Nina Simone: Life and Music of the "Priestess of Soul" Composed over 500 songs, recorded almost 60 albums First woman to win the Jazz Cultural Award "Woman of the Year" 1966, Jazz at Home Club Female Jazz Singer of the Year, 1967, National Association of Television and Radio Announcers Dates: February 21 , 1933 (*) - April 21, 2003 Occupation: pianist, singer Also known as: "Priestess of Soul"; birth name: Eunice Kathleen Waymon, Eunice Wayman Nina Simone Biography In 1993, Don Shewey wrote of Nina Simone in the Village Voice, "She's not a pop singer, she's a diva, a hopeless eccentric ... who has so thoroughly co-mingled her odd talent and brooding temperament that she has turned herself into a force of nature, an exotic creature spied so infrequently that every appearance is legendary." Early Life and Education: Nina Simone was born as Eunice Kathleen Waymon in 1933(*) in Tryon, North Carolina, daughter of John D.

Waylon and Mary Kate Waymon, an ordained Methodist minister. continue reading below our video What are the Seven Wonders of the World The house was filled with music, Nina Simone later recalled, and she learned to play piano early, playing at church when she was only six. Her mother discouraged her from playing music that wasn't religious. When her mother took a job as a maid for extra money, the woman she worked for saw that young Eunice had special musical talent and sponsored a year of classical piano lessons for her. She studied with a Mrs. Miller and then with Muriel Mazzanovitch. Mazzanovich helped raise money for more lessons. After graduating from the Allen High School for Girls in Asheville, North Carolina, in 1950 (she was valedictorian), Nina Simone attended Juilliard School of Music, as part of her plan to prepare to attend the Curtis Institute of Music. She took the entrance exam for the Curtis Institute's classical piano program, but was not accepted. Nina Simone believed that she was good enough for the program, but that she was rejected because she was black. She studied privately with Vladimir Sokoloff, an instructor at the Curtis Institute.

Music Career: Her family by that time had moved to Philadelphia, and she began to give piano lessons. When she discovered that one of her students was playing in a bar in Atlantic City -- and being paid more than she was from her piano teaching -- she decided to try this route herself. Armed with music from many genres -- classical, jazz, popular -- she began playing piano in 1954 at the Midtown Bar and Grill in Atlantic City. She adopted the name of Nina Simone to avoid her mother's religious disapproval of playing in a bar. The bar owner demanded that she add vocals to her piano playing, and Nina Simone began to draw large audiences of younger people who were fascinated by her eclectic musical repertoire and style. Soon she was playing in better nightclubs, and moved into the Greenwich Village scene. By 1957, Nina Simone had found an agent, and the next year issued her first album, "Little Girl Blue." Her first single, "I Loves You Porgy," was a George Gershwin song from Porgy and Bess that had been a popular number for Billie Holiday. It sold well, and her recording career was launched.

Unfortunately, the contract she signed gave away her rights, a mistake she came to bitterly regret. For her next album she signed with Colpix and released "The Amazing Nina Simone." With this album came more critical interest. Husband and Daughter: Nina Simone briefly married Don Ross in 1958, and divorced him the next year. She married Andy Stroud in 1960 -- a former police detective who became her recording agent -- and they had a daughter, Lisa Celeste, in 1961. This daughter, separated from her mother for long periods in her childhood, eventually launched her own career with the stage name of, simply, Simone. Nina Simone and Andy Stroud drifted apart with her career and political interests, and their marriage ended in divorce in 1970. Involvement with Civil Rights Movement: In the 1960s, Nina Simone was part of the civil rights movement and later the black power movement. Her songs are considered by some as anthems of those movements, and their evolution shows the growing hopelessness that American racial problems would be solved.

Nina Simone wrote "Mississippi Goddam" after the bombing of a Baptist church in Alabama killed four children and after Medgar Evers was assassinated in Mississipppi. This song, often sung in civil rights contexts, was not often played on radio. She introduced this song in performances as a show tune for a show that hadn't yet been written. Other Nina Simone songs adopted by the civil rights movement as anthems included "Backlash Blues," "Old Jim Crow," "Four Women" and "To Be Young, Gifted and Black." The latter was composed in honor of her friend Lorraine Hansberry , godmother to Nina's daughter, and became an anthem for the growing black power movement with its line, "Say it clear, say it loud, I am black and I am proud!" With the growing women's movement, "Four Women" and her cover of Sinatra's "My Way" became feminist anthems as well. But just a few years later, Nina Simone's friends Lorraine Hansberry and Langston Hughes were dead. Black heroes Martin Luther King, jr., and Malcolm X, were assassinated.

