A Portrait of Nina Simone in Eleven Songs

by Ale Díaz-Pizarro

The first time I listened, truly listened, to Nina Simone was also the second… and the third… and the fourth… and possibly the twentieth. I just couldn’t stop. With every track that played, it was as if a veil lifted, revealing yet another facet, another feeling. I was entranced. It is small wonder, considering Simone’s stature: a child prodigy, a classicallytrained pianist drawing as much from the blues as from Bach, a gifted composer and arranger, a committed civil rights activist, and a supremely talented singer—which, even as I write it, seems at least a gross understatement. Rather than try to encapsulate the breadth and brilliance of Nina Simone in yet another profile, this list is intended as a sort of topographical map of the many sides to her artistry. The selected songs are not necessarily the bestknown nor the most critically-acclaimed ones (although some are!), but rather samples of Simone’s reach and repertoire. No list like this can ever aim to be comprehensive—but I will be more than satisfied if it compels you to dive into her extraordinary work as if for the first time.

“I Put a Spell On You” (I Put A Spell on You, 1965)

“I Put a Spell On You” is a Nina Simone mainstay in popular culture, and for good reason. One of her best-known tracks, it would be Simone’s intonation that most later covers emulated, as opposed to Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’s deliberately macabre original rendition (which, make no mistake, is just as fabulous). Later versions by Creedence Clearwater Revival, Bryan Ferry, and even the Disney movie Hocus Pocus cemented Simone’s status as a household name across generations. Beyond just its recognition, however, this track showcases Simone’s dual gifts for arranging and interpreting: where the original veers toward the theatrically demented (Hawkins famously rose out of a coffin and wore a cape in one live performance), Simone elegantly channels its same blues tropes of witchcraft and violent love in a more subdued— but no less powerful—approach, trading the chugging saxophone of the original for a string section. (The saxophone, however, is by no means gone—the instrument’s protagonism in the bridge cannot be taken as anything other than an homage to Hawkins.) This is

Simone at the height of her powers: making a song her own not by overshadowing but by reinterpreting it, and looking back to the blues without forgoing her own style. Nina Simone doesn’t just cover a song—she borrows, honors, innovates, reinvigorates, resuscitates it. Listen to the Hawkins and the Simone back to back. The experience is, if you’ll pardon the obvious, spellbinding.

“Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out” (Pastel Blues, 1965)

This track is a natural follow-up to “I Put a Spell On You:” like it, it borrows from an iconic blues track, and puts Simone’s own stamp on it in a way that makes it easy (and intentional) for a listener to find their way back to the original source. So these are not the reasons I included it—though this is one of my favorite Simone tracks, and it was always going to make the list. No—I chose it because “Nobody Knows You…” is perhaps one of the strongest examples of Simone’s stature. The track was originally brought to popularity by blues legend Bessie Smith, whose performance of the song was thereafter so associated with her that it dissuaded many a burgeoning blues singer from attempting the song, knowing Smith had set an impossible standard. The fact that Simone tackles the song, then, is impressive enough and speaks to her prowess as a performer, but so does the fact that she breathes new life into it. Smith’s original is sung in a Vaudeville style and amidst the throes of the Great Depression; this, coupled with its recent entry into the public domain, could make it easier to reduce it to a relic of its moment in time. But Simone sings its woes with stunning vibrancy, with a jazzier backing and her own delicious accompaniment on the piano. The first time I heard this song, it sent me straight to Bessie Smith, but kept me coming back for more of Simone’s vocal feats and rich sonic color. What more could I want a song to achieve? (And, for what it’s worth, Nina Simone’s version kept me well far away from Eric Clapton’s. I pray it at least does you the same service.)

“Black is the Colour (of My True Love’s Hair)” (live at the Philharmonic Hall in New York City, October 1969)

