Nina Simone CDs

Forever Young, Gifted & Black: Songs of Freedom and Spirit (2006)  /   Anthology  (2003)   Nina: The Essential Nina Simone  (2000, 2003) 

 The Very Best Of Nina Simone, 1967-1972 : Sugar In My Bowl (1998)  / The Blues (1968, 1991) / Compact Jazz: Nina Simone (1989-1991)

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Nina Simone

A Bio- Chronology

Nina Simone (1933-2003) -- A protest singer; a jazz singer; a pianist; an arranger and a composer, Nina Simone is a great international artist  who defies easy classification. She sang jazz, rock, pop, and folk music. In fact, we can find her biography in jazz, rock, pop, black and soul literature. Her style and her hits provided many singers and groups with material for hits of their own.

Nina's voice  sometimes changes from dark and raw to soft and sweet -- pauses, shouts, repeats, whispers and moans.  She used her voice with its remarkable timbre and her careful piano playing as means to achieve her artistic aim, expressing alternately love, hate, sorrow, joy, loneliness - the whole range of human emotions -- through music, in a direct way. At times piano, voice, and gestures seem to be separate elements, then, at once, they meet. Her audience became captivated by her spell. Nina Simone was a unique artist, the High Priestess of Soul.

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1933 (21 February) -- Born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina, USA., the sixth of eight children, four boys and four girls. 

1939 -- At age of six, in 1939, a benefactor paid for her first piano lessons.

1943 -- At age of ten, she gave her first piano recital at the town library.

1950 --Eunice left North Carolina  to continue her musical education at the Juilliard School of Music in New York 

1954 --  Took a job as a singer-pianist in the Midtown Bar and Grill in Atlantic City, adopting the stage name of Nina Simone. "Nina" from a pet name  and "Simone" (from the French actress Simone Signoret) for its dignified sound. It was at Midtown Bar, where Nina Simone sang, played and improvised, that her career took off. 

1957 -- Recognized as a talented pianist, she was given a recording session with Bethlehem Records in this session she records 14 tracks.

1958  -- Simone's first album Jazz (also know as Little Girl Blue) as played in an Exclusive Side Street Club (11 tracks), published in and by then , was a great success, first in Philadelphia and New York and then in the whole US. 

1959 --The single released from Jazz  (featuring "I Loves You Porgy" and "He Needs Me") became a national rhythm & blues (placing 13th) hit in the summer of , selling over a million copies. Thanks to the success of her first recordings, in 1959 Simone signed with Colpix (Columbia Pictures Records) a collaboration that lasted until 1964. Nina recorded 10 albums while signed to Colpix: six studio and four "live" albums.

1961 -- Records the traditional song "The House of the Rising Sun." Nina marries Andy Stroud, a NewYork detective 

1962 -- Daughter Lisa Celeste Stroud is born.

1963 (September)--  wrote "Mississippi Goddam!"  Her first song of protest, written after the murders of Medgar Evers in Mississippi (June 1963) and four black schoolchildren in Alabama (September 1963).   1964 --  Began association with Philips, a Mercury subsidiary, collaboration lasted for three years during     which Nina recorded seven albums. One of the first songs recorded during the Philips period is "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood", from then associated with her name. Nina publish "I Put a Spell on You," a 1956 song by Screamin' Jay Hawkins.

1966 --  Switches to RCA (she will stay until 1974), a deal negotiated by her husband who acts as her manager and to whom some compositions are credited. While at RCA Nina records nine albums  and some of her most popular songs, including "To Be Young, Gifted And Black," inspired by a  play of the same name by Lorraine Hansberry, a friend of Nina. Wrote "Four Women," a bitter lament of four black women whose circumstances and outlook are related to subtle gradations in skin color, the song was banned on Philadelphia and new York radio stations because "it was insulting to black people…"

1969 -- Embittered by racism, Nina renounced her homeland and becomes a wanderer, roaming the world. Lives in Liberia, in Barbados, Switzerland, France, Trinidad, the Netherlands, Belgium and UK at various times.

1970  -- Nina and Stroud split up, and Nina attempt to manage herself and work with her brother Sam Waymon.

1974  --  Leaves RCA.

1978  --  Arrested, and soon released, for withholding taxes in 1971-73 in protest at her government's undeclared war in Vietnam. Make the LP Baltimore for the CTI label 

1982  -- Fodder on my Wings for a Swiss label released, based on her self-imposed "exile" from the USA. Nina wrote, adapted and arranged the songs, played piano and harpsichord and sang in English and French. 

1985  --  Records Nina's Back and Live and Kickin in US.

1987 -- European success with "My Baby Just Cares For Me" brought Nina back into the public eye.

1989 --  Contributed to Pete Townsend's musical "The Iron Man."

1990 --  Recorded with Maria Bethania; 

1991 -- Recorded with Miriam Makeba. 

1992  -- her music featured in movie Point Of No Return, with the lead character using Nina as inspiration. Records Let It Be Me at The Vine Street Bar & Grill in Hollywood for Verve Records.

Her autobiography I Put a Spell On You is published by Pantheon Books.  It was translated into French ("Ne Me Quittez Pas"), German ("Meine Schwarze Seele") and Dutch ("I Put A Spell On You, - Herinneringen").

1993 --  Moves to the southern French town of Bouc-Bel- Air near Aix-en-Provence. A new studio album was released, A Single Woman,  includes several Rod McKuen songs, and Nina's "Marry Me," her version of the French standard "Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux" and a very    moving "Papa, Can You Hear Me?"

1996 --  A number of Nina's songs used in films.

1997  -- Sang "Every Time I Feel The Spirit" at the Barbican Theatre in London e as a tribute to singer and actor Paul Robeson. More spirituals and "blood songs" would follow: "Reached Down And Got My Soul,"  "The Blood Done Change My Name." and "When I See The Blood."  Highlight of the Nice Jazz Festival in France.

1998 -- "Ain't Got No / I Got Life" was a big hit  in The Netherlands, just as it had been there 30 years before.

             24 July, Nina was a special guest at Nelson Mandela's 80th Birthday Party. 

             Highlight of Thessalonica Jazz Festival in Greece

1999 (7 October) -- Received a Lifetime Achievement in Music Award in Dublin. At the Guinness Blues Festival in Dublin, Ireland her daughter, Lisa Celeste sang a few duets with her mother.

2000  -- An international tour. Received Honorary Citizenship to Atlanta (May 26), the Diamond Award for Excellence in Music from the Association of African American Music in Philadelphia (June 9) and  the Honorable Musketeer Award from the Compagnie des Mousquetaires d'Armagnac in France (August 7).

2003 (21 April) -- Died  in Carry-le-Rouet, France.

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update 6 July 2008