In the late 1970s, a dispute with the Internal Revenue Service found Nina Simone accused of tax evasion; she lost her home to the IRS. Moving: Nina Simone's growing bitterness over America's racism, her disputes with the record companies she called "pirates," her troubles with the IRS all led to her decision to leave the United States. She first moved to Barbados, and then, with the encouragement of Miriam Makeba and others, moved to Liberia. A later move to Switzerland for the sake of her daughter's education was followed by a comeback attempt in London which failed when she put her faith in a sponsor who turned out to be a con man who robbed and beat her and abandoned her. She tried to commit suicide, but when that failed, found her faith in the future renewed. She built her career slowly, moving to Paris in 1978, having small successes. In 1985, Nina Simone returned to the United States to record and perform, choosing to pursue fame in her native land. She focused on what would be popular, de-emphasizing her political views, and won growing acclaim.

Her career soared when a British commercial for Chanel used her 1958 recording of "My Baby Just Cares for Me," which then became a hit in Europe. Nina Simone moved back to Europe -- first to the Netherlands then to the South of France in 1991. She published her biography, I Put a Spell on You, and continued to record and perform. Later Career and Life: There were several run-ins with the law in the 90s in France, as Nina Simone shot a rifle at rowdy neighbors and left the scene of an accident in which two motorcyclists were injured. She paid fines and was put on probation, and was required to seek psychological counseling. In 1995, she won ownership of 52 of her master recordings in a San Francisco court, and in 94-95 she had what she described as "a very intense love affair" -- "it was like a volcano." In her last years, Nina Simone was sometimes seen in a wheelchair between performances. She died April 21, 2003, in her adopted homeland, France.

In a 1969 interview with Phyl Garland, Nina Simone said: There's no other purpose, so far as I'm concerned, for us except to reflect the times, the situations around us and the things we're able to say through our art, the things that millions of people can't say. I think that's the function of an artist and, of course, those of us who are lucky leave a legacy so that when we're dead, we also live on. That's people like Billie Holiday and I hope that I will be that lucky, but meanwhile, the function, so far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times, whatever that might be. Jazz: Nina Simone is often classified as a jazz singer, but this is what she had to say in 1997 (in an interview with Brantley Bardin): To most white people, jazz means black and jazz means dirt and that's not what I play. I play black classical music.

That's why I don't like the term "jazz," and Duke Ellington didn't like it either -- it's a term that's simply used to identify black people." ___ (*) Nina Simone's birth year is given variously as 1933, 1935 and 1938. 1933 seems most credible, as she was a high school senior in 1950-51 when she attended Juilliard.

Nina Simone on this site: Remembering Nina Simone - books, music, videos Nina Simone on the Net: Ain't Got No - I Got Life Amazing Nina Simone Best of the Colpix Years Black Gold I Put a Spell on You In Concert & I Put A Spell On You It Is Finished Jazz as Played in an Exclusive Side Street Club Let It All Out Live & Kickin' - In Europe and the Caribbean Live at Ronnie Scott's My Baby Just Cares for Me Ne Me Quitte Pas Nina Simone and Her Friends Nina Simone and Piano Nina Simone at Carnegie Hall Nina Simone at Newport Nina Simone at the Village Gate Nina Simone at Town Hall Pastel Blues A Very Rare Evening with Nina Simone Wild Is The Wind Bio | The Official Home of Nina Simone Contact Bio She was one of the most extraordinary artists of the twentieth century, an icon of American music. She was the consummate musical storyteller, a griot as she would come to learn, who used her remarkable talent to create a legacy of liberation, empowerment, passion, and love through a magnificent body of works.

She earned the moniker ‘High Priestess of Soul’ for she could weave a spell so seductive and hypnotic that the listener lost track of time and space as they became absorbed in the moment. She was who the world would come to know as Nina Simone. When Nina Simone died on April 21, 2003, she left a timeless treasure trove of musical magic spanning over four decades from her first hit, the 1959 Top 10 classic “I Loves You Porgy,” to “A Single Woman,” the title cut from her one and only 1993 Elektra album. While thirty-three years separate those recordings, the element of honest emotion is the glue that binds the two together – it is that approach to every piece of work that became Nina’s uncompromising musical trademark. By the end of her life, Nina was enjoying an unprecedented degree of recognition. Her music was enjoyed by the masses due to the CD revolution, discovery on the Internet, and exposure through movies and television. Nina had sold over one million CDs in the last decade of her life, making her a global catalog best-seller.

