Nina Simone was the sixth out of seven children of her family and was born as Eunice Kathleen Waymon on 21 of February 1933 Tryon, North Carolina. She went to study at Julliard School of Music in New York, where she studied to become a classical music pianist.
To fund her study, she started working as an accompanist. In the summer of 1954 she took a job in an Irish bar where the owner told her she had to sing as well. Without having time to realize what was happening, Eunice Waymon, who was trained to become a classical pianist, stepped into the show business. At that time she changed her name into Nina (“little one”) Simone (“from the French actress Simone Signoret”) because she did not want her mother, who was a strict Methodist minister, to know that she was playing “the devil’s music”.
Combining Bachian counterpoint, the improvisational approach of jazz and the modulations of the blues, she went on to become one of the biggest stars of Jazz music.
Some facts:
Her first album Little Girl Blue did not bring her much financial rewards. She sold the rights of the album for $3000, despite the album bringing in more than $ 1 million in royalties, especially after the successful re-release “My Baby Just Cares for Me” during the 80s.
Her autobiography, “I Put A Spell on You” which was published in 1991 was translated into 3 different languages.
Her daughter Lisa Celeste (Lisa Stroud) was born in 1962. She`s a Broadway actress, star of the Broadway musical “Elton John`s Aida”.
She had a reputation in the music industry for being volatile and sometimes difficult to deal with. On one occasion she shot and wounded her neighbor’s son with a pneumatic pistol after his laughter disturbed her concentration. She also fired a gun at a record company executive whom she accused of stealing royalties.
In her later life she was awarded an Honorary Doctor in Music and Humanities.
Plans for a Nina Simone biographical film were released at the end of 2005. The movie will be based on Simone’s autobiography I Put A Spell On You (1992) and will also focus on her relationship in later life with her assistant, Clifton Henderson, who died in 2006. TV writer Cynthia Mort (Will & Grace, Roseanne) is working on the script, and singer Mary J. Blige will play the lead role. The movie is scheduled for release this year.
She once said that “Jazz is a white term to define Black people. My music is Black classical music.”
