Nina Simone: The High Priestess of Soul

In the annals of music history, there are few figures as captivating and
influential as Nina Simone. Known as the "High Priestess of Soul," Simone's voice
was a force of nature, her piano playing vireferredrtuosic, and her presence on
stage magnetic. Even if Sonny Rollins called her a jazz singer and he also refered
to her as a singing pop, cabaret, rhythm and blues, soul blues, classical art sing and
gospel, Nina Simone had a different idea. "If I had to be called something, it
should have been folk singer because there was more folk and blues than jazz in
my playing." 1 But if we need a label, Freedom Singer is the one which defined
Nina Simone. The term describes her militant presence in the Civil Rights
Movement of the 1960s. Like her good friends, James Baldwin and Loraine
Hansberry, Nina Simone made art about wanting to live like a free person. It meant
living and singing like a person who not only countedon the promise but lived in
the actuality of the American Dream.

Early Years and Rise to Fame

Growing up in the segregated South, Eunice Kathleen Waymon, by her real

name, displayed a remarkable aptitude for music from a young age. She began
playing the piano by ear at the age of three, demonstrating an innate musicality that
would later define her career. Despite the limited opportunities available to African
Americans in the Jim Crow era, Simone's talent was undeniable, and her family,
recognizing her potential, pooled their resources to ensure she received proper
training.

"Most of what I remember from the very earliest part of my life is tied up
with food and music. My first memory is of my mothers's singing." 2 PAG 7 As a
baby I always reacted to the sound of music."
 Everything that happened to her as a child involved music, it was a part of
everyday life. Her dead played piano, guitar and harmonica and led a choir in
church, her mother played piano and sang too, her brothers and sisters all played
piano and sang in the church choir. They learned to play as they learned to walk.
Music was played at home any time of the day or night.

By the time she was six she was a regular pianist at the church in Tryon, "the
piano was a wonderful toy that I could play for hours without getting tired and
although Momma tried to push my music down one particular road, I had no
preference for any individual style. Luckily I had an extra pair of eyes to help me,
because not everyone in my family was hostile to real songs as she was." 3 pag. 17

In her early teens, Eunice's talent caught the attention of local teachers and
community leaders, who helped fund her classical piano lessons. Simone soon
began formal training, her lessons paid for by benefactors who saw her promise as
a pianist. She learned classical repertory and specialized in playing the works of
Johann Sebastian Bach. Funds donated by a pair of white patrons in Tryon (Mrs.
Miller accordind to her autobiography) allowed Simone to attend the Allen High
School for Girls, a private, integrated high school in Asheville, North Carolina. In
1950, Simone graduated from Allen as the valedictorian.

She earned a scholarship for a one-year program at the Juilliard School in

New York City and used the time there to prepare for the entrance exam to the
prestigious (and tuition-free) Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.

Eunice's dreams of becoming a classical pianist were dashed when she was
rejected by the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Many believe that racial
discrimination played a significant role in this rejection, a painful experience that
fueled Simone's later activism. "When I was rejected by the Curtis Instituteit was
as if all the promises ever made to me by God, my family and my comunity were
broken and I had been lied to all my life. People who knew-I was told- white
people who knew, said the reason I was turned down was because I was black." p.
42 By that time she decalred "I was finished with music." p 43 and the fact that
Curtis turned her down changed Nina Simone forever.

To get away from music, Eunice took a job as an assistent in a

photographer's darkroom but as she missed playing too much, she enrolled as a
private pupil with Vladimir Sokhaloff , who would have been her tutor at Curtis.
She made that time the decision to get back into music and she promissed to
herself "I wild be the first black classical concert pianist, no matter what." p. 45

Innovative Fusion of Styles

Simone's musical style defied easy categorization. She seamlessly blended

jazz, blues, classical, R&B, and gospel, creating a unique and powerful sound. Her
deep, soulful voice conveyed a range of emotions, and her piano skills added layers
of complexity to her performances. Notable for her versatility, Simone's repertoire
included protest songs, love ballads, and soul-stirring covers.

Simone's career as a performer began in earnest when she started playing

piano and singing at bars and clubs in Atlantic City. Her rich, deep velvet vocal
tones, combined with her mastery of the keyboard, soon attracted club goers up
and down the East Coast. In order to hide the fact that she was singing in bars,
Eunice’s mother would refer to the practice as “working in the fires of hell”,
overnight Eunice Waymon became Nina Simone by taking the nickname “Nina”
meaning “little one” in Spanish and “Simone” after the actress Simone Signoret.