No one website can fully explore the many nuances and flavors that made up the more than 40 original albums in the Nina Simone library. This site and accompanying radio station contain many of Nina’s finest works. However, we might not have had the chance to witness the breathtaking range of material Nina could cover if she hadn’t taken the path she did. Born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina on February 21st, 1933, Nina’s prodigious talent as a musician was evident early on when she started playing piano by ear at the age of three. Her mother, a Methodist minister, and her father, a handyman and preacher himself, couldn’t ignore young Eunice’s God-given gift of music. Raised in the church on the straight and narrow, her parents taught her right from wrong, to carry herself with dignity, and to work hard. She played piano – but didn’t sing – in her mother’s church, displaying remarkable talent early in her life. Able to play virtually anything by ear, she was soon studying classical music with an Englishwoman named Muriel Mazzanovich, who had moved to the small southern town.

It was from these humble roots that Eunice developed a lifelong love of Johann Sebastian Bach, Chopin, Brahms, Beethoven and Schubert. This website captures milestones in a career that has had more than its share of peaks and valleys.After graduating valedictorian of her high school class, the community raised money for a scholarship for Eunice to study at Julliard in New York City before applying to the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Her family had already moved to the City Of Brotherly Love, but Eunice’s hopes for a career as a pioneering African American classical pianist were dashed when the school denied her admission. To the end, she herself would claim that racism was the reason she did not attend. While her original dream was unfulfilled, Eunice ended up with an incredible worldwide career as Nina Simone – almost by default. To survive, she began teaching music to local students. One fateful day in 1954, looking to supplement her income, Eunice auditioned to sing at the Midtown Bar & Grill on Pacific Avenue in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Word spread about this new singer and pianist who was dipping into the songbooks of Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, and the like, transforming popular tunes of the day into a unique synthesis of jazz, blues, and classical music. Her rich, deep velvet vocal tones, combined with her mastery of the keyboard, soon attracted club goers up and down the East Coast. In order to hide the fact that she was singing in bars, Eunice’s mother would refer to the practice as “working in the fires of hell”, overnight Eunice Waymon became Nina Simone by taking the nickname “Nina” meaning “little one” in Spanish and “Simone” after the actress Simone Signoret. At the age of twenty-four, Nina came to the attention of the record industry. After submitting a demo of songs she had recorded during a performance in New Hope, Pennsylvania, she was signed by Syd Nathan, owner of the Ohio-based King Records (home to James Brown), to his Jazz imprint, Bethlehem Records. The boisterous Nathan had insisted on choosing songs for her debut set, but eventually relented and allowed Nina to delve in the repertoire she had been performing at clubs up and down the eastern seaboard.

One of Nina’s stated musical influences was Billie Holiday and her inspired reading of “Porgy” (from “Porgy & Bess”) heralded the arrival of a new talent on the national scene. At the same mammoth 13 hour session in 1957, recorded in New York City, Nina also cut “My Baby Just Cares For Me,” previously recorded by Nate King Cole, Count Basie, and Woody Herman. The song was used by Chanel in a perfume commercial in Europe in the 1980’s and it became a massive hit for Nina, a British chart topper at #5, and thus a staple of her repertoire for the rest of her career. Nina Simone’s stay with Bethlehem Records was short lived and in 1959, after moving to New York City, she was signed by Joyce Selznik, the eastern talent scout for Colpix Records, a division of Columbia Pictures. Months after the release of her debut LP for the label (1959‘s The Amazing Nina Simone), Nina was performing at her first major New York City venue, the mid-Manhattan-located Town Hall.

Sensing that her live performances would capture the essential spontaneity of her artistry, Colpix opted to record her September 12, 1959 show. “You Can Have Him,” a glorious torch song previously cut by Peggy Lee and Ella Fitzgerald, was one of the highlights of the evening. The song opened with a dazzling keyboard arpeggio that would become her signature for decades. So momentous was the Town Hall performance that it inspired some of the same musicians, featuring the vocals of Nina’s only daughter, Lisa Simone Kelly, to do a tribute to a sold out audience over forty five years later. As Nina’s reputation as an engaging live performer grew, it wasn’t long before she was asked to perform at the prestigious Newport Jazz Festival. Accompanied on the June 30th,1960 show by Al Schackman, a guitarist who would go on to become Nina’s longest-running musical colleague, bassist Chris White, and drummer Bobby Hamilton, the dynamic show was recorded by the Colpix. The subsequent release in 1961 of the old blues tune “Trouble In Mind” as a single gave Nina her third charted record.

