Music Career

After she was rejected for the Curtis Institute's classical piano program because she was black. Her family by that time had moved to Philadelphia. To survive, she began teaching music to local students. When she discovered that one of her students was playing in a bar in Atlantic City -- and being paid more than she was from her piano teaching -- she decided to try this route herself.

Armed with music from many genres classical, jazz, popular, she began playing piano in 1954 at the Midtown Bar and Grill in Atlantic City. She adopted the stage name Nina Simone. "Nina" (from niña, meaning 'little girl' in Spanish) was a nickname a boyfriend had given to her, and "Simone" was taken from the French actress Simone Signoret, whom she had seen in the movie "Casque d'or". The bar owner demanded soon that she add vocals to her piano playing, and Nina Simone began to draw large audiences of younger people who were fascinated by her eclectic musical repertoire and style. Soon she was playing in better nightclubs, and moved into the Greenwich Village scene.

After playing in small clubs, in 1958 she recorded a rendition of George Gershwin's "I Loves You Porgy" (from Porgy and Bess), which she learned from a Billie Holiday album and performed as a favor to a friend. It became her only Billboard top 40 success in the United States, and her debut album Little Girl Blue soon followed on Bethlehem Records.

 

After the success of Little Girl Blue, Simone signed a contract with Colpix Records, and recorded a string of studio and live albums. 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. At this point, Simone only performed pop music 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.

Throughout her career, Simone assembled a collection of songs that would become standards in her repertoire. These songs were self-written tunes, tributes to works by others with a new arrangement by Simone or songs written especially for Simone. Her first hit song in America was her rendition of George Gershwin's "I Loves You, Porgy" (1958).  During that same period Simone recorded "My Baby Just Cares for Me", which would become her biggest success years later, in 1987, when it was featured in a Chanel No. 5 perfume commercial. A music video was created by Aardman Studios for the commercial.

Well known songs from her Philips albums include "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" on Broadway-Blues-Ballads (1964), "I Put a Spell on You", "Ne Me Quitte Pas" (a rendition of a Jacques Brelsong) and "Feeling Good" on I Put A Spell On You (1965), "Lilac Wine" and "Wild Is the Wind" on Wild is the Wind (1966). Especially the songs "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood", "Feeling Good", and "Sinnerman" (Pastel Blues, 1965) have great popularity today in terms of cover versions.

Simone's years at RCA-Victor spawned a number of singles and album tracks that were popular, particularly in Europe. In 1968, it was "Ain't Got No, I Got Life", a medley from the musical Hairfrom the album 'Nuff Said! (1968) that became a surprise hit for Simone, reaching number 4 on the UK pop charts and introducing her to a younger audience. In 2006, it returned to the UK Top 30 in a remixed version by Groovefinder. The following single, the Bee Gees' rendition of "To Love Somebody" also reached the UK top 10 in 1969. "House of the Rising Sun" was featured on Nina Simone Sings The Blues in 1967, but Simone had recorded the song in 1961 and it was featured on Nina At The Village Gate (1962), predating the versions by Dave Van Ronk and Bob Dylan. It was later covered by The Animals, for whom it became a signature hit.

Nina Simone's growing bitterness over America's racism, her disputes with the record companies she called "pirates," her troubles with the IRS all led to her decision to leave the United States. She first moved to Barbados, and then, with the encouragement of Miriam Makeba and others, moved to Liberia.

A later move to Switzerland for the sake of her daughter's education was followed by a comeback attempt in London which failed when she put her faith in a sponsor who turned out to be a con man who robbed and beat her and abandoned her. She tried to commit suicide, but when that failed, found her faith in the future renewed. She built her career slowly, moving to Paris in 1978, having small successes.

In 1985, Nina Simone returned to the United States to record and perform, choosing to pursue fame in her native land. She focused on what would be popular, de-emphasizing her political views, and won growing acclaim. 

Nina Simone moved back to Europe -- first to the Netherlands then to the South of France in 1991. She published her biography, I Put a Spell on You, and continued to record and perform.

In 1995, she won ownership of 52 of her master recordings in a San Francisco court, and in 94-95 she had what she described as "a very intense love affair" -- "it was like a volcano." In her last years, Nina Simone was sometimes seen in a wheelchair between performances. She died April 21, 2003, in her adopted homeland, France.

In a 1969 interview with Phyl Garland, Nina Simone said:

"There's no other purpose, so far as I'm concerned, for us except to reflect the times, the situations around us and the things we're able to say through our art, the things that millions of people can't say. I think that's the function of an artist and, of course, those of us who are lucky leave a legacy so that when we're dead, we also live on. That's people like Billie Holiday and I hope that I will be that lucky, but meanwhile, the function, so far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times, whatever that might be".

References: http://womenshistory.about.com/od/aframer19511999/a/Nina-Simone.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nina_Simone
http://www.ninasimone.com/about/bio/