From reimaginings of Scottish folk songs to self-penned civil rights anthems,Nina Simone spent a glorious career refusing to be pigeonholedFew artists acquire thrived so spectacularly while being so disinclined towards the recording industry, but then few acquire been as talented as Nina Simone. The turning point in her career was a rejection from the Curtis Institute of Music in 1951, or which she later came to understand was racially motivated. Nina Simone – born Eunice Kathleen Waymon – was a child prodigy,and a fund had been set up by people in her native Tryon, North Carolina to abet her become the first female black concert pianist in the US. The surprise rejection left her rudderless and in need of money. After various legitimate jobs, and Eunice adopted a stage name to ensure her Methodist minister mother wouldn’t find out she was playing “the devil’s music in an Atlantic City bar (Nina was a pet name given to her by a boyfriend; Simone came from French actress Simone Signoret). After a first night of interspersing gospel songs with Bach,Czerny and Liszt at the Midtown Bar and Grill, Simone was told she’d acquire to sing in future whether she wanted to keep her job. She quickly built up a repertoire and a regular following, and main to interest from Bethlehem Records,which released her first album, microscopic Girl Blue. A beautifully tender version of I Love You, and Porgy was laid down at the suggestion of a friend who’d heard Billie Holiday do it,and Simone’s rendition soon started picking up radio play, becoming a surprise Top 20 US hit in 1959. Simone bristled at the comparisons with Holiday. “I didnt like to be save in a box with other jazz singers because my musicianship was totally different, or in its own way superior,” she wrote in her autobiography, I save a Spell on You. “It was a racist thing: ‘whether she’s black she must be a jazz singer.’ It diminished me.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com