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I Put A Spell On You: The Autobiography Of Nina Simone
James Baldwin used to tell Nina Simone, "This is the world you have made for yourself, now you have to live in it." Simone has created for herself a world of magnificent peaks. Often compared to Billie Holiday and Edith Piaf, Simone is known as one of the greatest singers of her generation. She has recorded forty-three albums, ranging from blues to jazz to folk, and her hits like "I Loves You, Porgy," "My Baby Just Cares for Me," "I Put a Spell on You," and "Mississippi Goddam" have confirmed her as an enduring force in popular music. Her song "Young, Gifted, and Black" became the anthem for the Civil Rights Movement and thrust her beyond international stardom into the center of activism. But such worlds as Simone's are not without their grim disastrous marriages, arrest and the threat of imprisonment, mental breakdown, poverty, and attempted suicide. She has survived these trials and continues to perform throughout Europe and the United States. With undiminished passion and in her unconquerable voice, this is Nina Simone's powerful memoir of her tempestuous life.
208 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1991
89 people are currently reading
7105 people want to read
About the author
Nina Simone
65 books109 followersEunice Kathleen Waymon, better known by her stage name Nina Simone, was a fifteen-time Grammy Award-nominated American singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger and civil rights activist.
Although she disliked being categorized, Simone is generally classified as a jazz musician. Simone originally aspired to become a classical pianist, but her work covers an eclectic variety of musical styles besides her classical basis, such as jazz, soul, folk, R&B, gospel, and pop music. Her vocal style is characterized by intense passion, a loose vibrato, and a slightly androgynous timbre, in part due to her unusually low vocal range which veered between the alto and tenor ranges (occasionally even reaching baritone lows). Sometimes known as the High Priestess of Soul, she paid great attention to the musical expression of emotions. Within one album or concert she could fluctuate between exuberant happiness or tragic melancholy. These fluctuations also characterized her own personality and personal life, worsened by a bipolar disorder with which she was diagnosed in the mid-1960s, but was kept secret until 2004.
Simone recorded over 40 live and studio albums, the biggest body of her work being released between 1958 (when she made her debut with Little Girl Blue) and 1974. Songs she is best known for include "My Baby Just Cares for Me", "I Put a Spell on You", "I Loves You Porgy", "Feeling Good", "Sinner Man", "To Be Young, Gifted and Black", "Strange Fruit", "Ain't Got No/I Got Life" and "I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl". Her music and message made a strong and lasting impact on African-American culture, illustrated by the numerous contemporary artists who cite her as an important influence (among them Mary J. Blige, Alicia Keys, Jeff Buckley, and Lauryn Hill), as well as the extensive use of her music on soundtracks and in remixes.
Although she disliked being categorized, Simone is generally classified as a jazz musician. Simone originally aspired to become a classical pianist, but her work covers an eclectic variety of musical styles besides her classical basis, such as jazz, soul, folk, R&B, gospel, and pop music. Her vocal style is characterized by intense passion, a loose vibrato, and a slightly androgynous timbre, in part due to her unusually low vocal range which veered between the alto and tenor ranges (occasionally even reaching baritone lows). Sometimes known as the High Priestess of Soul, she paid great attention to the musical expression of emotions. Within one album or concert she could fluctuate between exuberant happiness or tragic melancholy. These fluctuations also characterized her own personality and personal life, worsened by a bipolar disorder with which she was diagnosed in the mid-1960s, but was kept secret until 2004.
Simone recorded over 40 live and studio albums, the biggest body of her work being released between 1958 (when she made her debut with Little Girl Blue) and 1974. Songs she is best known for include "My Baby Just Cares for Me", "I Put a Spell on You", "I Loves You Porgy", "Feeling Good", "Sinner Man", "To Be Young, Gifted and Black", "Strange Fruit", "Ain't Got No/I Got Life" and "I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl". Her music and message made a strong and lasting impact on African-American culture, illustrated by the numerous contemporary artists who cite her as an important influence (among them Mary J. Blige, Alicia Keys, Jeff Buckley, and Lauryn Hill), as well as the extensive use of her music on soundtracks and in remixes.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 188 reviews
March 14, 2013
"Unlike most artists I didn't care that much about a career as a popular singer. I was different- I was going to be a classical musician."
I've always been drawn to Nina Simone's soulful voice and her powerful lyrics in such songs as "Young, Gifted and Black" and "Ain't Got No..."I felt a little apprehensive about reading her biography because I guess it's human nature for people to idealize their heroes, and to think of them as flawless human beings.
The story begins with the background of her childhood and her dreams to be a classical musician, which unfortunately were unsuccessful, and meant that she took work in seedy clubs that she hated:
"If someone had walked up to me in the street and given me $100,000, I would have given up popular music and enrolled at Julliard and never played in a club again. And I wouldn't have missed the life because I hated it anyway; the cheap crooks, the disrespectful audiences, the way most people were easily satisfied by dumb, stupid tunes."
The book also goes into her role in Civil Rights history, and she had a big role. She was friends with great people, such as Langston Hughes, Lorraine Hansberry and James Baldwin.
"Like anyone with half a brain, I had followed the development of the civil rights movement from its early days with Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Junior and the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955...My music was dedicated to a purpose more important than classical music's pursuit of excellence; it was dedicated to the fight for freedom and the historical destiny of my people."
I found the autobiography sad at times as well. Her dependence on men for one was a bit tragic; it didn't seem as though she really had an active role in the managing of her own career. Also, her failed marriages, relationships and affairs were quite sad to read about.
