Remembering the great Nina Simone (February 21, 1933 – April 21, 2003)

Photo: Gilles Petard via Getty Images

Nina Simone was born Eunice Kathleen Waymon on February 21, 1933, in Tryon, North Carolina. Her mother, Mary Kate Irvin, was a Methodist preacher and housekeeper, and her father, John Divine Waymon, worked as an entertainer, barber, and dry-cleaner. The family’s home was filled with music and Simone’s mother encouraged her musical pursuits but did not approve of nonreligious music like blues and jazz. Simone took up the piano before her feet could reach the pedals, and by the age of six, she was playing during church services. 

‘If I had to be called something, it should have been a folk singer because there was more folk and blues than jazz in my playing’; Nina Simone wrote in her autobiography. Her musical style fused a range of influences including blues, gospel, pop and classical song. One of her most distinctive characteristics was her jazz contralto voice with its trademark free vibrato and dark timbre. Expression and freedom were her main focuses and, as she says, this is why “sometimes I sound like gravel, and sometimes I sound like coffee and cream”.

Don's Tunes 

Now the mods of the sixties adopted Nina early on and for who knows what reasons except that she was a diva and gorgeous interpreter of modern songs like this from the Animals’ cover and here The Bee Gees . . . I bought To Love Somebody as a single when it came out! 

Mississippi God Damn!

if you don’t know why . . . . . .find out!

Ain’t got no, I got Life . . . .