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Remembering Nina Simone, born on this day in 1933 (1933-2003).
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Eunice Kathleen Waymon, real name of Nina Simone, (February 21, 1933, Tryon, North Carolina, United States-April 21, 2003, Carry-Le-Rouet, France), was the sixth of eight brothers inside the family of a manual worker and a domestic maid.
Child prodigy, already touched the piano at the age of four and together with her sisters sang in the choir of the Methodist Church that her mother directed. In 1943, when she was just 10, she gave his first piano concert in the city library. There she met his first applause and his first clash with racism: during the concert they removed their parents from the first row of the premises to accommodate a group of whites.
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This episode was the first of a chain of traumatic experiences for her, and is, without a doubt, in the origin of her commitment to the struggle for freedom and for the claims of blacks in the United States. With the financial aid of his music teacher, he was able to Your skin. Although she had a classical piano training, to keep his family she had to start working in 1954 in an Atlantic City club as a singer. It was then that he changed her name to Nina’s, taken from Spanish to define himself as “the little girl” and Simone, of the French actress Simone Signoret of whom he was an admirer.
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In 1959, Nina Simone recorded her first albums for the Bethlehem label. In them, he gave notable signs of her talent as a pianist, singer, adapter and composer. Some songs became classics of their repertoire. The song I Love You Porgy, from the Porgy and Bess Opera, of Ira and George Gershwin, suddenly turned him into a star, selling a million copies. From these first records, her repertoire was filled with jazz, gospel, blues, soul, classical music and popular songs of diverse origin, touring a very wide range of her repertoire in a totally personal, warm and enormous amalgam of enormous expressiveness. Her way of touching the piano is decisive in many of her interpretations, but especially in the well -known My Baby Just Cares for Me.
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The influence of Duke Ellington is evident in the entire work of Nina, but especially in this type of compositions overflowing of improvisation and spiritual closeness. Nina achieves the listener’s complicity with an intentional job of silences and minimizing accompaniment. Hers voice sometimes whispers, but then shouts or groans, transmitting all the sensations that the human soul is able to experiment. Militant of the Black Panther Movement, another impressive theme of her, Young, Gifted and Black (young, endowed and black), inspired by Lorena Hansberry, became the African -American anthem. It was also a close collaborator of James Baldwin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Harry Belafonte.
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Tired of racism and the nonsense of the American musical world, Nina resigned her country in 1969, after the murder of Martín Luther King. In 1974, Nina Simone went to Barbados and during the following years he lived in Liberia, Switzerland, Paris, Holland and finally in southern France, where he resided until the day of her death on April 21, 2003.
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In 1978, Nina Simone was arrested because of her boycott of paying taxes to finance the Vietnam War. The song of her first album, “My Baby Just Cares for Me”, became a huge success in 1984, when appearing in the television announcement of a Chanel perfume. The song had been written for the musical film “Whoopee” in 1930, a work by Thornton Freeland and Eddie Cantor that was sung and danced by Ethel Shutta. Then, in the 50s, the song was in Frank Sinatra’s repertoire. Nina recorded it in her first album, published in 1959.
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Nina Simone – Little Girl Blue (1958) FULL ALBUM.
Track Listing:
1. Mood Indigo: 0:00 2. Don’t Smoke in Bed: 4:10 3. He Needs Me: 7:24 4. Little Girl Blue: 10:00 5. Love Me or Leave Me: 14:21 6. My Baby Just Cares for Me: 17:45 7. Good Bait: 21:23 8. Plain Gold Ring: 26:50 9. You’ll Never Walk Alone: 30:47 10. I Loves You Porgy: 34:36 11. Central Park Blues: 38:54
In the rough character and the haughty presence of Nina Simone, you could easily read the frustration of this piano student who aspired to be young a classic concert artist, that due to economic and family problems she was forced in 1954, becoming a pianist -Club Count. Her best album remains the first, this “Little Girl Blues” that she recorded in 1957 in a session in the studies of the select “Bethlehem” label.
It is remarkable a very aggressive version of “Love me or leave me”, a lyric “I loves you porgy” in addition to the celebrated topic that accompanied him throughout her career “My Baby Just Cares for Me”, the theme that became so popular thirty years after being recorded after being used in a television ad. This song perfectly portrays its wide pianistic style based on common places of classical tradition, forcibly embedded in a wrapping mixture of jazz and pop.
Her alt voice has enough claw and rhythm to make us regret all jazz fans and especially vocal jazz, which Nina Simone, would have wasted so many years and so many recordings in another type of music.
Nina Simone completely changed the world of jazz and black songs. Unlike other artists and musicians of jazz, Nina Simone had in life the artistic recognition of fans of her music, not only a tribute to her work but at the same time a sincere recognition of the person who It was Nina Simone, a human rights fighter now so trampled and of which she was a victim in her own country.
Nina Simone: Live in Antibes — July 24th, 1965 (Full Concert).
Nina Simone live at Jazz à Juan — the International Jazz Festival in Juan-les-Pins, Antibes, France on July 24th, 1965.
Nina performed twice at Jazz à Juan in 1965: on July 24th and July 25th. This is the full recording of Nina’s first concert that year. Nina appears with Lisle Atkinson (on bass), Rudy Stevenson (on guitar & flute) and Bobby Hamilton (on drums)
Songs: 00:00 Strange Fruit 6:12 Little Girl Blue / Au Clair De La Lune (Medley) 13:30 Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out 21:45 Trouble In Mind 29:45 Zungo (partial) 31:26 Images 34:45 Be My Husband 42:55 I Loves You, Porgy 47:21 Children Go Where I Send You 55:45 I Put A Spell On You