Nina Simone

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Ron Kroon : Nina Simone (1965)

Nina Simone (real name Eunice Kathleen Waymon ; born February 21, 1933 in Tryon (North Carolina) , USA ; † April 21, 2003 in Carry-le-Rouet , France ) was an American jazz and blues singer , pianist , songwriter and Civil rights activist .

Life

Nina Simone was the sixth of eight children of a Methodist preacher and a craftsman. She started playing the piano at the age of four. After studying at the renowned Juilliard School in New York City , she wanted to complete her training in Philadelphia at the Curtis Institute of Music , but was not admitted for racist reasons. Nina Simone came to singing through a job as a piano teacher, improvising her own pieces from the start. She called herself by the surname Simone because she was a fan of the actress Simone Signoret . Her singing and piano styles were influenced by Nellie Lutcher , whose career ended around the time that Nina Simone became famous. Nina Simone avoided the term jazz , she herself called her music Black Classical Music .

In 1957 she released her first album in New York on Bethlehem Records , a concert in 1959 in New York City Town Hall made her known in the USA and Europe. She was reverently referred to by her fans as the " High Priestess of Soul". In the 1960s she was involved in the American civil rights movement . With songs like Mississippi Goddam and To Be Young, Gifted, and Black ( lyrics by Weldon Irvine ), she became one of the musical leaders of this movement.

In 1961 she married the New York police officer Andrew "Andy" Stroud (1925–2012), who later became her manager and wrote some songs for her. In 1962 she gave birth to their daughter Lisa Celeste Stroud, who became known as a singer under the stage name Lisa Simone . In 1971 the marriage was divorced.

Nina Simone at a concert in France in 1982

Her private life broke up bit by bit: She fled her marriages, had an affair with the Prime Minister of Barbados ( Errol Barrow ), sought her destination in Africa on the basis of a recommendation from Miriam Makeba , went on tours of Europe, which included her political struggle Estranged from the US, and was increasingly difficult in the record industry. Her album Baltimore (1978) received critical acclaim, but initially sold poorly. In the 1980s, she appeared regularly in the jazz club of Ronnie Scott in London on (and took there also an album). Her autobiography I Put a Spell on You was released in 1992, her last regular album in 1993. In the same year she moved to southern France, where she lived for ten years and died in 2003 after suffering from cancer for a long time.

Your music in popular culture

The track Ain't Got No / I Got Life from their 1968 album 'Nuff Said! is a medley of two songs from the musical Hair . She became known to a wider audience through her song My Baby Just Cares for Me , which became a worldwide hit in 1987 thanks to a Chanel commercial 30 years after the piece was recorded. She only had a minimal share of the sales proceeds. In 1993, the film Codename: Nina with Bridget Fonda in the lead role came into the cinemas - with a soundtrack that consisted partly of music by Nina Simone. In the 1999 remake of Thomas Crown is unbelievable with Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo , the intro of their version of the gospel Sinnerman appears again and again, only to underline the climax of the film with their unmistakable vocals. In 2009 Pandemic Studios used Simone's version of the song Feeling Good and a remix version as background music for the computer game Saboteur, which was set in Paris during World War II . This song was also used as a sample for New Day by Kanye West and Jay-Z on their collaboration album Watch the Throne .

In 2008, Rolling Stone listed Simone 29th of the 100 best singers of all time .

In December 2017 Simone was posthumously honored with the induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame . The official ceremony took place in April 2018. The laudation was given by Mary J. Blige .

Performances in Germany

In 1989 Nina Simone performed as part of the Hamburg Jazz Festival in the communication center Fabrik in Hamburg-Ottensen, where she had already played in 1988.

Movies

In 2015 the documentary What Happened, Miss Simone? published that deals with her life. The feature film Nina (released April 2016) portrays Simone's life. In the run-up to the filming, there were discussions as to whether the leading actress Zoe Saldana, as an American with Dominican roots, was suitable for the impersonation of the African American Nina Simone.

Discography

literature

  • Nina Simone, Stephen Cleary: I Put a Spell on You. The Autobiography of Nina Simone. Ebury Press, London 1991, ISBN 0-85223-895-9 (In German: My black soul. Memories. From the American by Brigitte Jakobeit . Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1993, ISBN 3-455-08481-8 ).
  • Nadine Cohodas: Princess Noire. The tumultuous reign of Nina Simone. Pantheon Books, New York NY 2010, ISBN 978-0-375-42401-4 .

Web links

Commons : Nina Simone  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Independent: Obituaries: Nellie Lutcher. June 11, 2007. Archived from the original on August 6, 2011 ; Retrieved May 26, 2013 .
  2. ↑ The 2004 film Final Call - When he hangs up, she has to die as well as the remake of the action series Miami Vice from 2006 had a variant of Simone's Sinnerman as the title song. In the BBC series Sherlock in the third episode of the second season (" Sherlock - Der Reichenbachfall ") her version of Sinnerman could also be heard. The song runs in full in the credits of Golden Door from 2006.
  3. ↑ Videogamer.com: The Saboteur Review. (No longer available online.) December 3, 2009, archived from the original on October 22, 2012 ; Retrieved November 6, 2010 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.videogamer.com
  4. ↑ 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. Rolling Stone , December 2, 2010, accessed August 9, 2017 .
  5. ↑ https://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/mary-j-blige-nina-simone-rock-and-roll-hall-of-fame-speech-w518982
  6. ↑ https://rp-online.de/kultur/musik/bon-jovi-ein-fruehes-anzeichen-der-zombie-apokalypse_aid-17563009
  7. ^ Website of the factory, recording of the appearance with the date from YouTube
  8. ↑ Zoë Saldana's controversial role in Spiegel Online , accessed March 4, 2016
personal data
SURNAME Simone, Nina
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Waymon, Eunice Kathleen (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American musician, jazz and blues singer, pianist and songwriter
DATE OF BIRTH February 21, 1933
PLACE OF BIRTH Tryon , North Carolina , USA
DATE OF DEATH April 21, 2003
Place of death Carry-le-Rouet , France