This is Simone’s take on a traditional American folk ballad of Scottish origin, among those cataloged by Alan Lomax in the Appalachians. However, any listen to a traditional rendition (say, by Jean Ritchie) is enough to see just how far a cry Simone’s version is. Slower, more somber, allowing the voice and therefore the feeling to occupy more room, sparsely populated by little more than the piano— Simone takes her time to unravel the melody, in an interpretation that can only be described as her voice making a nest for itself amid the words, its home for the next few minutes. Though the recorded version on Wild Is The Wind (1966) is excellent, the definitive version is the live performance at the Philharmonic Hall on October 26th, 1969. Though the 1970 live album Black Gold compiles the performance, I’m of the belief that for the full experience one should turn to the video recording. In it, Simone, dressed in sober black, sits at the piano and inhabits the music for seven minutes and three seconds. But I refer specifically to this version because it features a turn by guitarist Emile Latimer on the vocals, during which Simone can devote her full attention to an extended piano improvisation. Simone’s piano builds on and responds to Latimer’s vocal line, weaving through in such a way that the three elements—piano, guitar, voice—converge into a single, gripping piece. Seeing this version, I always remember Nina Simone the Juilliardtrained pianist, who started singing to make a living in an Atlantic City nightclub, and can’t help but to doubly marvel at the Nina Simone who could render an audience silent simply with the gravitas of her performance, and wonder how we got so lucky as to have her sing in the first place.

“Suzanne” (To Love Somebody, 1969)

In the late 60s, Simone’s repertoire included a spate of covers, pulling from genres as diverse as country (her phenomenal twist on Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Mr. Bojangles”), folk (“Just Like A Woman,” which in my opinion is even better than the Bob Dylan original), and pop (“Here Comes the Sun” which is… ill-fated, to put it kindly, through no fault of Simone’s own in terms of the vocals but rather that of the maudlin arrangement). Amid this impressive collection, it should be hard to pick a favorite, but mine is indisputably her version of Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne.” Backed by a warm calypsoinfused arrangement with a bassline that keeps time like a heartbeat, Simone’s voice draws the poetry out even further from Cohen’s words, delivering each line like a smoothly-polished river stone for you to hold in the palm of your hand. I’m a fan of Cohen myself, but it was Simone’s version that really made the “all men will be sailors” lines sink in for me. It has been said that it is as if Simone is embodying Suzanne herself. I have cried to both versions of this song: to the Leonard Cohen, as I looked out a window to a rainy summer morning, aching; to the Nina Simone, as I let the music envelop me and fill the room completely, imbibing every drop of the beauty the world has to offer, weeping, weeping joyfully.

“Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” (BroadwayBlues-Ballads, 1964)

By 1964, Nina Simone had cemented her place in music enough to warrant songs written especially for her voice and style. This is one such song: Bennie Benjamin, Horace Ott, and Sol Marcus wrote five songs for Simone’s 1964 record Broadway-Blues-Ballads, which also featured standards of the American songbook (both the Lomax kind and the Rodgers & Hammerstein type). Simone’s voice treads a delicate arrangement, lined by strings, a harp, bells, a choir, and a calm drumbeat. Many have speculated that the song came to symbolize a sort of credo for Simone, a way to define her career and demeanor in one song. To me, it feels misguided to attribute this to a song Simone did not write herself— and which was written in the context of a temporary rupture between songwriter Ott and his girlfriend, rather than targeting the complexity of Simone’s career and character by that point, when the civil rights movement had become the primary focus of her activity. Still, this song deserves its place on the list not only because it is well-known, but because it offers a good crystallization of Simone’s status as an anchoring figure of music that decade. She was already an artist for whom songs were being tailor-made, and an artist whose music immediately rippled through the emulations of others (The Animals, famous Nina Simone fans, recorded a widely-recognized version the very month Simone did, and the Santa Esmeralda disco twist made it onto the highlyacclaimed soundtrack of Kill Bill Vol. I).

“House of the Rising Sun” (Nina at the Village Gate, 1962)

I promise it is not an Animals connection that brings us here again—although it is very likely that, committed Nina Simone fans as they were, this was the version that would lead to their biggest hit. Everyone has done “House of the Rising Sun:” off the top of my head, I can remember recently playing versions by Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and even Waylon Jennings on WKCR shows. Simone’s own brief introduction to the track makes it clear that she already expects her audience’s familiarity with it. However, this track again pays testament to the gravitas she exuded in her live performances, exerting an irresistible influence over an audience from the earliest years of her career. This command is all the more impressive considering it is exerted by a bare-bones arrangement of guitar, bass, and Simone’s quiet voice, punctuated by Simone’s finger-snapping keeping time toward the end of the song. Simone frequently took on folk songs, and this was perhaps the best-known of them; however, no matter how many times one has heard a song, to listen to Nina Simone sing it is to hear it anew.

