What Happened, Miss Simone?

Alan Light

Description

'From her raging, handwritten letters to late-night phone calls with David Bowie, this biography gets up close and personal with the tempestuous Nina Simone' Observer Drawing on glimpses into previously unseen diaries, rare interviews and childhood journals, and with the aid of her daughter, What Happened, Miss Simone? tells the story of the classically trained pianist who became a soul legend, a committed civil rights activist and one of the most influential, provocative and least understood artists of our time. This is the story of the real Miss Simone.

Sujets

• Jazz

Informations

• Publié par: Canongate Books
• Date de parution: 26 février 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781782118732
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

What happened, Miss Simone?
A BIOGRAPHY
ALAN LIGHT
First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH 1 1 TE
www.canongate.co.uk
This digital edition first published in 2016 by Canongate Books
Copyright © 2016 by RadicalMedia LLC and the Estate of Nina Simone
The moral right of the author has been asserted
First published in the United States by Crown Archetype, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 78211 871 8 EXPORT ISBN 978 1 78211 872 5 e ISBN 9 781 78211 873 2
Book design by Lauren Dong
But what happened, Miss Simone? Specifically, what happened to your big eyes that quickly veil to hide the loneliness? To your voice that has so little tenderness, yet flows with your commitment to the battle of Life? What happened to you?
𠇄MAYA ANGELOU, 1970
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Discography
Notes
Bibliographical Sources
Acknowledgments
Index
Illustrations
List of Illustrations
Nina showed an early aptitude for music—she was discovered at the age of six while playing church music in a local theater. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty
Born Eunice Waymon, she changed her name to Nina Simone when she started playing nightclubs in Atlantic City, knowing that her mother (a preacher) would disapprove. Herb Snitzer
Nina was blessed with perfect pitch. She understood that she had a gift to share with the world. Herb Snitzer
Nina was highly style conscious and had her own distinctive fashion sense—a perfect blend of elegant sophistication and black pride. Courtesy of the Estate of Alfred Wertheimer
Nina’s home in Mount Vernon, New York, where she and husband Andrew Stroud entertained luminaries like Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, Harry Belafonte, and Sidney Poitier. Courtesy of the Estate of Alfred Wertheimer
Lisa Simone, age two, at the piano. Nina always had music playing in her home growing up and continued the tradition with her own family. Courtesy of the Estate of Alfred Wertheimer
Nina in a contemplative moment on the road. Bernard Gotfryd/Courtesy of Lisa Simone Kelly
Trained as a classical pianist, Nina taught herself to incorporate multiple, independent music lines into one improvisation that blended everything from Bach to pop. Courtesy of the Estate of Alfred Wertheimer
Nina with her dear friend James Baldwin. Bernard Gotfryd/Courtesy of Lisa Simone Kelly
Nina’s new Afro coincided with her increasing interest in black pride and a commitment to using her talent in the fight for racial equality. Jack Robinson/Getty
Nina loved to look theatrical when she went on stage; she often had sequins glued to her eyebrows and eyelids for her performances. Courtesy of the Estate of Alfred Wertheimer
Nina pointing to her name on the marquee at the Luxor Theatre in Arnhem, the Netherlands. Gerrit De Bruin
With Andrew in their hotel room on the road. He became her manager in 1962 and helped her realize her dream of playing Carnegie Hall the following year. Courtesy of the Estate of Alfred Wertheimer
Nina greeting fans after a show; she often complained that Andrew worked her too hard. Bernard Gotfryd/Courtesy of Lisa Simone Kelly
Nina reviewing her set list before her Carnegie Hall appearance. She was the first black female soloist to appear at the legendary theater. Courtesy of the Estate of Alfred Wertheimer
She played eighteen pieces, an eclectic set list ranging from an Israeli folk tune to a Leadbelly song. Courtesy of the Estate of Alfred Wertheimer
Nina was aware of her power as a performer—she described it as “mass hypnosis . . . a spell that you cast.” Bernard Gotfryd/Courtesy of Lisa Simone Kelly
Released in 1963, Nina Simone at Carnegie Hall was an artistic triumph and became one of her signature albums. Courtesy of the Estate of Alfred Wertheimer
After a trip to Africa, Nina developed a deep love for the continent’s people and culture; this affection inspired the many African gowns she commissioned upon her return. David Redfern/Getty
A disciplined perfectionist who was finely attuned to her audiences, Nina often paced the theater before performances to get a sense of its sound. Guy Le Querrec/Magnum Photos
Nina posing for a photograph in 1978. John Minihan/Getty
Nina on a European tour in 1978. Facing tax evasion charges in the States and bitter about the rampant racism there, she moved to France that same year. Gerrit De Bruin
