Known as the ’High Priestess of Soul’ the distinctive voice of Nina Simone is immediately recognisable today and her contribution to music can still be heard as it reverberates through the music of contemporary artists. Nina Simone was more than just a performer, however, and that same voice which helped to shaped and define soul, RnB, jazz, and blues also called vocally for radical reform and action in the African-American struggle for civil rights. While her monumental public life helped affect lasting change in music and American society Nina Simone's private life was troubled with mental health issues. Join 'Talking History' as we delve into the intricate life of Nina Simone.
In 1933 in Tryon, North Carolina a Methodist minister and housemaid gave birth to her sixth child, Eunice Kathleen Waymon. Though the family wasn’t wealthy the child’s early display of musical talent ensured that she received a good education as her mother’s employer and other townspeople provided funds for piano lessons and her attendance at Allen High School for Girls. With racism and segregation rampant during this period music offered Eunice opportunities that would have otherwise been unavailable; including the ability to speak out when her parents were moved from their seats during her concert debut.
After graduating high-school Eunice applied for a scholarship to the Curtis Institute of Music. Although she performed well in the audition Eunice was not awarded the scholarship; a decision, she claims, was made on the basis of her skin. This was a key moment in the life of Nina Simone as this rejection sent the young Eunice Waymon adventuring to New York so that she could continue her musical education at Julliard.
Musical education wasn't cheap, however, and in order to fund her private lessons Eunice began to work in Midtown Bar & Grill in Atlantic City. With Eunice's musical education primarily classical in nature and her future firmly pointed toward piano stools and monochrome keys the voice of Nina Simone had largely been silent. This wasn't, however, to remain the case as the job at Midtown Bar & Grill required that Eunice sing as well as play the piano. So in 1954 Eunice took the stage name Nina Simone and began to form her distinctive brand of jazz and blues with an infusion of classical music.
Over the following years Nina's career and popularity grew and in 1958 she recorded her first record I Loves You, Porgy. While this was to be her greatest hit on the US charts, Nina Simone reaped little financial reward from this success as she had sold all of her rights for $3,000. This sort of financial mismanagement plagued Nina Simone's career and her commercial success was always tempered by bad contracts and poor managerial decisions. Her outspoken views and unique sound worsened these financial issues as much of Nina Simone's music was coloured by controversy and met by radio boycotts.
Yet her legacy and standing today show how truly important the voice of Nina Simone is. She has provided inspiration for generations of musicians from Van Morrison, Cat Stevens, and Peter Gabriel to Christine Aguilera, Alicia Keys, and Mos Def while others, including the likes of David Bowie and Marilyn Manson, have covered her songs. More important than these individual inspirations was Nina Simone's massive influence on the development of genres like jazz, blues, soul, and RnB.
In her own works and her renditions of other artists' songs Nina Simone suffused her classical training with a soulful and emotionally loaded voice. While she developed as an artist and discovered new styles and genres she never discarded what had come before. Her jazz numbers are suffused with her gospel roots while her blues always carry a soulful air; all of her music is a mosaic of styles painted on a canvas awash with classical music.
While music was the vehicle for her greatness it was her social message and political activism which made her such an important figure in history. The year after she released I Loves You, Porgy Nina Simone signed with Colpix Records. Though she had full creative control with Colpix Nina Simone viewed this partnership as merely a means to continue her musical studies; an attitude which wouldn't really ever change. A great deal would change, however, in 1964 as Nina Simone moved to the Dutch Philips label.
Her first album on this new label, Nina Simone in Concert, included the single Mississippi Goddamn. A reaction to the slaying of Medgar Evers and the Birmingham Church bombing this song launched Nina Simone straight into the deep end of the Civil Rights Movement. Filled with passion Mississippi Goddamn called for racial equality, criticised those who talked of gradual change, and damned the racism which allowed for these killings. Old Jim Crow, released on the same record, follows this message as Nina Simone openly condemns the Jim Crow laws and other government sanctioned racial repression. Nina Simone in Concert was just the beginning and Nina Simone seemed to come into her own as a performer as she engaged more with her audiences on a personal and political level.
Nina Simone's politics were to prove more radical than most protest performers of the time as she marched closer to the tune of figures like Malcolm X than the pacifist Martin Luther King Jr. For the rest of the 1960s Nina Simone would continue her call for radical reform as she covered famous works like Strange Fruit and I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free and helped to create new anthems of freedom and reform. In 1968 'Nuff Said!, one of Nina Simone's greatest recordings, was released. A recording of a performance which took place three days after the assassination of Martin Luther King and which was dedicated to this figurehead of the Civil Rights Movement; 'Nuff Said! provides a window into a movement in the throes of emotional anguish at this profound loss.
