Nina Simone has burst upon the musical scene with a new sound, a breathless style and some fancy piano playing. In less than a year she has amazed a legion of fans who know her as the girl who rediscovered Gershwin’s Porgy, but in her own manner.
Nina admits that she makes no effort to phrase her singing or her playing in any special way. She has no set notion of technique. She just goes to the piano, plays the best she knows how and sings softly. But all the experts agree that this tall dark brown girl from Tryon, North Carolina has just about set the music world on its ears, with a sound that is new and “way, way out.”
In the words of the second best-seller album she recorded for Colpix, Miss Simone is The Amazing Nina Simone.
The song Nina is best known for is I Loves You Porgy with she made as a single and which has come to be known as her theme song. In this song Nina pours her heart out for the man she wants but who she knows is no good for her. In the haunting blues melody, almost heartbreaking in its rendition, Nina sends out feelers that find a ready understanding in her audience.
“That’s because I am singing about myself,” says Nina, “and I think my audience realizes this too. This song is for real and I am singing about my husband. We have broken up five times but can’t keep away from each other.”
By the time you read this Nina will have another Porgy in the record stores. This is not the Gershwin Porgy again, but a version of the song by Dorothy fields and Jimmy Van Heusen from Bye, Bye Blackbirds in 1928. The song, which starts “I’ve got my Porgy now,” is very close to the Gershwin’s song. Its mood fits the style of Miss Simone, sad and mournful but utterly compelling. Everybody who has heard Nina do it leaves with the song running through their minds.
It’s a safe bet that for a while, anything of a sad nature which Nina does will capture her public, because Little Girl Blue (the title of her first album) is what she is. Hers is an unhappiness that seeks to find expression – expression for the numerous things that lie locked up in her heart.
How did Nina start? She was born Eunice Waymon, the sixth of eight children in the obscure town of Tryon, North Carolina. Her father was a handyman and her mother worked as a housekeeper during the day. At night she donned the robes of an ordained minister to conduct services for Methodist churches. Here Nina developed her interest in music.
While everyone in the Waymon family was musically inclined, Nina had the earliest start. At the age of four she was picking out songs on the family piano. By the time she was seven she was so good she played for the choirs in her mother’s church services. Thus Nina had deep roots, in both blues and spiritual music. This comes out now in her playing and her interpretation of most songs.
When she was about seven, she and two sisters formed the “Waymon Sisters” group and performed not only in church but at outside functions. After one of these performances at the Tryon Theatre, a woman in the audience went backstage to congratulate her on her playing. When she learned that Nina had never had a lesson in her life, she arranged for Nina to begin classical piano lessons with a local teacher, Mrs. Lawrence Mazzanovich. This woman was to become an important factor in Nina’s life, for when her benefactress ceased paying her tuition two years laser, Mrs. Mazzanovich, realizing the youngster’s great talent, continued to teach her free. Moreover, she organized small concerts for Nina at civic and social affairs and with the money thus raised started a “Eunice Waymon Fund” which enabled Nina to go to high school in Asheville and to study for a year at the Juilliard School of Music in New York under Carl Friedberg.
By this time Nina’s parents had moved to Philadelphia, and when her money ran out a Juilliard, she rejoined her family in Philadelphia and went to work as an accompanist for vocal students at the Arlene Smith studio. She also gave private piano lessons. With the money she earned she studied privately with a teacher from the Curtis Institute.
Most of the students at the Smith studio were studying popular music, and since it was Nina’s job to help them interpret the songs properly, she soon found that she herself was developing a pop style. Although her formal training had always been in the classical idiom, Nina developed a strong interest in jazz, as well as for improvising. She would improvise on classical music, spirituals and popular tunes. She was also influenced by listening for hours to Nat Cole, Billie Holiday, Kitty White, Louis Armstrong and others.
In the summer of 1954, Nina found herself without a job as all the students had gone on vacation and the studio had closed down. She accepted a job at the Midtown Club in Atlantic City to play piano and sing for $90 a week – a brand new departure for her. Despite her fears, Nina made out so well that she developed an enthusiastic following. She did not return to the studio for long. Nina decided that performing, at least until she could do the composing that she wanted to, was the best bet.
For the next two years Nina worked in the small clubs in and around Philadelphia. In the summer of 1957, she performed with her own trio at the New Hope Playhouse Inn. During that engagement, he made a demonstration record which led to her recording contract with Bethlehem Records and her first album, Little Girl Blue. It was there Nina met Bertha Case, a noted literary agent, who later was to negotiate her current contract with Colpix Records.
Nina came by her name in an unusual way. When she played at the Midtown, she did not want the Smith studio to know she was playing a club. She remembered a boyfriend used to call here “Ninia”, so she used the name. People didn’t bother to say “Ninia”. They just called her “Nina.” Where the Simone came from she doesn’t know: only that it sounded well with Nina.
Now 27, the slim girl with the large, expressive black eyes has the bookings pouring in. Between stints she tries to rest and practice on the 15th floor of an apartment building overlooking Central park in New York, where she lives with her husband, a Philadelphia born drummer named Don Ross, who is now painting in oil, and her secretary, Faye Anderson, who is simply captivated by Nina’s talent.
Since Nina has depth in three spheres of music – classics, blues and spirituals – Don thinks this is the thing that gives her such an unusual sound. Says he: “She has a tremendous reservoir of training and this training combined with modern material gives, in effect, a particularly majestic feeling in a framework of modern jazz.” If it can ever be explained, this is the best explanation so far of Nina’s elusive style, which can be felt, but seems to escape any description.
Sometime soon, Nina and Ross plan to go to Europe, “perhaps for good.” There they expect to find some peace and repose to do the things which they want to do most. She wants to compose in the classics as well as in jazz and he wants to paint.
“Let’s face it,” she says, “I’m doing what I do now for money, and I hope the money I make can help me achieve the things I really want. Right now I am not happy.”
An intense and sensitive person, Nina has more than the average feeling for her work, and a broader knowledge of the world than is found with many performers. She suffers easily and is filled with an overpowering compassion and tenderness for everything. As her husband says, “France may very well be the catalyst that makes us find ourselves and realize our goals in life.”
In France, Nina and Don hope to get down to serious study and hard work. Also, they hope to find a better perspective on their marital troubles. In other words, they are looking to their stay abroad with “great expectations,” they say.
Until they leave, however, Nina Simone will be giving pleasure to thousands of fans all over the country who may not know what her goals are, but dig the most what she is doing now.