Additionally, she didn't feel as though she belonged in America; despite her successes she didn't feel any respect. "I suddenly realized what it was to be black in America in 1963, but it wasn't an intellectual connection,...it came as a rush of fury, hatred and determination." This was probably one of the reasons why she enjoyed going to Africa so much:
"All around us were black faces and I felt for the first time the spiritual relaxation any Afro-American feels on reaching Africa. I didn't feel like I'd come home when I arrived in Lagos, but I knew I'd arrived somewhere important and that Africa mattered to me, and would always matter."
It's a relatively short read, at least compared to the other autobiographies I've read, but it states only pertinent information and not so much filler, as far as I can tell. I also loved the photos included.
I admired Ms. Simone's candidness and honesty. She didn't sugar-coat anything. It was also quite an inspirational story in that she rose against the odds, despite her family experiencing poverty during the Great Depression, and having her dream of being a classical pianist shattered.
I've always been drawn to Nina Simone's soulful voice and her powerful lyrics in such songs as "Young, Gifted and Black" and "Ain't Got No..."I felt a little apprehensive about reading her biography because I guess it's human nature for people to idealize their heroes, and to think of them as flawless human beings.
The story begins with the background of her childhood and her dreams to be a classical musician, which unfortunately were unsuccessful, and meant that she took work in seedy clubs that she hated:
"If someone had walked up to me in the street and given me $100,000, I would have given up popular music and enrolled at Julliard and never played in a club again. And I wouldn't have missed the life because I hated it anyway; the cheap crooks, the disrespectful audiences, the way most people were easily satisfied by dumb, stupid tunes."
The book also goes into her role in Civil Rights history, and she had a big role. She was friends with great people, such as Langston Hughes, Lorraine Hansberry and James Baldwin.
"Like anyone with half a brain, I had followed the development of the civil rights movement from its early days with Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Junior and the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955...My music was dedicated to a purpose more important than classical music's pursuit of excellence; it was dedicated to the fight for freedom and the historical destiny of my people."
I found the autobiography sad at times as well. Her dependence on men for one was a bit tragic; it didn't seem as though she really had an active role in the managing of her own career. Also, her failed marriages, relationships and affairs were quite sad to read about.
Additionally, she didn't feel as though she belonged in America; despite her successes she didn't feel any respect. "I suddenly realized what it was to be black in America in 1963, but it wasn't an intellectual connection,...it came as a rush of fury, hatred and determination." This was probably one of the reasons why she enjoyed going to Africa so much:
"All around us were black faces and I felt for the first time the spiritual relaxation any Afro-American feels on reaching Africa. I didn't feel like I'd come home when I arrived in Lagos, but I knew I'd arrived somewhere important and that Africa mattered to me, and would always matter."
It's a relatively short read, at least compared to the other autobiographies I've read, but it states only pertinent information and not so much filler, as far as I can tell. I also loved the photos included.
I admired Ms. Simone's candidness and honesty. She didn't sugar-coat anything. It was also quite an inspirational story in that she rose against the odds, despite her family experiencing poverty during the Great Depression, and having her dream of being a classical pianist shattered.
April 19, 2012
NINA SIMONE - ANOTHER ONE I NEVER SAW LIVE
The accidental star, the reluctant creator of something new under the sun of popular music, something no one else did before or since (because not only did no one else think of it, if they'd thought of it they wouldn't have been able to do it, she wasn't jazz, wasn't soul, wasn't cabaret but all of that and everything else), at the age of 60 produced this short account of her strange life in such a way that even the crazy stuff sounds reasonable, and which is a fascinating read which manages to leave practically every question unanswered.
Trials, tribulations, tantrums, tiaras, every concert a psychodrama of audience confrontation, every fan an assassin, every boyfriend either a crook or a president, sometimes both, Nina against the world, fleeing to and from Liberia, Barbados, Switzerland, France, Holland, living anywhere that's not America, nowhere that's home. Despising the popular song that she turned effortlessly into sonic art sculpture, worshipping the classical composers no one wanted to hear her play.
Up until the end of the 60s, this is a completely gripping 5 star read. Imagine. Eunice Waymon, a little black girl living in absolutely nowhere, North Carolina, dirt poor. From the age of three - three - her family and her church realises she's a prodigy on the piano. They all chip in and pay for lessons for her from a posh white woman. Eventually the entire town establishes a Eunice Waymon Fund to make sure she gets the lessons she needs. I never heard of that happening anywhere else. After she graduated the idea was to spend a year at Juilliard School of Music in New York in preparation for applying to the Curtis Institute in Philly which was the top of the tree – then she would get to be the first ever black concert pianist.
She did the year at Juilliard, applied to Curtis and they turned her down. So the floor fell out. Was it racism or because she didn't quite make the grade? So she decided to apply again in another year and moved to Philadelphia. This is where the weird thing happened.
She needed to make money. She got a job as an accompanist for a music teacher who was coaching white kids who wanted to sing. So she had to cram her head with all known popular songs. She had a brain which could store any amount of music and a facility for improvising she got from the hours of accompanying the holy rolling gospel music in church. She thought she could make an easier living if she gave lessons herself. So she opened a storefront office and started up as a music teacher. It wasn't easy. Then a student casually mentioned he'd got a job as a pianist in a bar and mentioned the wage which was twice what she was making herself. She thought well, if this idiot can do that, I think I can.
She found a bar which needed a pianist. It was one room filled with sad Irish drunks. She turned up dressed to the nines because that's how she always rolled, she was nothing but dignified in this cruddy pub, and played to this smokey dive a strange freeform blend of classical music and popular songs, parts of one mashed into parts of the other, classical pop mashups, unique. She had no idea what to play, no idea at all, so she just made it up. At the end of the first night the manager said the piano playing was good but she didn't sing. She said she didn't know she had to. He said either you sing or don't come back. So she sang. That's how Nina Simone happened.