Yet Nina Simone's struggle went beyond the aims of the African-American Civil Rights Movement. As a black woman in 1960s America Nina Simone was doubly damned as she faced a society which severely discriminated against both her race and her gender. These circumstances differentiated Nina Simone from many other campaigners at this time as she fought a war on two fronts. While songs like Mississippi Goddamn and Old Jim Crow had targeted the rampant institutional and societal racism in the US, Nina also busied herself campaigning for women's rights and highlighting the unsung tale of the African-American woman.
Though she again used the words of others to tell her message to the world, most famously William Waring Cuney's No Images, Nina Simone's own composition, Four Women, is seen by many as her greatest work in dealing with the issue of being a black woman in America. By using four stereotypes Nina Simone highlights the sufferings endured by black women throughout history and modernity and the strength they needed to endure. The first of the Four Women tells the tale of 'Aunt Sarah' who embodies those women enslaved to others and the resilience they were forced to cultivate in order to survive the pain and hardships they and their race suffered again and again.
The second story is of a daughter born to a white father and black mother. Falling 'between two worlds' this young 'Safronia' tells of the suffering inflicted on two generations of women by the rich white man who 'forced [her] mother late one night'. The third story continues the telling of the sexual suffering of African-American women as 'Sweet Thing' sells her inviting hips and wine like mouth to anyone willing to pay. Most telling in this tale is the protagonists' tan skin and fine hair which seem to be key in making her acceptable to her white clients. This emphasis on 'Sweet Thing's' physical features and prostituting reinforces the point that a black woman's role in the white world is sexual and her acceptance can only be fleetingly bought by Caucasian like features.
Nina brings the story full circle in the final verse with 'Peaches'. While 'Safronia' and 'Sweet Thing' are introduced as 'yellow' and 'tan', 'Peaches's' brown skin is closer to 'Aunt Sarah's' black. The similarities do not stop there as this tough and assertive woman riles against the society that enslaved her forebears. 'Peaches's' message is clear and defiant; you cannot buy or own me, even for a single night, and my racial identity gives me strength despite my rough life. Nina's political message is made clear in the line 'I'll kill the first mother I see' as we imagine 'Peaches' daring anyone to get in her way as she marches forward. The clearly defiant and empowered tone of Four Women makes it Nina Simone's greatest odes to African-American women.
Then in 1970, with the help of Weldon Irvine, Nina Simone turned an unfinished play by Lorraine Hansberry into a requiem for this great playwright. Though Hansberry had died in 1965 at the age of 34 she had achieved great recognition for her works which had highlighted her own youth in Chicago and the segregation she encountered there and elsewhere. Many of the unfinished works Hansberry left behind were compiled and co-opted together into the play To Be Young, Gifted and Black by her ex-husband Robert Neimroff. It was this title that Nina Simone decided upon for the song that would remember the great life of her friend and celebrate a world where the future looked so much brighter for African-Americans.
By the end of the 1960s the African-American Civil Rights Movement had achieved a great deal of its goals. Though racism was still rampant it was no longer legal thanks to the series of Civil Rights Acts and the US was a changed place from the nation that had fired so much of Nina Simone's work, there had even been a televised inter-racial kiss between William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols. The 1970s would bring an even greater change for Nina, however, as she found herself a fugitive in her own country.
In 1961 Nina Simone married her second husband, Andrew Stroud, who became her manager two years later. For the next nine years they remained together and raised their only child, Lisa Celeste Stroud. Yet in 1970 Nina took a sudden trip to Barbados, leaving behind her husband and her wedding band. Though there is confusion over what her intentions were in taking this trip the end result was a divorce between Simone and Stroud. Further change was to come when Nina Simone returned to the US as she was met by a warrant for her arrest for unpaid taxes.
Quickly leaving to avoid prosecution, Nina Simone would never make the United States her home again. Over the next three decades Nina Simone would live in Liberia, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and France. It was back to Barbados that Nina Simone would first flee, however, and it would be here that she would undergo her next musical revolution. Despite her exile from the US, Nina Simone continued her recording career, releasing a string of live and studio albums up until 1974. Then she fell silent.
In '78 she reemerged with the album Baltimore released on CTI Records. Though the album was somewhat of a commercial flop and a personal disappointment Baltimore was well received by the music world and breathed life into Nina Simone's dormant career. Over the following decades Nina Simone continued to release records and explore new musical avenues. The use of My Baby Just Cares for Me in a Channel No. 5 ad in 1986 saw a massive resurgence in her popularity as a whole new generation was introduced to the 'High Priestess of Soul'.
In 1993 Nina Simone released her final album A Single Woman; she lived the next ten years of her life in France before dying of breast cancer on the 21st of April 2003. The legacy she began in the 1960s is as powerful today as ever and her work still inspires, and is covered by, a multitude of artists while people around the world continue to be inspired by this iconic woman of the African-American struggle for Civil Rights.
Listen back as Patrick and a panel of biographers and music experts discusses the life, music, and legacy of Nina Simone, the 'High Priestess of Soul'.