Her stay with Colpix resulted in some wonderful albums – nine in all – included Nina’s version of Bessie Smith’s blues classic “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out.” Issued as a single in 1960, it became Nina’s second charted Pop and R&B hit and one of two Colpix tracks to achieve such a feat during her five year stint with the label. Other stand out tracks from that era were the soulful song “Cotton Eyed Joe,” the torch tune “The Other Women,” and the Norwegian folk rendition of “Black Is The Colour Of My True Love’s Hair” – all beautiful examples of Nina Simone at her storytelling best, painting a vivid picture with her skill as a lyrical interpreter. During this time with the label, Nina recorded one civil rights song, Oscar Brown Jr.’s “Brown Baby,” which was included on her fifth album for the label, At The Village Gate. “Critics started to talk about what sort of music I was playing,” writes Nina in her 1991 autobiography I Put A Spell On You, “and tried to find a neat slot to file it away in.

It was difficult for them because I was playing popular songs in a classical style with a classical piano technique influenced by cocktail jazz. On top of that I included spirituals and children’s song in my performances, and those sorts of songs were automatically identified with the folk movement. So, saying what sort of music I played gave the critics problems because there was something from everything in there, but it also meant I was appreciated across the board – by jazz, folk, pop and blues fans as well as admirers of classical music.” Clearly Nina Simone was not an artist who could be easily classified. Nina’s Colpix recordings cemented her appeal to a nightclub based U.S. audience. Once she moved to Phillips, a division of Dutch owned Mercury Records, she was ready to expand her following globally. Her first LP for the label, 1964’s In Concert, signaled Nina’s undaunting stand for freedom and justice for all, stamping her irrevocably as a pioneer and inspirational leader in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement.

Her own original “Mississippi Goddam” was banned throughout the South but such a response made no difference in Nina’s unyielding commitment to liberty; subsequent groundbreaking recordings for Philips like “Four Women” (recorded September 1965) and “Strange Fruit” continued to keep Nina in the forefront of the few performers willing to use music as a vehicle for social commentary and change. Such risks were seldom taken by artists during that time of such dramatic civil upheaval. For years, Nina felt there was much about the way that she made her living that was less then appealing. One gets a sense of that in the following passage from I Put A Spell on You where she explains her initial reluctance to perform material that was tied to the Civil Rights Movement. “Nightclubs were dirty, making records was dirty, popular music was dirty and to mix all that with politics seemed senseless and demeaning. And until songs like ‘Mississippi Goddam’ just burst out of me, I had musical problems as well. How can you take the memory of a man like [Civil Rights activist] Medgar Evers and reduce all that he was to three and a half minutes and a simple tune?

That was the musical side of it I shied away from; I didn’t like ‘protest music’ because a lot of it was so simple and unimaginative it stripped the dignity away from the people it was trying to celebrate. But the Alabama church bombing and the murder of Medgar Evers stopped that argument and with ‘Mississippi Goddam,’ I realized there was no turning back.” Nina was deeply affected by these two events. In 1962, she had befriended noted playwright Lorraine Hansberry and spoke often with her about the Civil Rights Movement. While she was moved by her conversations with Hansberry, it took the killing of Medgar Evers and the four girls in Birmingham to act as catalysts for a transformation of Nina’s career. There were many sides to Nina Simone. Among her most amazing recordings were the original and so-soulful version “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” and “I Put A Spell On You” (which had reached to #23 in the U.S.

charts), eerily moody, unrestrained, drama to the max; “Ne Me Quitte Pas” tender, poignant, filled with melancholy; and with gospel-like fervor, the hypnotic voodoo of “See-Line Woman.” In her own unrivaled way, Nina also loved to venture into the more earthy side of life. After she signed with RCA Records in 1967 (a deal her then husband/manager Andy Stroud had negotiated), her very first recordings for the label included the saucy “Do I Move You?” and the undeniably sexual “I Want A Little Sugar In My Bowl” which were from the concept album entitled Nina Sings The Blues. Backed by a stellar cast of New York CIty session musicians, the album was far and away Nina’s most down-home recording session. By this time, Nina had become central to a circle of African American playwrights, poets, and writers all centered in Harlem along with the previously mentioned Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin and Langston Hughes.

