Nina Simone

Eunice Kathleen Waymon, better known as Nina Simone (February 21, 1933 – April 21, 2003), was a singer, songwriter and pianist. She generally is classified as a jazz musician, but disliked that categorisation herself; and her work also has been described as covering the blues, rhythm and blues and soul. Her vocal style is characterized by passion, breathiness, and tremolo.

Simone was born in Tryon, North Carolina, one of eight children. Like a number of other African-American singers, she was inspired as a child by Marian Anderson and began singing at her local church, also showing prodigious talent as a pianist. When she debuted publicly at a piano recital at age ten, her parents, who had taken seats in the front row, were forced to move to make way for whites. This incident contributed to her later involvement in the civil rights movement.

At seventeen, Simone moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she taught piano and accompanied singers. She was able to begin studying piano at New York City's prestigious Juilliard School of Music, thanks to the sponsorship of benefactors, but lack of funds meant that she was unable to fulfill her dream of becoming America's first African-American concert pianist. She later had an interview to study piano at the Curtis Institute, but was rejected. Simone believed that she was rejected because she was black.

Simone turned instead to blues and jazz after getting her start in an Atlantic City nightclub, taking the name "Nina Simone" in 1954 - "Nina" was her boyfriend's nickname for her (from the Spanish for "girl") and "Simone" was after the French actress Simone Signoret. She first came to public notice in 1959 with her wrenching rendition of George Gershwin's "I Loves You Porgy" (from Porgy and Bess), which proved to be her only Top 40 hit in the United States. This was soon followed by the single "My Baby Just Cares for Me" (this was also a hit in the 1980s in the United Kingdom when used for television advertisements for Chanel No. 5 perfume).

Throughout the 1960s, Simone was involved in the Civil Rights Movement and recorded a number of political songs, including "To Be Young, Gifted and Black" (later covered by Aretha Franklin), "Blacklash Blues," "Mississippi Goddam" (a response to the murder of Medgar Evers and the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama killing four black children), "I Wish I Knew How it Would Feel to be Free" and Kurt Weill's "Pirate Jenny" set in a southern hotel.

In 1961, Simone recorded a version of the traditional song "House of the Rising Sun", a song which was later recorded by Bob Dylan and was a hit for The Animals. Other songs she is famous for include "I Put a Spell on You" (originally by Screamin' Jay Hawkins), The Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun," "Four Women," "I shall be released," and "Aint got no (I got life)". Nina's versatility as an artist was evident throughout her music, which often had a folk-music simplicity. In a single concert, she moved easily from gospel-inspired tunes, to blues and jazz and, in numbers like "For All We Know," to numbers infused with European classical stylings, and counterpoint fugues. A 1968 Norman Jewison cinematic hit, "The Thomas Crown Affair," starring Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway, featured Simone's "Sinner Man" and helped bring her music to a broader audience. The remake of this film, starring Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo also featured the same track.

In 1971, Simone left the United States following disagreements with agents, record labels, and the tax authorities, citing racism as the reason. She returned in 1978 and was arrested for tax evasion (she had withheld several years of income tax as a protest against the Vietnam War). She lived in various countries in the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe, continuing to perform into her 60s. In the 1980s, she performed regularly at Ronnie Scott's jazz club in London.

In 1995, Simone purportedly shot her neighbour's son with a BB gun after his laughing disturbed her concentration. She had a reputation in the music industry for being sometimes difficult to deal with and volatile, a characterization with which Simone vigorously took issue. 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. Simone's regal bearing and commanding stage presence earned her the title the "High Priestess of Soul."

Her daughter, an actress/singer known only as "Simone," has appeared on Broadway in Aida.

Simone's autobiography, I Put a Spell on You (ISBN 0306805251) was published in 1992.

In 1993, she settled near Aix-en-Provence in the south of France. She died in her sleep in Carry-le-Rouet in 2003.

The 1993 film Point of No Return (aka The Assassin), 1996's Romeo and Juliet and 1999's The Thomas Crown Affair included some of her songs and introduced a new generation to her soulful music.

Quote

• "Jazz is a white term to define Black people. My music is Black classical music."

External links

• Nina Simone official site (http://ninasimone.com/welcome.html)
• L'hommage: Nina Simone - Tribute and Archival site (http://www.high-priestess.com/index.html)
• Obituary from the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/2965225.stm)
• Mark Anthony Neal's Nina Simone: She Cast a Spell-and Made a Choice (http://www.seeingblack.com/2003/x060403/nina_simone.shtml)bg:Нина Симон

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