She carried on in this dingy dive and word got around, simple as that. The sad Irish drunks were replaced in a couple of weeks by the beatnik student crowd. They goggled. They were seeing Nina Simone, which nothing had prepared them for.
Well, this ghosted autobiography misses out a thousand times more than it puts in – she acknowledges several very crazy incidents which sound the stuff bipolar people do, and I believe this diagnosis has been read back into her life. She continually soars high then crashes and burns. She is a trenchant hater of practically everything including herself. But the hell with that.
PLAYLIST
Just Say I Love Him
Four Women
Sinnerman (the ten minute version!)
My Father
The accidental star, the reluctant creator of something new under the sun of popular music, something no one else did before or since (because not only did no one else think of it, if they'd thought of it they wouldn't have been able to do it, she wasn't jazz, wasn't soul, wasn't cabaret but all of that and everything else), at the age of 60 produced this short account of her strange life in such a way that even the crazy stuff sounds reasonable, and which is a fascinating read which manages to leave practically every question unanswered.
Trials, tribulations, tantrums, tiaras, every concert a psychodrama of audience confrontation, every fan an assassin, every boyfriend either a crook or a president, sometimes both, Nina against the world, fleeing to and from Liberia, Barbados, Switzerland, France, Holland, living anywhere that's not America, nowhere that's home. Despising the popular song that she turned effortlessly into sonic art sculpture, worshipping the classical composers no one wanted to hear her play.
Up until the end of the 60s, this is a completely gripping 5 star read. Imagine. Eunice Waymon, a little black girl living in absolutely nowhere, North Carolina, dirt poor. From the age of three - three - her family and her church realises she's a prodigy on the piano. They all chip in and pay for lessons for her from a posh white woman. Eventually the entire town establishes a Eunice Waymon Fund to make sure she gets the lessons she needs. I never heard of that happening anywhere else. After she graduated the idea was to spend a year at Juilliard School of Music in New York in preparation for applying to the Curtis Institute in Philly which was the top of the tree – then she would get to be the first ever black concert pianist.
She did the year at Juilliard, applied to Curtis and they turned her down. So the floor fell out. Was it racism or because she didn't quite make the grade? So she decided to apply again in another year and moved to Philadelphia. This is where the weird thing happened.
She needed to make money. She got a job as an accompanist for a music teacher who was coaching white kids who wanted to sing. So she had to cram her head with all known popular songs. She had a brain which could store any amount of music and a facility for improvising she got from the hours of accompanying the holy rolling gospel music in church. She thought she could make an easier living if she gave lessons herself. So she opened a storefront office and started up as a music teacher. It wasn't easy. Then a student casually mentioned he'd got a job as a pianist in a bar and mentioned the wage which was twice what she was making herself. She thought well, if this idiot can do that, I think I can.
She found a bar which needed a pianist. It was one room filled with sad Irish drunks. She turned up dressed to the nines because that's how she always rolled, she was nothing but dignified in this cruddy pub, and played to this smokey dive a strange freeform blend of classical music and popular songs, parts of one mashed into parts of the other, classical pop mashups, unique. She had no idea what to play, no idea at all, so she just made it up. At the end of the first night the manager said the piano playing was good but she didn't sing. She said she didn't know she had to. He said either you sing or don't come back. So she sang. That's how Nina Simone happened.
She carried on in this dingy dive and word got around, simple as that. The sad Irish drunks were replaced in a couple of weeks by the beatnik student crowd. They goggled. They were seeing Nina Simone, which nothing had prepared them for.
Well, this ghosted autobiography misses out a thousand times more than it puts in – she acknowledges several very crazy incidents which sound the stuff bipolar people do, and I believe this diagnosis has been read back into her life. She continually soars high then crashes and burns. She is a trenchant hater of practically everything including herself. But the hell with that.
PLAYLIST
Just Say I Love Him
Four Women
Sinnerman (the ten minute version!)
My Father
Read
September 15, 2023She was a star of the 60s but maybe she remained a star throughout her life. Her voice was beautiful. She was a civil rights activist. And she was a mother, but she felt that she failed her daughter.
I had never heard of her until now. In The 60s I was going from house to house talking about my religion, not listening to the news. Not listening to any kind of music other than country. In the 70s I Begin to wake up. But I have never really caught up with things.
I liked her childhood best. This was because she was innocent, she didn't really know much about racism. She did not know about the harshness of the world, especially America And I didn't either. Maybe that was better, maybe not. In high school we never learned about slavery. Or if we did it was barely mentioned and given a date to memorize. 1865.
She learned to hate America due to it's racism. That's a good reason to hate anything.
She talked about the Killing of innocent blacks by the police. I thought that that had ended long ago and had only begun again in recent years.
Several days ago I dreamed that I had taken a trip back to Berkeley. I parked my VW in north Berkeley and walked across the campus. They were beginning a protest. A march against the banning of books and stifling teachers. I Wonder, Where have all the protests gone?
I had never heard of her until now. In The 60s I was going from house to house talking about my religion, not listening to the news. Not listening to any kind of music other than country. In the 70s I Begin to wake up. But I have never really caught up with things.
I liked her childhood best. This was because she was innocent, she didn't really know much about racism. She did not know about the harshness of the world, especially America And I didn't either. Maybe that was better, maybe not. In high school we never learned about slavery. Or if we did it was barely mentioned and given a date to memorize. 1865.
She learned to hate America due to it's racism. That's a good reason to hate anything.
She talked about the Killing of innocent blacks by the police. I thought that that had ended long ago and had only begun again in recent years.
Several days ago I dreamed that I had taken a trip back to Berkeley. I parked my VW in north Berkeley and walked across the campus. They were beginning a protest. A march against the banning of books and stifling teachers. I Wonder, Where have all the protests gone?
