Having once performed at Carnegie Hall, she was forced to sell her car, furniture, and jewelry to survive. From What Happened, Miss Simone? A Biography by Alan Light, we learn that Simone would stand on the sidewalk in front of various Latin Quarter nightclubs and invite passerby to come in and see her perform. I went back to Paris thinking that I could resume my career. They first witnessed their daughter perform a whole song on the piano at the age of three.
It has been claimed that Waymon was so naturally gifted that she could play almost anything she heard by ear, and under the tutelage of teacher Muriel Mazzanovich, who had moved to Tryon, grew a deep love of classic music, including Bach , Chopin, and Beethoven. She was so committed to mastering music even as a child that Waymon was invited to perform her first piano recital at the age of 11, an event that took place at the local library.
NPR reports that the recital, as well as being notable for being the first public performance from the future Nina Simone, was the first time that racial injustice became perceptible to the young musician, when her parents, who were present in the front row of the audience, were asked to move to the back of the hall to accommodate late-arriving white audience members.
Reportedly, she refused to continue until her parents were reseated at the front. Simone recalled that the next day: "the skin grew back a little tougher, a little less innocent, and a little more black. It is important to remember that, in her early years, Nina Simone didn't consider herself a singer at all — her dream was to become a classical pianist working without vocal accompaniment, performing those timeless compositions taught to her by her English piano teacher.
According to her official website , her talents were not reserved simply for music; she graduated as valedictorian of her high school in , and the local community raised funds to send Waymon to continue her studies at the Juilliard School of the Performing Arts in New York City. She spent the summer of preparing to audition for Philadelphia's prestigious Curtis Institute of Music, with her family relocating to Philadelphia in anticipation of her acceptance.
However, despite giving a good audition, Waymon was no accepted into the school. The rejection was a great blow to her, and though, according to the biographer Nadine Cohodas , she then received training from a professor at the school, Vladimir Sokoloff, to prepare her for another audition a year later, she was never admitted. In later years, when Waymon was famous as Nina Simone, she would claim that her rejection by the school was motivated by racism.
While continuing to receive musical instruction, Nina Simone worked a series of jobs. She worked for a time as a photographer's assistant, gave piano lessons and, according to History Collection , worked as an accompanist on the piano for singing students. It was during this time that she began to take notice of her own voice, as she gave advice to the students on how best to perform to her accompaniment, realizing that, for the first time, she was making money from singing.
However, Eunice Waymon had a problem: her mother would not approve of her performing in a bar. To avoid the prospect of her mother spotting the name "Eunice Waymon" on the bar's advertisements, Waymon created the stage name "Nina Simone," by combining the nickname her boyfriend at the time called her, with the name of the French actress Simone Signoret.
It was a name that would become famous as her star grew on the live music circuit. However, according to her autobiography , Simone always made it back to Philadelphia each week for her piano lesson with Vladimir Sokoloff. Unusually for singers at the time, Simone insisted that she select the entirety of the music on the record, as opposed to the selection of songs that Nathan had chosen for her and brought to their first meeting, per Glide.
Simone believed that she was able to get her own way with Nathan because she truly was not interested in becoming a famous singer — she still considered popular music a distraction from her classical ambitions. The album, Little Girl Blue , was released in and attracted many more bookings for Simone in large New York venues.
After her version of "My Baby Just Cares For Me" became a huge hit, Simone claimed that signing the contract without reading it led to her lose a fortune. The word "tumultuous" is commonly used to describe the life of Nina Simone, and the word is particularly apt when it comes to her love life.
Simone was first married in , to a jazz drummer and "beatnik" named Don Ross. In her autobiography , Simone claims that she is unable to remember the date of the marriage: "a good indication of my feelings towards him.
In , Simone married Andrew Stroud, a Harlem police detective who had initially told Simone that he worked as a bank teller. This is middle-period Nina in her prime. The signature finger-poppin' shuffle of "Just in Time" is a concert standout, and you can hear Simone humorously berating the audience for taking pictures. It's a brilliant segue into her classic, African-flavored arrangement of "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" Simone's version inspired The Animals' hit recording of the song.
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