1958 (when she made her debut with Little Girl Blue) and 1974.
Youth (1933–1954)
Simone was born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina, one of eight children. She began singing at her local church and showed prodigious talent as a pianist. Her public debut, a piano recital, was made at the age of ten. 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. Simone refused to play until her parents were moved back. This incident contributed to her later involvement in the civil rights movement.
Simone's mother, Mary Kate Waymon (who lived into her late 90s) was a strict Methodist minister; her father, John Divine Waymon, was a handyman and sometime barber who suffered bouts of ill-health. Mrs. Waymon worked as a maid and her employer, hearing of Nina's talent, provided funds for piano lessons for the little girl. Subsequently, a local fund was set up to assist in Eunice's continued education.
At seventeen, Simone moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she taught piano and accompanied singers to fund her own studying as a classical pianist at New York City's Juilliard School of Music. With the help of a private tutor she studied for an interview to further study piano at the Curtis Institute, but she was rejected. Simone believed that this rejection was because she was a black woman and it fueled her hatred of the racial injustice in the United States. It seemed that her dream, to become the first African-American classical pianist, would not be fulfilled.
Early success (1954–1959)
Cover of Simone's debut album Little Girl Blue (1958), also known as Jazz as Played in an Exclusive Side Street ClubSimone played at the Midtown Bar & Grill on Pacific Avenue in Atlantic City to fund her studying. The owner said that she would have to sing as well as play the piano in order to get the job. She took on the stagename "Nina Simone" in 1954 because she didn't want her mother to know that she was playing "the devil's music". "Nina" (meaning "little one" in Spanish) was a nickname a boyfriend had given to her and "Simone" was after the French actress Simone Signoret, which she had seen in the movie Casque d'or.[1] Simone played and sang a mixture of jazz, blues and classical music at the bar, and by doing so she created a small but loyal fan base.[2]
After playing in small clubs she recorded a rendition of George Gershwin's "I Loves You Porgy" (from Porgy and Bess) in 1958. It became her only Billboard top 40 hit in the United States, and her debut album Little Girl Blue soon followed on Bethlehem Records. Simone would never benefit financially from the album, because she sold the rights for 3000 dollars. It meant that she missed out on more than 1 million dollars of royalties (mainly because of the successful re-release of "My Baby Just Cares for Me" in the 1980s). After the success of Little Girl Blue, Simone signed a contract with the bigger label Colpix Records, followed by a string of studio and live albums (Simone, 1992; Brun-Lambert, 2006).
Performing live
Simone's regal bearing and commanding stage presence earned her the title the "High Priestess of Soul". Her live performances were regarded not as mere concerts, but as happenings. In a single concert she could be a singer, pianist, dancer, actress and activist all simultaneously. On stage Simone's versatility became truly evident, as she moved from gospel to blues, jazz and folk, to numbers infused with European classical stylings, and counterpoint fugues. She incorporated monologues and dialogues with the audience into the program, and often used silence as a musical element. Nina says about this herself:
"It's like mass hypnosis. I use it all the time" [3]
Many recordings exist of her concerts, expressing fragments of her on-stage power, wit, sensuality and occasional menace. Throughout most of her live and recording career she was accompanied by percussionist Leopoldo Flemming and guitarist and musical director Al Shackman.
Civil rights era (1964–1974)
Nina Simone, by Cuban artist Mario Perez.Simone was made aware of the severity of racial prejudice in America by her friends Langston Hughes, James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry (author of the play Raisin in the Sun). In 1964, she changed record labels, from the American Colpix to the Dutch Philips, which also meant a change in the contents of her recordings. Simone had always included songs in her repertoire that hinted to her African-American origins (such as "Brown Baby" and "Zungo" on Nina at the Village Gate in 1962). But on her debut album for Philips, Nina Simone In Concert (live recording, 1964), Simone for the first time openly addresses the racial inequality that was prevalent in the United States with the song "Mississippi Goddam". It was her response to the murder of Medgar Evers and the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four black children. The song was released as a single, being boycotted in certain southern states.[4] With "Old Jim Crow" on the same album she reacts to the Jim Crow Laws.