The outcome from one of the relationships became a highlight of the LP with the song “Backlash Blues,” a song that’s lyrics originated from the last poem Langston Hughes submitted for publication prior to his death in May, 1967 and gave to Nina. Nina’s seven years with RCA produced some remarkable recordings, ranging from two songs featured in the Broadway musical “Hair” (combined into a medley, “Ain’t Got No – I Got Life,” a #2 British hit in 1968) to a Simone-ified version of George Harrison’s “Here Comes The Sun,” which remained in Nina’s repertoire all the way through to her final performance in 2002. Along the way at RCA, songs penned by Bob Dylan (“Just Like A Woman”), the brothers Gibb (“To Love Somebody”), and Tina Turner (“Funkier Than A Mosquito’s Tweeter”) took pride of place alongside Nina’s own anthem of empowerment, the classic “To Be Young, Gifted, & Black,” a song written in memory of Nina’s good friend Lorraine Hansberry. The title of the song coming from a play Hansberry had been working on just prior to her death.

After Nina left RCA, she spent a good deal of the 1970’s and early 1980’s living in Liberia, Barbados, England, Belgium, France, Switzerland and The Netherlands. In 1978, for the first time since she left RCA, Nina was convinced by U.S. jazz veteran Creed Taylor to make an album for his CTI label. This would be her first new studio album in six years and she recorded it in Belgium with strings and background vocals cut in New York City. With the kind of “clean” sound that was a hallmark of CTI recordings, the Nina Simone album that emerged was simply brilliant. Nina herself would later claimed that she ”hated” the record but many fans strongly disagreed. With an eighteen piece string section conducted by David Mathews (known for his arrangements on James Brown’s records), the results were spectacular. The title track, Randy Newman’s evocative “Baltimore,” was an inspired Nina Simone choice. It had a beautifully constructed reggae-like beat and used some of the finest musicians producer Creed Taylor could find including Nina’s guitarist and music director, Al Schackman.

Aside from 1982’s Fodder On My Wings that Nina recorded for Carrere Records, two albums she made of the independent VPI label in Hollywood (Nina’s Back and Live And Kickin’) in 1985, and a 1987 Live At Vine Street set recorded for Verve, Nina Simone did not make another full length album until Elektra A&R executive Michael Alago persuaded her to record again. After much wining and dining, Nina finally signed on the dotted line. Elektra tapped producer Andre Fischer, noted conductor Jeremy Lubbock, and a trio of respected musicians to provide the suitable environment for this highly personal reading of “A Single Woman,” which became the centerpiece and title track for Nina Simone’s final full length album. With two marriages behind her in 1993 she settled in Carry-le-Rout, near Aix-en-Provence in Southern France. She would continue to tour through the 1990’s and became very much ‘the single woman’ she sang about on her last label recording.

She rarely traveled without an entourage, but if you were fortunate enough to get to know the woman behind the music you could glimpse the solitary soul that understood the pain of being misunderstood. It was one of Nina’s many abilities to comprehend the bittersweet qualities of life and then parlay them into a song that made her such an enduring and fascinating person. In her autobiography, Nina Simone writes that her function as an artist is “…to make people feel on a deep level. It’s difficult to describe because it’s not something you can analyze; to get near what it’s about you have to play it. And when you’ve caught it, when you’ve got the audience hooked, you always know because it’s like electricity hanging in the air.” It was that very electricity that made her such an important artist to so many and it will be that electricity that continues to turn on new people all over the world for years to come. Nina Simone died in her sleep at her home in Carry-le-Rout, Bouches-du-Rhone on April 21, 2003. Her funeral service was attended by Miriam Makeba, Patti Labelle, poet Sonia Sanchez, actor Ossie Davis and hundreds of others.

Elton John sent a floral tribute with the message, “You were the greatest and I love you”. And the legacy continues… Contributions by: David Nathan (RCA’s ‘Nina Simone Anthology’, ‘Simone On Simone’), Ed Ward & Richard Seidel (RCA/Legacy ‘To Be Free-The Nina Simone Story’), Rob Bowman (Jazz Icons), Aaron Overfield (L’hommage: Nina Simone), additional editing by Sarah Epler Nina Simone - Author, Pianist, Civil Rights Activist, Musician, Singer - Biography.com » quotes “Music is a gift and a burden I've had since I can remember who I was. I was, born into music. The decision was how to make the best use of it.” “How can you be an artist and not reflect the times?