February 8, 2015
"Shimmy Shimmy Ya, Oh Baby I like it raw!!!" - ODB
May 25, 2014
I have to say I didn't know much at all about Nina Simone, even though I learned she and her family were for many years in my hometown of Philadelphia. So I discovered the trials and tribulations of her life through this book, and her singing by watching YouTube videos while I was reading it. I loved the book, and the videos. Spirit and soul!
July 30, 2018
Η Νίνα Σιμόν μέχρι τα 80ς. Μια γυναίκα με αστείρευτο ταλέντο αλλά κ προφανώς άπειρα κόμπλεξ. Συντηρητική, με αποτέλεσμα να της βγαίνει το εντελώς αντίθετο όταν χαλαρώνει, εγωκεντρική , σε σημείο να χρησιμοποιεί σχεδόν την κόρη της, απόλυτη έτσι ώστε να μην βλέπει τον αγαπημένο της πατέρα ούτε στα τελευταία του.
Πάντα ήξερε τι ήθελε αλλά ποτέ τον τρόπο για να τα καταφέρει. Έζησε τη ζωή ακραία, εκτέθηκε στα όμορφα και στα πολύ άσχημα , και παρόλο που η ίδια απεχθανόταν να χαρακτηρίζεται ως τζαζ τραγουδίστρια , έζησε μια τζαζ ζωή ειτε ως μαύρη του Αμερικανικού νότου κ αγωνίστρια αργότερα, ειτε ως καλλιτέχνης της κλασικής παιδείας, είτε ως μια απλή γυναίκα, ερωμένη κ μητέρα που απλά έψαχνε να βρει το λιμάνι της για να αραξει.
Πάντα ήξερε τι ήθελε αλλά ποτέ τον τρόπο για να τα καταφέρει. Έζησε τη ζωή ακραία, εκτέθηκε στα όμορφα και στα πολύ άσχημα , και παρόλο που η ίδια απεχθανόταν να χαρακτηρίζεται ως τζαζ τραγουδίστρια , έζησε μια τζαζ ζωή ειτε ως μαύρη του Αμερικανικού νότου κ αγωνίστρια αργότερα, ειτε ως καλλιτέχνης της κλασικής παιδείας, είτε ως μια απλή γυναίκα, ερωμένη κ μητέρα που απλά έψαχνε να βρει το λιμάνι της για να αραξει.
September 29, 2021
Ms Simone in her own words.
An interesting story from a riveting artist, although her music tells her tale best.
An interesting story from a riveting artist, although her music tells her tale best.
June 10, 2015
Wow. Her early adult years, tutoring so she could keep up the private study, the isolation, the summers of nightclub work; all of that was very interesting. Then the book delves deep, but somehow artificially at the same time, flying over the years and you know you're not getting the whole story, which is completely her prerogative. It became very uncomfortable to read, to say the least. I came away a bit perplexed, disturbed and just plain sad.
November 6, 2012
I wanted so much for Nina Simone to live up to the strong woman I had in mind. I had this spectrum in my head, with weak and susceptible songbird Billie Holiday on one end and strong, iconic Nina Simone on the other. Nina Simone who gave voice to a movement, who gave new life to African-American history through her music. Sadly, Nina seems much more a victim of circumstance than her songs let on.
The entire book shows her reacting to one situation after the other, even when she is held up as a key figure in the Civil Rights Movement, and when that movement seems to dissolve into FBI investigations and threats from the IRS, she never even tries to take control of her circumstances. Never even tries! Instead she runs away to Barbados, Liberia, Europe.
Men also play a key figure in her life. From her father to her first husband to her string of wealthy lovers, she lets these men control her finances, her career, her living situation, and her life.
I think the beginning of the last paragraph in the book sums up my disappointment. She says "Right now I'm as close to happy as I can be without a husband to love..." Words can't express how disappointed I was reading this phrase.
I love Nina Simone's music, but I'm going to have to find a way to reconcile how strong her music makes me feel with how vulnerable she is portrayed in her autobiography.
The entire book shows her reacting to one situation after the other, even when she is held up as a key figure in the Civil Rights Movement, and when that movement seems to dissolve into FBI investigations and threats from the IRS, she never even tries to take control of her circumstances. Never even tries! Instead she runs away to Barbados, Liberia, Europe.
Men also play a key figure in her life. From her father to her first husband to her string of wealthy lovers, she lets these men control her finances, her career, her living situation, and her life.
I think the beginning of the last paragraph in the book sums up my disappointment. She says "Right now I'm as close to happy as I can be without a husband to love..." Words can't express how disappointed I was reading this phrase.
I love Nina Simone's music, but I'm going to have to find a way to reconcile how strong her music makes me feel with how vulnerable she is portrayed in her autobiography.
July 24, 2018
This is an important book for many reasons. It gives a true look at the grueling work of a performing artist. It reveals the love and strains of family life. But primarily it tells the story of a talented precocious girl who wants so badly to be the first African-American classical pianist but is denied that dream because of the color of her skin. Simone led an adventuresome life including her love life. She became (mostly against her will) an activist for equal rights in the 1960s when what she truly wanted was to be an artist. This is a wonderful autobiography. Intelligent. Moving. Humorous. She was a gift to us all and her music endures.
March 24, 2015
Don't call her a jazz superstar. She hated that, being categorized as a jazz singer. What Nina Simone really wanted to be when she grew up was a classical concert pianist, and that's what she spent most of her childhood training for. In fact, her town raised enough money for her to study for one year at Julliard. But she was rejected from the Curtis School of Philadelphia, the premier classical school of the time, not because she wasn't good, but because she was black.
And so, determined to somehow get to Carnegie Hall, Nina started playing whenever and wherever she could. She never planned to start singing, but it was what many clubs expected, so she just rolled with it. And somewhere along the line, she became a superstar, with her unusual mix of classical/gospel/children's songs/popular standards.
