Nina Simone was born Eunice Waymon in Troy, North Carolina, on February 21, 1933.

She was an American singer, songwriter, musician, arranger, and civil rights activist. Her music crossed all genres from classical, jazz, blues and folk to R&B, gospel, and pop.

Simone later became the leading voice of the Civil Rights Movement describing the experiences of the Black community in the 1960s.  “Mississippi Goddam” was her “first civil rights song” and that the song came to her “in a rush of fury, hatred and determination.” The song challenged the belief that race relations could change gradually and called for more immediate developments: “me and my people are just about due.” It was a key moment in her path to Civil Rights activism.

Simone’s reputation as an engaging live performer grew, it wasn’t long before she was asked to perform at the prestigious Newport Jazz Festival. Accompanied on the June 30th, 1960 show by Al Schackman, a guitarist who would go on to become Nina’s longest-running musical colleague, bassist Chris White, and drummer Bobby Hamilton, the dynamic show was recorded by the Colpix. The subsequent release in 1961 of the old blues tune “Trouble In Mind” as a single gave Nina her third charted record.

“Critics started to talk about what sort of music I was playing,” writes Nina in her 1991 autobiography I Put A Spell On You, “and tried to find a neat slot to file it away in. It was difficult for them because I was playing popular songs in a classical style with a classical piano technique influenced by cocktail jazz. On top of that I included spirituals and children’s songs in my performances, and those sorts of songs were automatically identified with the folk movement. So, saying what sort of music I played gave the critics problems because there was something from everything in there, but it also meant I was appreciated across the board – by jazz, folk, pop and blues fans as well as admirers of classical music.”

Clearly Nina Simone was not an artist who could be easily classified.  Simone was the recipient of a Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 2000 for her interpretation of “I Loves You, Porgy”.  Simone was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018.  In 2019, “Mississippi Goddam” was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.  She suffered from breast cancer for several years before she died in her sleep at her home in Carry-le-Rouet (Bouches-du-Rhône), on April 21, 2003.