Nina Simone

Singer, musician, and activist

• Born: February 21, 1933
• Birthplace: Tryon, North Carolina
• Died: April 21, 2003
• Place of death: Carry-le-Rouet, France

Simone was one of the leading musical artists of the Civil Rights movement. Although she started out with the goal of becoming a famous classical pianist, her musical career transcended and informed several genres of music, including folk, jazz, blues, and protest music.

Early Life

Nina Simone was born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in the segregated town of Tryon, North Carolina, on February 21, 1933. Although the Great Depression made subsistence difficult, her parents, John Divine Waymon and Kate Waymon, managed to feed and clothe their eight children. The Waymons demonstrated to their children the importance of using hard work to overcome racism. Simone’s father worked as a truck driver and later opened his own dry-cleaning business. Her mother was ordained as a minister in St. Luke’s Christian Methodist Episcopal Church. By age six, Simone had begun playing the church organ, an early harbinger of her future as a pianist.

Recognizing Simone’s talent, her parents began paying for piano lessons with a white benefactor. By age ten, she was serving as the pianist at her mother’s church and a fund had been established to further her classical training. African Americans in the area took pride in the young musical prodigy.

Simone learned early on that, despite her best efforts, race would always be a factor in life. While she was preparing for a recital in Tryon, her parents were ushered to the back of the room. Simone objected and even refused to play before the white audience until her parents received front-row seats. In another incident, Simone and another African American purchased ice cream from a drugstore on a sweltering day in Tryon but were not allowed to sit inside to eat it.

Simone graduated from Tryon’s segregated high school and attended Allen High School, a private, all-black girls school in Asheville, North Carolina. There, she continued piano lessons. Her dream was to become a classical pianist. However, Simone faced a daunting challenge. After completing her studies at Allen, she auditioned for admission to the Curtis Institute of Music. She was devastated when the renowned classical music school did not admit her. Determined to win admission, she gave recitals and taught other students to earn money for more lessons. Eventually, however, Simone gave up on her dream of becoming a classical pianist.

Life’s Work

To cover her growing living expenses, Simone began playing in Philadelphia nightclubs in 1954. She chose the stage name “Nina Simone.” “Nina” came from a Latino boyfriend and “Simone” from the French film star Simone Signoret.

After several weeks of playing piano at the Midtown Bar, the owner urged Simone to sing; customers wanted a piano player and a singer. Simone agreed, although she had little tolerance for rude bar patrons and refused to play while they talked. She gradually learned to sing.

Simone recorded her first album, Little Girl Blue, in 1957. It was a modest success and she moved to New York for bigger audiences and paydays. In New York, she continued classical training at the Juilliard School of Music and married Don Ross, her manager. By 1959, Simone’s career had blossomed. She was in demand at small, intimate clubs and played concerts around New York, Philadelphia, Atlantic City, and Washington, D.C. She also enjoyed her greatest hit that year, “I Loves You, Porgy” from George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. The song stayed on the charts for nearly four months and the album reached number eight. Her music attracted a small but loyal following.

Several more hits followed in the 1960’s, including “I Put a Spell on You,” “To Be Young, Gifted, and Black,” and “Four Women.” Although Simone had a strong following in northern metropolitan cities, she often received negative reviews from white music critics who were unable to characterize her music.

As the Civil Rights movement unfolded during the 1960’s, Simone became involved, both personally and musically. She did benefit concerts for civil rights groups, donated money, befriended leading members of the movement, and addressed racial injustices in her music. After the murder of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) field secretary Medgar Evers in 1963, she wrote “Mississippi Goddam.” Some radio stations refused to play the song, especially those in the South.

After the 1960’s, Simone spent most of her time in Barbados, parts of Africa, and Europe, where she found peace and appreciative audiences. Europeans especially recognized her deft blend of jazz, blues, folk, and protest music. Throughout the 1970’s, with a new husband and manager, Don Stroud, she played in the United States only when necessary. Their marriage produced a daughter named Lisa.

Although Simone’s career declined in the early to mid-1980’s, she experienced a revival between 1989 and 1993. I Put a Spell on You: The Autobiography of Nina Simone was published in 1991; she produced her last album, A Single Woman, two years later to good reviews. However, Simone struggled with depression. Her mother died at the age of one hundred in 2001; Simone overcame a bout of breast cancer. She performed her last concert in Poland in June, 2002. Soon after, Simone had a stroke in France and died six months later on April 20, 2003.

Significance

Simone was a talented musician who refused to surrender to racism. Although she did not succeed in becoming a classical pianist, she did much more. She became an icon of the civil rights era and left an enduring legacy of jazz, blues, folk, and protest music. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018.

Bibliography

Bratcher, Melanie E. Words and Songs of Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, and Nina Simone. New York: Routledge, 2007. Contains analysis of Simone’s music along with a discography and a short biography.

Cohodas, Nadine. Princess Noire: The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone. New York: Pantheon Books, 2010. The most complete biography of Simone, supported by voluminous research and personal remembrances from friends, family members, and supporters.

Grass, Randall. “Nina Simone: The High Priestess of Soul.” In Great Spirits: Portraits of Life-Changing World Music Artists. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2009. A very readable narrative of Simone’s life and career.

"Nina Simone." Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, 2018, www.rockhall.com/nominee/nina-simone. Accessed 5 Jan. 2018.

Simone, Nina. I Put a Spell on You: The Autobiography of Nina Simone. Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 1991. Simone’s autobiography covers her upbringing in the segregated South, classical-music ambitions, and experiences in the Civil Rights movement.