Life as a star wasn't always easy, and she lost a lot of money to unscrupulous record companies, managers, and so-called "advisers," including her husband. However, she also had a lot of good sex, played shows around the world, and rode the highs and lows of her circumstances the best she could. I'm glad I read the autobiography rather than a biography, because Simone's authorial voice was exciting and vibrant. My favorite part was where she described how she acquired a political consciousness, mostly from her dear friend Lorraine Hansberry, which led to the writing of, among other songs, "Mississippi Goddamn." More things I never knew, but should have been told, beautifully delivered.
And so, determined to somehow get to Carnegie Hall, Nina started playing whenever and wherever she could. She never planned to start singing, but it was what many clubs expected, so she just rolled with it. And somewhere along the line, she became a superstar, with her unusual mix of classical/gospel/children's songs/popular standards.
Life as a star wasn't always easy, and she lost a lot of money to unscrupulous record companies, managers, and so-called "advisers," including her husband. However, she also had a lot of good sex, played shows around the world, and rode the highs and lows of her circumstances the best she could. I'm glad I read the autobiography rather than a biography, because Simone's authorial voice was exciting and vibrant. My favorite part was where she described how she acquired a political consciousness, mostly from her dear friend Lorraine Hansberry, which led to the writing of, among other songs, "Mississippi Goddamn." More things I never knew, but should have been told, beautifully delivered.
December 13, 2014
So many iconic musicians struggle with achieving recognition first and then the pressures of fame. Nina Simone's story has that too, but it also included the Civil Rights Movement and her role as a protest singer and leader through her music and fame. It's a life that was borne from a legacy of slavery followed the prejudice of her own time that was part of her life but not the centerpiece of it growing up. But her struggles were uniquely hers, often shocking, inspiring, heartbreaking, and elevating.
Her autobiography recognizes music, particularly Nina's quest to be the first black classical concert pianist, as the driving force behind her choices, both good and bad. But it's as much a book about what it means to be in the minority, as someone both black and female. It's a bit like getting the double whammy for Nina, but she shows us what it means to be a survivor in every way, a risk taker, a free spirit, and someone with the gift. An inspiring and fast-pace read. Thanks, Nina!
Her autobiography recognizes music, particularly Nina's quest to be the first black classical concert pianist, as the driving force behind her choices, both good and bad. But it's as much a book about what it means to be in the minority, as someone both black and female. It's a bit like getting the double whammy for Nina, but she shows us what it means to be a survivor in every way, a risk taker, a free spirit, and someone with the gift. An inspiring and fast-pace read. Thanks, Nina!
June 28, 2021
“What kept me sane was knowing that things would change, and it was a question of keeping myself together until they did.”
The classic autobiography of Nina Simone, the queen of music of her time and a civil rights fighter, not to mention her being also an amazing pianist. She deserves as much credit as Martin Luther King and Malcolm X to the minimum. Her classic music is way entertaining if you enjoy jazz, folk, blues, soul, or even gospel.
I also think this book could be written better to reflect how truly astonishing she was. Yet a good coming-of-age story and notes on her music albums, and strong contributions for the civil rights movements.
The classic autobiography of Nina Simone, the queen of music of her time and a civil rights fighter, not to mention her being also an amazing pianist. She deserves as much credit as Martin Luther King and Malcolm X to the minimum. Her classic music is way entertaining if you enjoy jazz, folk, blues, soul, or even gospel.
I also think this book could be written better to reflect how truly astonishing she was. Yet a good coming-of-age story and notes on her music albums, and strong contributions for the civil rights movements.
September 22, 2020
Nina Simone will always be one of my favorite singers/musicians. She had a unique style that sets her apart from others. Her version of ‘Pirate Jenny’ is my favorite. No one does chilling and bitter better than Nina. I am disappointed to learn that she hated white people and America. Unlike most Americans who hate their country, she left to live in various other countries. Good for her. Her rage and hate probably helped make her a great performer and stylist. What made me feel equally repulsed by Nina, the person, is she seemed to have no loyalty to anyone. I will still listen to her recordings and admire her talent but thank my lucky stars that I never personally knew her.
May 19, 2018
This autobiography is not what I thought it would be; it reads as a diary that outlines her misfortunes and let-downs. I learned a lot about Ms. Simone's mentality and how she went about in life. She didn't anticipate fame; Nina was an accidental star and she was not prepared for this sort of life. The good and down sides of I Put a Spell on You is that she didn't focus on her music and what inspired her artistry; that part of her is not covered here. Actually, she seemed much in a love-hate relationship with the whole thing.
August 11, 2021
I’m a Nina Simone obsessive, so I loved this book. I’ve lately been reading the biographies of many of the Torch singers of whom I admire, and hers is so differently toned, her factual presentation and dissection of thoughts and feelings as simply bulletpoints in the story match so much of Nina’s attitude that we love about her. She is frank, honest, and concise in this decades-spanning tale of her life.
April 21, 2024
PopSugar prompted me to read an autobiography by a woman in rock and roll. Nina Simone wasn’t quite rock and roll, but she wasn’t quite anything else either. So I feel like this fit.
I picked Nina Simone because I knew so little about her. I find that when I read autobiographies or memoirs by people I like, I often come away liking them slightly less. So there was no harm in picking someone that I didn’t know at all.
Now I’m kicking myself for not knowing anything about this remarkable woman. I’ve been listening to her music since I started the book, and I can see why she was famous. Her voice is captivating. I love that she didn’t care about the fame. She just loved making music. But she also recognized the good she could do with the platform she had. Her activism was one of my favorite parts of the book.
All in all, I am so glad that I know who this woman is now.