From then onward, the civil rights message was standard in Simone's recording repertoire, where it had already become a part of her live performances. She covered Billie Holiday's ("Strange Fruit") on Pastel Blues (1965), on the southern hanging of black men, and sang the W.Cuney poem "Images" on Let It All Out (1966), talking about the absence of pride in the African-American woman. Simone wrote the song "Four Women" and sings it on Wild Is the Wind (1966). It is about four different stereotypes of African-American women.
Simone again moved from Philips to RCAvictor in 1967. She sang "Backlash Blues", written by her friend 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 last song illustrates how white children would get indoctrinated with racism at an early age. The album Nuff Said (1968) contains live recordings from the Westbury Music Fair, April 7th 1968, three days after the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King. She dedicated the whole performance to him and sang "Why? (The King Of Love Is Dead)", a song written by her bass player directly after the news of Dr. Kings death had reached them.
Together with Langston Hughes, Simone turned the late Lorraine Hansberrys unfinished play "To Be Young, Gifted and Black" into a civil rights song. She performed it live on Black Gold (1970). A studio recording was released as a single, and the song became the official "National Anthem of Black America" and has been covered by Aretha Franklin (on 1972s Young, Gifted and Black) and Donny Hathaway.[5]
Later life (1978–2003)
Simone impulsively left the United States in September 1970. The continuous performances and decline of the Civil Rights movement had exhausted her. She flew to Barbados, expecting her husband and manager, Andrew Stroud, to contact her when she had to perform again. However, Stroud interpreted Simone's sudden disappearance as a cue for a divorce. As her manager, Stroud was also in charge of Simone's income. This meant that after their separation Simone had no knowledge about how her business was run, and what she was actually worth. Upon returning to the United States she also learned that there were serious problems with the tax authorities, causing her to go back to Barbados again.[6] Simone stayed in Barbados for quite some time, and had a lengthy affair with the Prime Minister, Errol Barrow.[7][8] Her friend, singer Miriam Makeba convinced her to come to Liberia. After that she lived in Switzerland and the Netherlands, before settling in France in 1992. Simone's divorce from her husband and manager can be seen as the end of her most successful years in the American music business, and the beginning of her (partially self-induced) exile and estrangement from the world for the next two decades (Simone & Cleary, 1992; Brun-Lambert, 2006).
After her last album for Colpix Records, It Is Finished (1974), it was not until 1978 that Simone recorded another album, Baltimore.
Simone had a reputation in the music industry for being volatile and sometimes difficult to deal with, a characterization with which she strenuously took issue. In 1995, she reportedly shot and wounded her neighbour's son with a pneumatic pistol after his laughing disturbed her concentration.[9] She also fired at a record company executive whom she accused of stealing royalties.[10]
In the 1980s she performed regularly at Ronnie Scott's jazz club in London. The album Live At Ronnie Scott's was recorded there in 1984. Though her onstage style could be somewhat haughty and aloof, in later years, Simone particularly seemed to enjoy engaging her adoring audiences by recounting sometimes humorous anecdotes related to her career and music and soliciting requests. Her autobiography, I Put a Spell on You, was published in 1992 She recorded her last album A Single Woman in 1993.
In 1993 Simone settled near Aix-en-Provence in the south of France. Simone had been ill with cancer for several years before she died in her sleep at her home in Carry-le-Rouet on April 21, 2003, aged 70. She left behind a daughter Lisa Celeste, now an actress/singer who took on the stagename Simone and has appeared on Broadway in Aida.
Simone received two honorary degrees in music and humanities from the University of Massachusetts and Malcolm X College.[11] She preferred to be called "Dr. Nina Simone" after these honors were bestowed upon her.[12] Only two days before her death, Simone was awarded with a honorary diploma by the Curtis Institute, the school that had turned her down at the start of her career.[13]