Edwin J Bernard traces her checkered career:
Nina Simone began her checkered career as jazz music’s most elusive and temperamental star at the age of 17. Her mother didn’t approve of the music biz so, in order to preserve the family’s honor, Nina changed her name from Eunice Waymon, the North Carolina-born child prodigy who first took piano lessons at the age of four.
Nina’s big break came in 1957, when she was spotted by a big wig at Bethlehem Records during a club date in Atlantic City. Nina’s first album was ‘My Baby Just Cares For Me’ (now re-released, like the single, on the Charly label) and, although the title track became a standard, it wasn’t a hit. Her big breakthrough came with ‘I Loves You Porgy’, a bluesy ballad from George Gershwin’s operetta ‘Porgy & Bess’.
Nina had only four hits in the UK during her heyday, although two records reached the top five: ‘Ain’t Got No – I Got Life’ (number two, October 1968) and ‘To Love Somebody’ (number five, February 1969).
In 1963, Nina married New York detective Andrew Stroud, who then gave up detecting to become her manager for a while. Nina 1969, Nina walked out on him, claiming he had married someone else without asking her permission first!
The hits soon dried up and, in 1974, she gave up singing and went to live first in Barbados and then in Liberia. Asked why she chose Liberia, she replied that “they treat me right and don’t scrimp on the Babycham!”
Nina’s temper tantrums, which had got progressively worse, led to rumour and gossip about her state of mind. The problem intensified when the press got hold of a story about an ill-fated affair with a Liberian lover. The ensuing publicity, coupled with her outspoken comments on racism in the music industry, almost destroyed her and her flagging career. After a suicide attempt everyone wrote Nina Simone off.
Nina amazed everyone by releasing a brilliant album in 1978, ‘Baltimore’, which began the slow process of Nina Simone’s comeback. She began to play live at selected venues and continued to make acclaimed records. Unfortunately, her temperament often got the better of her. Last year she was booked to play a triumphant week at Ronnie Scott’s, London’s premier jazz club, but, after two disastrous nights of manic depressive ramblings and not much singing, she was fired.
Nina’s last public performance to date was at the Montreux Jazz Festival earlier this year, but she remains a recluse living somewhere in Europe. Her UK record label, Charly, have been trying to contact her to thank her personally for providing them with their first hit for 11 years! But all to no avail.
‘My Baby Just Cares For Me’ is the latest in a long line of black music classics revitalized through advertisements. This time, Chanel No. 5 used the song as its theme, catapulting it into the pop charts for the first time in its 30 year history. No doubt the brilliant animated video by Aardman’s Animation, the people responsible for Peter Gabriel’s ‘Sledgehammer’ and the animation in ‘Spitting Image’ has something to do with it, too.
But the real reason, of course, is that ‘My Baby Just Cares For Me’, as sung by a 24-year-old Nina Simone, is a timeless euphoric paean to love that everyone can identify with.