I picked Nina Simone because I knew so little about her. I find that when I read autobiographies or memoirs by people I like, I often come away liking them slightly less. So there was no harm in picking someone that I didn’t know at all.
Now I’m kicking myself for not knowing anything about this remarkable woman. I’ve been listening to her music since I started the book, and I can see why she was famous. Her voice is captivating. I love that she didn’t care about the fame. She just loved making music. But she also recognized the good she could do with the platform she had. Her activism was one of my favorite parts of the book.
All in all, I am so glad that I know who this woman is now.
July 28, 2024
#GGIBookClubReading
Musical genius of Nina Simone is now completely destroyed for me. What an arrogant and condescending lady. What the heck? I hated writing, it was extremy chaotic and repetitive. She did not put a spell on me, she actually disenchanted her career for me.
Musical genius of Nina Simone is now completely destroyed for me. What an arrogant and condescending lady. What the heck? I hated writing, it was extremy chaotic and repetitive. She did not put a spell on me, she actually disenchanted her career for me.
February 13, 2016
I still remember like it was yesterday the first time I heard Nina Simone: 1993, I was fifteen and watching the movie, Point of No Return. A mediocre film for which I'm thankful only because it introduced me to Nina's music. From that day on, I haven't made a feelings-based mix (yeah, I still make mix CDs) without at least one of her songs. There are few singers/musicians who evoke such pure connection like she does, for me. I'll always wish I could've attended one of her live performances.
Even though I felt so deeply listening to Nina, I'm not one of those people who actively seeks out the details of an artist's life. Maybe I'm scared their reality will shatter my perception? Perhaps it feels too invasive to seek out personal details? So it wasn't until I heard about the 2015 documentary, What Happened, Miss Simone?, that I wondered how much Nina's life and the times directly affected her music. The answer: a lot. How could it not? In Nina's words, "An artist's duty, as far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times...How can you be an artist and not reflect the times? That to me is the definition of an artist."
After watching that documentary, I looked to see if she'd written a book and sure enough, she had. While this autobiography was rather short, I appreciated hearing her story in her words. And I'm left with two thoughts:
1) what could Nina Simone have accomplished if she had not been raised/lived in a society where being Black and a woman were obstacles she had to overcome before anyone would even hear her gift?
and
2) why is so much that happened to Black people during her lifetime STILL happening today, and how many budding artists, inventors, entrepreneurs, scientists, etc. are being dismissed because of their race or sex? It's maddening.
So while Nina Simone wasn't perfect - oh, how I wish she hadn't been as dependent on the love of a man as she was - I am happy to know more about who she was. And she will forever be someone to whom I'll turn for an example of what can be accomplished when a woman refuses to give up on her gift.
4 stars
"Although Lorraine [Hansberry] was a girlfriend - a friend of my own, rather than one shared with Andy - we never talked about men or clothes or other such inconsequential things when we got together. It was always Marx, Lenin, and revolution -- real girls' talk (p.87)."
"I was rich and famous but I wasn't free. Most of the decisions I made were taken in consultation with my manager/husband, accountant, lawyer and record company. Like it or not, I couldn't do what I wanted and think about the consequences later; I had to plan months, sometimes years, ahead. So I felt part of the struggle, yet separated from it. I was lonely in the movement like I had been lonely everywhere else. Sometimes I think the whole of my life has been a search to find that one place I truly belong (p.113)."
Even though I felt so deeply listening to Nina, I'm not one of those people who actively seeks out the details of an artist's life. Maybe I'm scared their reality will shatter my perception? Perhaps it feels too invasive to seek out personal details? So it wasn't until I heard about the 2015 documentary, What Happened, Miss Simone?, that I wondered how much Nina's life and the times directly affected her music. The answer: a lot. How could it not? In Nina's words, "An artist's duty, as far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times...How can you be an artist and not reflect the times? That to me is the definition of an artist."
After watching that documentary, I looked to see if she'd written a book and sure enough, she had. While this autobiography was rather short, I appreciated hearing her story in her words. And I'm left with two thoughts:
1) what could Nina Simone have accomplished if she had not been raised/lived in a society where being Black and a woman were obstacles she had to overcome before anyone would even hear her gift?
and
2) why is so much that happened to Black people during her lifetime STILL happening today, and how many budding artists, inventors, entrepreneurs, scientists, etc. are being dismissed because of their race or sex? It's maddening.
So while Nina Simone wasn't perfect - oh, how I wish she hadn't been as dependent on the love of a man as she was - I am happy to know more about who she was. And she will forever be someone to whom I'll turn for an example of what can be accomplished when a woman refuses to give up on her gift.
4 stars
"Although Lorraine [Hansberry] was a girlfriend - a friend of my own, rather than one shared with Andy - we never talked about men or clothes or other such inconsequential things when we got together. It was always Marx, Lenin, and revolution -- real girls' talk (p.87)."
"I was rich and famous but I wasn't free. Most of the decisions I made were taken in consultation with my manager/husband, accountant, lawyer and record company. Like it or not, I couldn't do what I wanted and think about the consequences later; I had to plan months, sometimes years, ahead. So I felt part of the struggle, yet separated from it. I was lonely in the movement like I had been lonely everywhere else. Sometimes I think the whole of my life has been a search to find that one place I truly belong (p.113)."
July 24, 2018
This is the second time I've read this book and I'm glad I re-read it. I was so eager for facts the first time, and also eager to find the heroine that I had constructed in my mind since first hearing a recording back in 1965. You won't find a heroine here, but an excruciatingly honest women who tells the bad and the good without flinching, without much regard for how she appears to others. That was always Nina.