“Sinnerman” (Pastel Blues, 1962)

This track scarcely requires introduction. One of her most famous, her long 10+-minute version would often end her concerts in her early days in the Village, and has been featured in everything from movies to video games to plenty of hip hop samples. An African-American spiritual, “Sinnerman” hails back to Simone’s earliest days playing and hearing music in church. Her mother, a Methodist minister, would use the song at revival meetings, from where Simone claimed to have learned the lyrics. Simone’s “Sinnerman,” however, draws its compelling power not only from the words, but is also driven by the extended, jazz-like instrumental breaks peppered throughout the song. I always find myself tapping my foot, the same way it is hard not to feel the music course through your body at a concert—and I challenge anyone to go through a dedicated listening of the song without calling back “Power, Lord” at least once to Simone’s invocation.

“Wild Is The Wind” (Wild Is The Wind, 1966)

I was very surprised to learn “Wild Is The Wind” originated in a film soundtrack, accompanying the 1957 film of the same name. Listening to the Johnny Mathis original only made me feel bad for him—what must it have been like to record an Academy Award-nominated song only to, fewer than ten years later, have it sound stilted, rushed, mechanical, superficial when compared to the Nina Simone version? Simply compare its pithy 2:26 duration when stacked against Simone’s 6:56—and oh, what a nearly-seven-minutes it is. “Wild Is The Wind” is a masterclass in the art of taking one’s time: it unfolds, unfurls, building itself up and bringing itself down, the faithful bass in the back keeping pace for Simone’s fluttering piano, stretching every syllable so that Simone’s voice parts the slow silence. Getting lost in the song makes it so that when Simone croons, “You touch me,” the flesh on my arm stands up on end. It is pure magic, and much as later versions by artists like David Bowie and Cat Power (who were obviously thinking of Simone, Mathis long out of the equation) may honor the tune, it is only Simone’s voice that carries like the wind.

“To Be Young, Gifted, and Black” (live at Morehouse College, June 1969)

Nina Simone’s involvement in the civil rights movement is commonly associated with “Mississippi Goddam,” the song that marked her formal entrance into political songwriting. But it was her later composition “To Be Young, Gifted, and Black” that would become an anthem of the Civil Rights Movement. Written after the title of her friend Lorraine Hansberry’s autobiographical play, Simone would always say that Hansberry “had given it to her.” Though Simone grew increasingly disenchanted with performing, one wouldn’t know it from this performance at the historically Black Morehouse College, where Simone speaks to the crowd, sings with them, girlishly shows off a black orchid corsage, and ends on a rousing rallying cry and a gesture of jubilation from Simone. It is an exuberance shared with the crowd: their whoops throughout and standing ovation at the end make this live recording, however poor the acoustics, into a powerful display of Simone’s power to unite and rally.

“Take Care of Business” (I Put a Spell On You, 1965)

From the outset, this is an irresistible track: driven forward by lively percussion and underscored by choir, brass, strings, and an oompah-pah piano, Simone attacks every line in this song with ardor. Written by her thenhusband and manager Andy Stroud, with whom she had a tumultuous relationship, this track is a bursting expression of female sexuality: Simone’s delivery is forward about her desire and her pleasure (“you are God’s gift to all womanhood—take it from me” is a delightfully raunchy turn of phrase and double entendre), unique in that it centers her experience of intimacy without being hypersexual or fetishistic. This is the Nina Simone of flesh and blood.

“Compensation” (Nina Simone & Piano, 1969)

It only feels fitting to close out this list with one of Simone’s own compositions. This short track ends the first side of Simone’s 1969 Nina Simone and Piano, which features her accompanying herself on her instrument. The blend of piano and gospel-style organ is a rich, soulful background for a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar, the acclaimed Black poet whose poetry was famously used as the epigraphs to the four movements of William Grant Still’s 1930 “Afro-American” Symphony. There is a certain finality to this song: it brings us back to the church where Simone got her start performing on piano; it connects to the Black liberation to which Simone was committed; it brings together Simone’s gifts as singer, composer, arranger, and musician; and it provides a sort of meditation on the life and role of Simone as a musician. I can think of no better way to leave you than with Dunbar’s words themselves:

Because I have loved so deeply

Because I have loved so long God in his great compassion

Gave me the gift of song

Because I have loved so vainly

Sung with such faltering breath

Oh, oh, oh, the Master in His infinite mercy

Offers the boon of death.

WKCR will be celebrating the life and work of Nina Simone on what would have been her 91st birthday, February 21st, all day. Tune in for 24 hours of one of the greatest voices to ever grace American music.