That to me is the definition of an artist.” “The America I'd dreamed of through the '60s seemed like a bad joke, with Nixon in the White House and the black revolution replaced by disco.” Nina Simone Synopsis Born on February 21, 1933, in Tryon, North Carolina, Nina Simone studied classical piano at the Juilliard School in New York City, but left early when she ran out of money. Performing in night clubs, she turned her interest to jazz, blues and folk music and released her first album in 1957, scoring a Top 20 hit with the track "I Loves You Porgy." In the ‘60s, Simone expanded her repertory in exemplary fashion while becoming identified as a leading voice of the Civil Rights Movement. She later lived abroad and experienced major mental health and financial issues, though enjoying a big career resurgence in the 1980s. Simone died in France on April 21, 2003.

Background and Early Life Born Eunice Kathleen Waymon on February 21, 1933, in Tryon, North Carolina, Nina Simone took to music at an early age, learning to play piano at the age of 3 and singing in her church's choir. Simone's musical training over the years emphasized classical repertory along the lines of Beethoven and Brahms , with Simone later expressing the desire to have been recognized as the first major African-American concert pianist. Her music teacher helped establish a special fund to pay for Simone's education and, after finishing high school, the same fund was used to send the pianist to New York City's famed Juilliard School of Music to train. Simone taught piano and worked as a accompanist for other performers while at Juilliard, but she eventually had to leave school after she ran out of funds. Moving to Philadelphia, Simone lived with her family there in order to save money and go to a more affordable music program. Her career took an unexpected turn, however, when she was rejected from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia; she later claimed the school denied her admittance because she was African-American.

Turning away from classical music, she started playing American standards, jazz and blues in Atlantic City clubs in the 1950s. Before long, she started singing along with her music at the behest of a bar owner. She took the stage name Nina Simone—"Nina," derived from the Spanish word "niña," came from a nickname used by her then boyfriend while "Simone" was inspired by French actress Simone Signoret. The performer eventually won over such fans as writers Langston Hughes , Lorraine Hansberry and James Baldwin . Innovative Fusion of Styles Simone began recording her music in the late 1950s under the Bethlehem label, releasing her first full album in 1957, which featured "Plain Gold Ring" and the title track "Little Girl Blue." It also included her one and only Top 20 pop hit with her version of "I Loves You Porgy" from the George and Ira Gershwin musical Porgy and Bess.

Under different labels, Simone released a bevy of albums from the late '50s throughout the '60s and early '70s, including records like The Amazing Nina Simone (1959), Nina Simone Sings Ellington ! (1962), Wild Is the Wind (1966) and Silk and Soul (1967). She also made cover songs of popular music, eventually putting her own spin on such songs as Bob Dylan 's "The Times They Are A-Changin'" and the Beatles ' "Here Comes the Sun." And she showed her sensual side with tracks like "Take Care of Business" on 1965's I Put a Spell on You and "I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl" on 1967's Nina Simone Sings the Blues. In many ways, Simone's music defied standard definitions. Her classical training showed through, no matter what genre of song she played, and she drew from a well of sources that included gospel, pop and folk. She was often called the "High Priestess of Soul," but she hated that nickname. She didn't like the label of "jazz singer," either.

"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," she later wrote in her autobiography. Prominent Civil Rights Singer By the mid-1960s, Simone became known as the voice of the Civil Rights Movement. She wrote "Mississippi Goddam" in response to the 1963 assassination of Medgar Evers and the Birmingham church bombing that killed four young African-American girls. She also penned "Four Women," chronicling the complex histories of a quartet of African-American female figures, and "Young, Gifted and Black," borrowing the title of a play by Hansberry, which became a popular anthem. After the assassination of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, Simone's bassist Greg Taylor penned "Why (The King of Love Is Dead)," which was performed by the singer and her band at the Westbury Music Festival.

During the '60s, Simone had prominent hits in England as well with "I Put a Spell on You," "Ain't Got No-I Got Life/Do What You Gotta Do" and "To Love Somebody," with the latter penned by Barry and Robin Gibb and originally performed by their group the Bee Gees . Struggles and Career Renaissance As the 1960s drew to a close, Simone tired of the American music scene and the country's deeply divided racial politics. Having been neighbors with Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz in Mount Vernon, New York, she later lived in several different countries, including Liberia, Switzerland, England and Barbados before eventually settling down in the South of France. For years, Simone also struggled with severe mental health issues and her finances, and clashed with managers, record labels and the Internal Revenue Service. Simone, who had taken a break from recording in the mid-70s, returned in 1978 with the album Baltimore, with the title track a cover version of a Randy Newman tune. Critics gave the album a warm reception, but it did not fare well commercially.