My parents were the same generation as hers. I remember these days in the south, even though she was 12 years older than I and lived further south in North Carolina. The innocence that she describes in regard to racism is totally credible. She grew up in an unusual town, which showed a more gentle face because it always wanted to welcome tourists. And indeed her town was her community, more integrated than the norm, which supported her completely and was proud of her talent and her drive to hone it to perfection. Her family didn't believe in whining, they believed in working. But when her ceaseless work failed to reap rewards, yes, she was tempted to bitterness -- perhaps worse because she had known support from white people throughout her life.
Her memories will take you back to the sixties and the way the civil rights movement flared, then flamed into the black power/black pride movement, then was eclipsed by the even larger fire of the Vietnam war. She was at the movement's center and the sense of purpose and value it gave her compensated her to some degree for having lost her chance to play the music of great composers on a high level. And yet her loss was our gain.
She never really got over the other loss of her first love...in part her fault, in part the fault of whoever gave her her talent and set her on a trajectory of achievement which left no room for a simple family life. "Security" she always craved...Otis Redding's song comes into my mind here...but never achieved except in the love of her father, which she also rejected...but regained in an unconventionally miraculous way in Africa.
Contradictions...her love of simplicity and her love of luxury and display... her desire to be protected and sheltered by powerful men contrasted with her love of those who could give her nothing but warmth and affection...her love of classically complex music (Bach) and of more simple improvisation which welled out of her naturally with visceral impact.
That was Nina. She wrote this book in 1991. She was in Washington, D. C. that year for Martin Luther King's birthday. I was there too, in my first year of music school in a doctoral program. I missed her and I will always regret it.
My parents were the same generation as hers. I remember these days in the south, even though she was 12 years older than I and lived further south in North Carolina. The innocence that she describes in regard to racism is totally credible. She grew up in an unusual town, which showed a more gentle face because it always wanted to welcome tourists. And indeed her town was her community, more integrated than the norm, which supported her completely and was proud of her talent and her drive to hone it to perfection. Her family didn't believe in whining, they believed in working. But when her ceaseless work failed to reap rewards, yes, she was tempted to bitterness -- perhaps worse because she had known support from white people throughout her life.
Her memories will take you back to the sixties and the way the civil rights movement flared, then flamed into the black power/black pride movement, then was eclipsed by the even larger fire of the Vietnam war. She was at the movement's center and the sense of purpose and value it gave her compensated her to some degree for having lost her chance to play the music of great composers on a high level. And yet her loss was our gain.
She never really got over the other loss of her first love...in part her fault, in part the fault of whoever gave her her talent and set her on a trajectory of achievement which left no room for a simple family life. "Security" she always craved...Otis Redding's song comes into my mind here...but never achieved except in the love of her father, which she also rejected...but regained in an unconventionally miraculous way in Africa.
Contradictions...her love of simplicity and her love of luxury and display... her desire to be protected and sheltered by powerful men contrasted with her love of those who could give her nothing but warmth and affection...her love of classically complex music (Bach) and of more simple improvisation which welled out of her naturally with visceral impact.
That was Nina. She wrote this book in 1991. She was in Washington, D. C. that year for Martin Luther King's birthday. I was there too, in my first year of music school in a doctoral program. I missed her and I will always regret it.
May 30, 2012
I have been a fan of Nina Simone's music for the last five years or so. I was looking at pictures of her a few weeks ago and decided that I wanted to learn more about her life. This book was an excellent resource, because the information comes straight from her. Nina Simone led a full and interesting life. Like anyone else, she made her mistakes and experienced highs and lows.
Now, I must admit that there were a few scenes where I rolled my eyes, particularly when she speaks of not knowing anything about her finances and then migrating to Africa without fixing her tax issue, the relationship with CC was strange. I didn't really understand why she mourned him for so long. Their encounter seemed brief and weird. The passage regarding the shaman and her dead father also caused an eyeroll. Simone had the opportunity to make things right with her father while he was alive. Instead she banished him from her life for telling one lie. He had been a great father up until that point. She seems a bit extreme at times, but then again who isn't.
Overall, I enjoyed this story. I am glad I have some background information on a musician whose music I love.
Now, I must admit that there were a few scenes where I rolled my eyes, particularly when she speaks of not knowing anything about her finances and then migrating to Africa without fixing her tax issue, the relationship with CC was strange. I didn't really understand why she mourned him for so long. Their encounter seemed brief and weird. The passage regarding the shaman and her dead father also caused an eyeroll. Simone had the opportunity to make things right with her father while he was alive. Instead she banished him from her life for telling one lie. He had been a great father up until that point. She seems a bit extreme at times, but then again who isn't.
Overall, I enjoyed this story. I am glad I have some background information on a musician whose music I love.
December 2, 2009
Nina Simone struck me as incredibly vain, arrogant, and prideful after reading this book. She discusses her many conquests, dancing naked, constantly saying how "cute" she looks, and being a mistress, rather shamelessly. She doesn't even seem like a responsible mother- there is one point she is off living the fabulous life in Africa (or was it some tropical island?) for a stretch of time, leaving her daughter with family. I don't expect everyone in the limelight to be the perfect role model, but she seemed to be the poster child for hedonism.
July 12, 2020
Este libro recoge la autobiografía de Nina Simone (o Eunice K. Watson, su nombre real) desde su infancia en un pequeño pueblo sureño de Estados Unidos hasta los años 90.
Ella se presenta tal cuál era, con sus virtudes y con sus errores. Nos transmite su amor por la música, sus esfuerzos por llegar a ser una gran concertista de piano, sus pinitos en pequeños pubs....Nos presenta sus grandes logros, y también sus momentos bajos en la vida. Y nos da a conocer el mundo del espectáculo desde dentro.
