Jazz and blues singer Nina Simone dead at 70
By Giles Hewitt
Picture dated 22 October 1991 of legendary jazz and blues singer Nina Simone in concert at the Olympia music hall in Paris.AFP PHOTO/Bertrand GUAY
PARIS (AFP) Singer Nina Simone, who
died Monday at the age of 70, was a child prodigy who overcame
poverty and racism to build a legendary musical career as varied
and complex as her own personality.
Dubbed the "High Priestess of Soul", Simone developed
an eclectic repertoire that made a mockery of such narrow labels
by including jazz standards, gospel and spirituals, classical
music, folk, blues, African chants and her own compositions.
A pianist, singer and composer, Simone's place among the great divas is assured by her genre-devouring body of work, stormy love life and an often aloof manner that more than once saw her walk out on an audience that showed her too little regard.
Hailed as one of the great 20th century icons by Nobel-winning novelist Toni Morrison, she remained up until her death an enormously influential figure, cited by generations of young singers, up to and including this year's multi-Grammy winner Norah Jones.
Simone's influence far outweighed her commercial
exposure, although her best-known song "My Baby Just Cares
For Me" enjoyed considerable chart success with its re-release
in 1987 following its use in a Chanel
advertisement.
Born Eunice Waymon in 1933 to a poor family
in North Carolina, Simone displayed a precocious talent for the
piano and went on to win a scholarship to the prestigious Juilliard
School in New York in 1950.
She hoped to continue her musical studies, but was turned down
by the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia a rejection
she always attributed to racism.
"I have never gotten over it,"
she said in 1997. "Though I'm now more famous than the Curtis
Institute."
With her ambitions of becoming the first black concert pianist
apparently blocked, she took up teaching and playing in night
clubs.
"I was forced to go into showbiz to make a living and forced to sing to keep a job," she would say later. "And I'm still angry and bitter about it."
With the change of career path came a change of name to Nina ("little one" in Spanish) Simone. The adopted surname was taken from the French actress Simone Signoret.
It was during her nightclub performances that Simone began to weave her classical training into the jazz and soul staples the venues required.
The resulting style attracted the attention of various record labels and in 1958 she scored her first major hit with "I Loves You Porgy" from the George Gershwin opera "Porgy and Bess."
Always acutely aware of racist slights, Simone's political consciousness flourished with the birth of the civil rights movement and in 1963 she wrote "Mississippi Goddam" as a response to the murder of black activist Medgar Evers in Alabama.
By the mid-1970s, her life was in a state of turmoil with two broken marriages and constant fights with producers, promoters and record labels over money.
The IRS was suing her for back taxes and she believed the CIA and FBI were stalking her as a result of her black activism.
had to run away from being killed," she later told the Guardian of London.
She left the United States, saying she was
disillusioned with show business and racism, and moved through
Africa and Europe before finally settling in the south of France,
where she lived until her death.
Her last studio album "A Single Woman" was recorded
in 1993 but she continued to be a regular performer at international
jazz festivals and was a special guest at Nelson Mandela's 80th
birthday party in 1998.
To the end, she remained particularly prickly about being pigeonholed.
"To most white people, jazz means black and jazz means dirt and that's not what I play," she said in a recent interview. "I play black classical music."