From the Archive: A Birthday Profile of Nina Simone

This article was originally published in my e-newsletter on February 21, 2023. I thought that today, Nina Simone’s birthday, would be a great day to repost this brief biography and recommendations for further reading, watching, and listening.

Today, February 21, is the birthday of vocalist and pianist Eunice Kathleen Waymon, better known by her stage name Nina Simone. Born in 1933, she grew to acclaim for her incredible musical talent as well as her persistent activism.

At a young age growing up in Tryon, North Carolina, Simone dreamt of being a classical pianist and studied rigorously to achieve her goal. She took private lessons to study classical greats like Bach and performed regularly in church. Many considered her a prodigy and after graduating high school, she moved to New York where she spent a summer studying at the renowned Juilliard School. Simone wanted to continue her studies at the elite Curtis Institute of Music, but her application was rejected (likely on the basis of race and gender) and she was forced to put classical piano on the back burner. Simone continued taking private lessons for classical piano, but took a job at a club playing more popular music of the time to fund her lessons. She hated it at first, but eventually grew to love the freedom of improvisational music. She began singing at the request of the club owner and her career quickly took off.

Simone married New York police detective Andrew Stroud in 1961. He became her first manager and father of her only daughter, Lisa. Their relationship started off strong, but soon, Stroud began to abuse Simone both physically and psychologically. He was controlling and demanding as her manager, bringing her fame and success, but also extreme exhaustion with hardly any time off. He often did not respect her wishes or honor her requests regarding when and where she performed. Given their working relationship, it took Simone several years to break away from Stroud and find a new manager.

As Simone’s musical career developed, so did the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. It was inevitable that the two would become intertwined. Simone wrote several politically driven pieces including “Backlash Blues,” “To Be Young, Gifted, and Black,” “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free,” and “Mississippi Goddamn,” a response to the Birmingham, Alabama, church bombing. She performed at protests and rallies and befriended Black cultural leaders such as James Baldwin and Langston Hughes. Her activism extended to the antiwar movement as well during the 1960s.

Simone spent considerable time traveling in Europe and Africa and eventually moved to Barbados, where she had a prolonged affair with Prime Minister Errol Barrow. She began performing less and less and enjoyed a much-needed break from the stress and demanding schedule of being a professional musician. Simone never moved back permanently to the US and instead moved to Europe, where she continued performing until she died of breast cancer in 2003.

Like any artist, Simone was not without her flaws. While she began her career refusing to consume any substances, the pressures of working as a professional jazz musician eventually led her to alcohol and drug addiction. She also was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in the in the late 1980s and was known to have uncontrollable outbursts. These are heavy, challenging topics to discuss, and I find that when jazz biographers tackle them with any artist, it is easy to misconstrue the truth or blow things out of proportion. That is not to say that difficult topics should be ignored or overlooked, but I always prefer to get a first-hand account from autobiographies or memoirs when they are available, as opposed to biographies written by other authors. Simone’s autobiography I Put a Spell On You is a great one, digging into the nitty gritty details of her career that I would definitely recommend. If you want to learn more about Nina Simone, I would also recommend watching the Netflix documentary What Happened, Miss Simone? and, of course, listen to her expansive discography.