Simone went through a career renaissance in the 1980s when her song "My Baby Just Cares For Me" was used in a Chanel No. 5 perfume commercial in the United Kingdom. The song thus became a Top 10 hit in Britain in 1985. She also penned her autobiography, I Put a Spell on You, which was published in 1991. Her next recording, A Single Woman, came out in 1993. Touring periodically, Simone maintained a strong fan base that filled concert halls whenever she performed. In 1998, she appeared in the New York tri-state area, her first trip there in five years, specifically playing at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark. The New York Times critic Jon Pareles reviewed the concert, saying that "there is still power in her voice" and the show featured "a beloved sound, a celebrated personality, and a repertory that magnifies them both." That same year, Simone also attended South African leader Nelson Mandela 's 80th birthday celebration. Death and Legacy In 1999, Simone performed at the Guinness Blues Festival in Dublin, Ireland.

She was joined on stage by her daughter Lisa Simone Kelly for a few songs. Lisa, from Simone's second marriage to manager Andrew Stroud, followed in her mother's footsteps. Among an array of performance accomplishments, she has appeared on Broadway in Aida, using the stage name "Simone." In her final years, reports indicated that Nina Simone was battling breast cancer. She died at the age of 70 on April 21, 2003, at her home in Carry-le-Rouet, France. While she may be gone, Simone left a lasting impression on the world of music, art and activism. She sang to share her truth, and her work still resonates with great emotion and power. Simone has inspired an array of performers, including Aretha Franklin , Laura Nyro , Joni Mitchell , Lauryn Hill and Meshell Ndegeocello. Her deep, distinctive voice continues to be a popular choice for television and film soundtracks. Two documentaries on the musician's life were released in 2015: The Amazing Nina Simone, directed by Jeff L. Lieberman and backed by Re-Emerging Films, and What Happened, Miss Simone?, from Netflix.

The latter project was directed by Liz Garbus and offered commentary from daughter Lisa and ex-husband Stroud, among others. In addition to glorious musicianship, the project detailed troubling aspects of Simone's life, including the abuse she endured from her ex-husband and in turn the abuse daughter Lisa endured from her mother. What Happened, Miss Simone? later received an Oscar nomination for best documentary. In a turn of controversial casting, Simone was also depicted by actress Zoe Saldana in the 2016 biopic Nina. Fact Check We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us ! Citation Information TOP 5 Best Female Live Singers: Aretha Franklin, Etta James, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone and Billie Holiday – Fourth Part | inrumor.com | inrumor TOP 5 Best Female Live Singers: Aretha Franklin, Etta James, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone and Billie Holiday – Fourth Part by Nicole June 17, 2012 at 4:55 pm The third series of female singers ended with Céline Dion as the winner in a poll that also included names like Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Madonna and Kylie Minogue.

" class="pin-it-button" target="_blank" count-layout="horizontal"> Tweet The third series of female singers ended with Céline Dion as the winner in a poll that also included names like Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Madonna and Kylie Minogue. In the first week (Christina Aguilera, Adele, Beyoncé, Lady Gaga and Alicia Keys), Lady Gaga was at number one and in the second week (Demi Lovato, Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez and Avril Lavigne), Demi Lovato won. We will have several sets of five female singers, each with one week to vote. In the end only five singers will remain. This week we have: Aretha Franklin, Etta James, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone and Billie Holiday. Aretha Franklin Exceptional performer, skilled pianist, civil rights activist, inspire composer and diva, the “Queen Of Soul” Aretha Franklin has received several Grammy Awards and other major distinctions during her career. Her top tens include “Baby I love You”, “Chain of Fools” and “You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman”.

After making her debut in the gospel, Aretha Franklin goes to a more soulful repertoire and reveals her true value in the second half of the 1960s. She gains success with the song “I Never Loved a Man the Way I Loved You” which was called “the greatest single soul album of all time” by Rolling Stone’s Album Guide. In the late ’60s, Aretha Franklin earned the nickname “The Queen of Soul” and became at the same time an internationally known artist and a symbol of pride for the Black community. The album “Amazing Grace” released in 1972 became the best selling gospel album with over two million sales. Franklin’s success continued into the mid 1970s winning eight consecutive Grammy awards for Best R&B Female Vocal Performance. In 1987, she is the first female artist to be included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and in 1994 she receives a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Her 38th studio album called “A Woman Falling Out Of Love” was released on 3 May 2011 to mark her 50th anniversary in the music industry.