Nina sometimes found the constant touring physically draining and mentally punishing, but she continued to perform until the very end of her life. Courtesy of the Estate of Alfred Wertheimer
Tel Aviv, 1978. Nina spent many of her later years abroad; while she traveled extensively through Europe and the Middle East, she felt most at home in Africa. Upon her death, she asked that her ashes be scattered across several countries there. AP Photo/Max Nash
London, 1997, enjoying her final act as an international icon. Bernard Gotfryd/Courtesy of Lisa Simone Kelly
Nina in 1990 with a triumphant fist raised on stage. “An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times,” she said. David Redfern/Getty
INTRODUCTION
“ A re you ready, black people? ”
In the summer of 1969—before, during, and after the “three days of peace and music” being held at Max Yasgur’s farm in Bethel, New York—another all-star outdoor music festival was taking place in Mount Morris Park, northeast of Manhattan’s Central Park. The Harlem Cultural Festival, also sometimes called the “Black Woodstock,” happened over the course of six Sunday afternoons from June 29 to August 24, with legends like B.B. King, the Staple Singers, and Sly & the Family Stone playing to an estimated one hundred thousand concertgoers.
Tony Lawrence, a New York nightclub singer and sometime movie actor, was the producer, promoter, and host of the events. On campuses and in black neighborhoods throughout the country, unrest and upheaval were at a fever pitch, so while the city’s mayor John Lindsay spoke at the event (and was introduced as a “blue-eyed soul brother”), the New York Police Department refused to provide security for the concerts. In their stead, a delegation of Black Panthers managed the crowds.
At one of the July shows, Jesse Jackson addressed the throngs of people. “ As I look out at us rejoice today,” he said, “I was hoping it would be in preparation for the major fight we as a people have on our hands here in this nation. Some of you are laughing because you don’t know any better, and others laughing because you are too mean to cry. But you need to know that some mean stuff is going down. A lot of you can’t read newspapers. A lot of you can’t read books, because our schools have been mean and left us illiterate or semiliterate. But you have the mental capacity to read the signs of the times.”
It was a time of joy and danger, of liberation and fear, testing the opportunities and the limits of empowerment. And no performance over those six summer Sundays would capture the moment, in all its contrasts, more than the appearance of Nina Simone.
Are you ready to smash white things? Burn buildings? Are you ready?
Are you ready to build black things?
Simone’s concert came near the end of the series, on August 17. Just a few weeks earlier, she had recorded “To Be Young, Gifted and Black,” inspired by the memory of her friend and mentor Lorraine Hansberry, an anthem of hope for the future of a civil rights movement that had already been battered and ripped apart by murders, philosophical and tactical divisions, and government interference; still, the song would be named the “Black National Anthem” by the Congress of Racial Equality and covered by Aretha Franklin and Donny Hathaway.
When she took the stage at Mount Morris Park—in a long yellow-and-black-print dress, her hair teased into a sort of Afro-bouffant, massive silver earrings dangling to her neck—she made explicit the tensions and the possibilities of an event celebrating black culture and black pride in the aftermath of the riots that had erupted in urban areas during the previous summers.
Backed by a loose but propulsive and earnest-looking group of musicians wearing dashikis, she dug into a set focused on protest material of various moods: the brand-new “To Be Young, Gifted and Black”; “Four Women,” her controversial examination of the black female experience, and the insidious power held by varying black skin tones, in America; a fiery new song titled “Revolution,” with the refrain “Don’t you know it’s going to be all right,” borrowed from the Beatles’ hit of the same name; the joyous “Ain’t Got No—I Got Life” medley, from the “American Tribal Love-Rock Musical” Hair, which had opened on Broadway the previous year and was still running, about seventy blocks south of the Harlem stage.
But it was the final number of her performance, a recitation of “ Are You Ready, Black People? ,” the battle cry written by David Nelson of the proto-rap group the Last Poets, that would define Simone’s performance for history. “I did not memorize enough, so I have to read it,” she told the crowd. “It’s for you.” And as her band banged out a rhythm on the congas and chanted, “Yes, I’m ready,” in response to the poem’s questions, she bit down on Nelson’s words.
Are you ready to change yourself?—You know what I’m talking about.
Are you ready to go inside yourself and change yourself?
The Harlem audience yelled its approval. They shouted affirmations at the challenge to “smash white things,” to “go inside yourself and change yourself.” Simone built the poem to a climax, then said quietly, “