With "Old Jim Crow" on the same album she reacts to the Jim Crow Laws.Īfter that, a civil rights was a common theme in Simone's songs. The song was boycotted in some southern states. It was about the murder of Medgar Evers and the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama that killed four black children. She recorded a live album called Nina Simone In Concert which included the song " Mississippi Goddam". She began to record songs about her African-American origins and racial inequality. In 1964, Simone began to work with the Dutch record label Philips. In the 1960s, Simone was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. She only played pop music to make money for her classical music studies.
Simone made sure she had control and did not really mind whether she had a recording contract or not. Colpix let her have control over choosing the material that she recorded. Simone then signed a contract with the record company Colpix Records and released several studio and live albums. Simone never earned money from the album because she sold the rights for $3000, missing out on more than $1 million of royalties. Soon, she recorded her first album Little Girl Blue on Bethlehem Records. It became her only Billboard top 40 success in the United States. She had learned the song from a Billie Holiday album, and performed it as a favor for a friend. In 1958 she recorded a song called " I Loves You Porgy", from Porgy and Bess by George Gershwin. Simone played and sang a mixture of jazz, blues and classical music at the bar. She got "Nina" from a nickname given to her by a boyfriend, and "Simone" from a French actress called Simone Signoret. She did not want her mother to know that she was playing "the devil's music", so she started using the stage name Nina Simone. The owner said that she would only get the job if she would sing as well as play the piano. Simone played the piano at the Midtown Bar & Grill on Pacific Avenue in Atlantic City to earn money for her studying. She believed that this too was because she was black, and because she was a woman. She applied to study piano at the Curtis Institute, but was not successful. This money helped her to study at the Juilliard School of Music in New York.
She began to earn money teaching piano and accompanying singers. When she asked the examiner why she was not given a scholarship, the examiner told her "because you're black."Īfter this, Simone became very passionate about the civil rights movement. She had to take a test, and passed it, but she was not given the scholarship. She found more racism here when she applied for a scholarship at a local college. When she was 17, Simone moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After that, a local fund was made to help in carrying on her education. Waymon worked as a maid and her employer, hearing of Simone's talent, gave them money for piano lessons. Her father, John Divine Waymon, was a handyman, and sometimes a barber, who was often ill. Simone's mother, Mary Kate Waymon was a strict Methodist minister. She remembered this event later when she got involved with the civil rights movement. Simone said she would not to play until her parents were moved back to the front.
Her parents sat on the front row to watch her, but were made to move to the back of the hall to make way for white people. Her first concert was a classical piano recital, when she was twelve. The first song she learned was "God be With You, Till we Meet Again" and she played at her local church. She began playing the piano when she was age of three. She was one of eight children in a poor family. Nina Simone was born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina in 1933.