At the age of twenty-four, Nina came to the attention of the record industry.
After submitting a demo of songs she had recorded during a performance in New
Hope, Pennsylvania, she was signed by Syd Nathan, owner of the Ohio-based King
Records (home to James Brown), to his Jazz imprint, Bethlehem Records. The
boisterous Nathan had insisted on choosing songs for her debut set, but eventually
relented and allowed Nina to delve in the repertoire she had been performing at
clubs up and down the eastern seaboard.

One of Nina’s stated musical influences was Billie Holiday and her inspired
reading of “Porgy” (from “Porgy & Bess”) heralded the arrival of a new talent on
the national scene. At the same mammoth 13 hour session in 1957, recorded in
New York City, Nina also cut “My Baby Just Cares For Me,” previously recorded
by Nate King Cole, Count Basie, and Woody Herman. The song was used by
Chanel in a perfume commercial in Europe in the 1980’s and it became a massive
hit for Nina, a British chart topper at #5, and thus a staple of her repertoire for the
rest of her career.

In 1958, Simone released her debut album, "Little Girl Blue," which
featured her iconic rendition of "I Loves You, Porgy." The album marked the
beginning of her rise to prominence as a singer-songwriter and activist.
Throughout the 1960s, Simone's music became increasingly politicized, reflecting
her deepening involvement in the civil rights movement. Songs like "Mississippi
Goddam" and "To Be Young, Gifted and Black" became anthems of the struggle
for racial equality.
 Nina Simone’s stay with Bethlehem Records was short lived and in 1959,
after moving to New York City, she was signed by Joyce Selznik, the eastern talent
scout for Colpix Records, a division of Columbia Pictures. Months after the release
of her debut LP for the label (1959‘s The Amazing Nina Simone), Nina was
performing at her first major New York City venue, the mid-Manhattan-located
Town Hall.

After the success of Little Girl Blue, Simone signed a contract with Colpix
Records and recorded some wonderful albums – nine in all – included Nina’s
version of Bessie Smith’s blues classic “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down
And Out.” Issued as a single in 1960, it became Nina’s second charted Pop and
R&B hit and one of two Colpix tracks to achieve such a feat during her five year
stint with the label.

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. 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.
 “Critics started to talk about what sort of music I was playing,” writes Nina
in her 1991 autobiography I Put A Spell On You, “and tried to find a neat slot to
file it away in. It was difficult for them because I was playing popular songs in a
classical style with a classical piano technique influenced by cocktail jazz. On top
of that I included spirituals and children’s song in my performances, and those
sorts of songs were automatically identified with the folk movement. So, saying
what sort of music I played gave the critics problems because there was something
from everything in there, but it also meant I was appreciated across the board – by
jazz, folk, pop and blues fans as well as admirers of classical music.” Clearly Nina
Simone was not an artist who could be easily classified.

Activism and Civil Rights

 Simone's music was inseparable from her activism. In the 1960s, during the
height of the civil rights movement, she became a voice for change. Songs like
"Mississippi Goddam" and "To Be Young, Gifted and Black" became anthems for
the struggle against racial injustice. Simone's activism extended beyond her music;
she participated in civil rights marches and used her platform to advocate for
equality.
By the mid-1960s, Simone became known as the voice of the Civil Rights
Movement. She wrote "Mississippi Goddam" in response to the 1963 assassination
of Medgar Evers and the Birmingham church bombing that killed four young
African American girls. She also penned "Four Women," chronicling the complex
histories of a quartet of African American female figures, and "Young, Gifted and
Black," borrowing the title of a play by Hansberry, which became a popular
anthem. After the assassination of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968,
Simone's bassist Greg Taylor penned "Why (The King of Love Is Dead)," which
was performed by the singer and her band at the Westbury Music Festival.

During the '60s, Simone had prominent hits in England as well with "I Put a Spell
on You," "Ain't Got No-I Got Life/Do What You Gotta Do" and "To Love
Somebody," with the latter penned by Barry and Robin Gibb and originally
performed by their group the Bee Gees.

https://www.biography.com/musicians/nina-simone

Simone's career as a performer began in earnest when she

started playing piano and singing at bars and clubs in
Atlantic City. Her rich, deep velvet vocal tones, combined
with
her mastery of the keyboard, soon attracted clubgoers up
and down the East Coast.