Gospel pop diva, the first lady of R & B, Aretha Franklin distinguishes herself with her warm voice, both sensual and powerful, that marked the North American music since the early 60s. Etta James Etta James became one of the figures of R & B with her songs “The Wallflower” and “Good Rockin ‘Daddy”. But it’s the hit “At Last” in 1961 that wrote her name in the music history. She has been an inspiration for Tina Turner, Diana Ross and Janis Joplin. Discovered by talent scout Johnny Otis, Etta James did not wait long before finding her first success: with the1954 single Roll With Me Henry, renamed the following year The Wallflower, she is immediately considered one of the most iconic representatives of R & B music. Her reputation became even stronger at the release of the album At Last! (1961), a combination of jazz and blues ballads that will eventually become a classics of the genre.

From Tell Mama (1967) to Seven Year Itch (1988), Etta went through a turbulent period in her personal life as an addiction to heroin earned her many stints in rehabilitation centers. A collaboration with rapper Def Jef in 1988 (‘Droppin’ Rhymes on Drums’) revealed her to a younger audience. Thanks to a series of his concerts in the 1990s and several international singles, such as Matriarch of the Blues (2000), Blue Gardenia (2001) or All the Way (2006), Etta James was awarded a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003. In 2001 she was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame and in 2003 she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. On January 20, 2012 she died of leukemia at the age of 73. James’ powerful and poignant voice helped her cover an array of genres such as blues, soul, jazz, R&B, and rock, and earn her a significant place in music history.

Ella Fitzgerald Called the “First Lady of Jazz,” singer Ella Fitzgerald recorded over 200 albums and around 2,000 songs in her lifetime. At the age of 16 she wins a competition for amateur singers in Harlem. This will be the first of a series of unparalleled successes. She was spotted at an audition by drummer Chick Webb who hired her in his orchestra. It is with Webb, both her mentor and tutor, that she recorded her first songs. When he died in 1939, she took the management of the orchestra for a while but preferred to lead a solo career. From 1956 to 1964, she records with Ray Brown and Norman Granz the famous ‘songs books,’ albums of popular American songs, which often earned the place of best selling records in the charts. She performed with fellow musical giants such as Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie and Frank Sinatra, and recorded jazz classics with Count Basie and Louis Armstrong “First Lady of Jazz,” named so due to her virtuosity, improvisational skills and smooth, silky voice, died at the age of 79, because of diabetes of which she had suffered for many years.

During her career, she received 13 Grammy Awards, the NAACP Image Award for Lifetime Achievement and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2007 the United States Postal Service honored the late singer with an Ella Fitzgerald Commemorative Stamp. Nina Simone Born in a family of eight children, Nina Simone, whose real name was Eunice Kathleen Wayman, played the piano and sang in the parish choir with her sisters from an early age. Thanks to a special fund established by her music teacher to pay for her education, after finishing high school, Simone won a scholarship to New York City’s famed Julliard School of Music to train as a classical pianist. Despite his determination to stay in the classical genre, she began her career in blues and jazz clubs. She recorded her first album ‘Little Girl Blue’ in 1957. Her most productive period is that of the 1960s when she recorded nine albums while campaigning for the civil rights with Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. She was identified as the voice of the civil rights and wrote songs about the movement. After releasing several albums in the 1970s, she went into exile in Liberia.

She returned in 1987 with Brel’s “Do not leave me”. She then wrote her biography in 1991 and signed her last album “A Single Woman” in 1993. Considered one of the greatest jazz singers, Nina Simone died in 2003. Her deep, distinctive voice makes her a popular choice for television and film soundtracks. Billie Holiday Considered one of the best jazz vocalists of all time, Holiday became known for her distinctive and expressive, sometimes melancholy voice. With an extraordinary voice and especially her genius performances, Billie Holiday experienced tremendous success with Benny Godman, Teddy Wilson, Buck Clayton and Young Lether. Called “Lady Day” by fellow musicians, she recorded between 1935 and 1942 over thirty songs. Holiday pursued her career and released “Strange Fruit”, a song against racism and “God Bless the Child”, which became her theme song. But although her life as a singer was a success, her private life had been a reflection of her dramatic childhood. At only 44, she died on a hospital bed in New York.

Billie Holiday was “the voice of jazz”, which was nurtured by emotions, pain and tenderness, feelings she managed to render in her music most likely because she had tasted them in real life. Which female singer is the best live performer? Aretha Franklin

Question: Which American singer's real name was Eunice Wayman?
Answer: Nina Simone