Me ha gustado conocer la vida de esta gran artista, contada por ella misma
Ella se presenta tal cuál era, con sus virtudes y con sus errores. Nos transmite su amor por la música, sus esfuerzos por llegar a ser una gran concertista de piano, sus pinitos en pequeños pubs....Nos presenta sus grandes logros, y también sus momentos bajos en la vida. Y nos da a conocer el mundo del espectáculo desde dentro.
Me ha gustado conocer la vida de esta gran artista, contada por ella misma
September 21, 2014
A Strong & Proud Queen!
January 23, 2021
A fascinating life.
February 14, 2025
books that make you say “damn” before staring at the wall in silence
January 26, 2016
If I were allowed to keep only one CD from our vast and eclectic music collection, it would be Nina Simone’s Finest Hour.
Until our younger son gave me a mixed CD that included Simone’s “Lilac Wine,” I had unaccountably not heard of her. I immediately fell in love with her voice, her passion and emotion, her intensity and commitment, her wry humor.
I Put a Spell On You: The Autobiography of Nina Simone, written with Stephen Cleary, is a slim volume. At 176 pages, can Simone effectively tell her story? Yes and no.
Although written with a collaborator, Nina Simone’s (born Eunice Kathleen Waymon) unique and distinct voice is clearly heard. The first half of the book, the history of her hometown, Tryon, North Carolina, of her ancestry and early childhood, is rich in detail. Memories are of a solid, stable, loving home, of her large family riding through both prosperity and the Great Depression with resilience and determination. Comfortable but hardly wealthy before the Depression, the Waymons made do without complaint.
Eunice’s astounding musical gifts were discovered early, and she was admonished not to be “big-headed” about them and to behave with modesty and humility. A regular church pianist by age six, her formal lessons, sponsored the first year by her mother’s employer, Mrs. Miller, were with Mrs. Muriel Massinovitch, “Miz Mazzy,” to whom Eunice/Nina remained close until Miz Mazzy’s death at 102. Six years of lessons with Miz Mazzy set Eunice on the trajectory toward her dream of becoming the first black classical pianist.
At the end of her first year, Mrs. Miller, unable to subsidize Eunice’s piano lessons long-term, “founded the Eunice Waymon Fund, a fund to which everybody in Tryon could contribute and which would ensure [her] musical education not just for the next year but for as long as it was needed.”
An astonishing development, the fund was successful in enabling Eunice to continue her private studies, to pay for her tuition for four years at the Allen High School for Girls, a private school in Asheville (from which she graduated in 1950 as Valedictorian), and for a year of study at Julliard, where she studied with Dr. Carl Friedburg.
Eunice’s passion for music, her love of the lessons, practice, and improvement is clear. She describes his methods and his influence:
My tutor was Dr. Carl Friedburg, a great teacher, very gifted…Lessons with Dr. Friedburg were a joy because, although they took the same shape as the lessons I’d always had, he was the greatest musician I had met up to that time and I learned something new each time I sat down to play for him.
Every week I played a piece for him to criticize. His corrections were so subtle and delicate that individually each one seemed to make hardly any difference at all, but when I played the piece again afterwards with all his alterations included it shone like polished silver. Studying under Dr. Friedburg gave me a satisfaction I couldn’t explain, but I knew this was what I was born to do, what all those hours of practice had been about, and it was leading me to my destiny, the classical concert stage.
The year at Julliard, an intense preparation for the scholarship examination to the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, appeared to be an unobstructed road to achieving her goal. But her world collapsed when she was rejected by Curtis. She was told that she was not good enough, but she then and always believed it was racially motivated.
Remaining in New York after Julliard, Eunice initially made a living as a photographer’s assistant and as an accompanist to a singing teacher, and then as a music teacher herself. Before long, Eunice took a job playing piano at the Midtown Bar and Grill. Not wanting her mother to know, she chose a stage name, “Nina,” a pet name given her by a friend, “Simone,” after the French actress Simone Signoret. At Midtown, the first bar she had ever entered, she was paid a princely sum of ninety dollars a week, plus tips and all the milk she could drink (Not a drinker then, when asked what she wanted, she requested a glass of milk).
From the beginning, with classical training her only performance experience, Nina walked onto the stage in her finest attire, make-up, and hair. Her dignified appearance turned heads (“The guys at the bar must have thought I came from another planet...”) as patrons listened to her inimitable combination of classical and popular music:
I arrived prepared with classical pieces, hymns, and gospel songs and improvised on those, occasionally slipping in a part from a popular tune. Each [piece]…lasted anywhere between thirty and ninety minutes. I just sat down, closed my eyes, and drifted away on the music.
There was only one problem: the bar owner wanted to know why she hadn’t sung.
“I’m only a pianist,” she replied.
“Well, tomorrow night you’re either a singer or your out of a job.”
The next night, she sang. With her signature blend of classical, popular, folk, and jazz piano combined with her evocative vocals, Nina Simone’s career was born.
Following a high school romance with a local boy, Edney Whiteside, the love of her life, and after a brief first marriage, Nina married former New York City police officer Andrew Stoud, who fathered her daughter, Lisa, became her manager---and her abuser. After many tumultuous years, they divorced.
This is where I Put a Spell On You begins to fall apart. It is as though Nina was two different people, or that she was unable to deal with the difficult aspects of her story. The book is split in two, schizophrenic. The full memories that populate the story of her early years disintegrate into a rote list of musical gigs, her involvement in civil rights, and her many affairs, some inexplicably bizarre or surreal.
The rightful anger that arose at her rejection by the Curtis Institute becomes a leitmotif throughout the rest of her life, but the details are skimmed over, lacking the heart that was a hallmark of her earlier words. I finished the book ultimately dissatisfied.
And yet, after I put away I Put a Spell On You, I listened again to Nina Simone sing: “Mississippi Goddam,” “Four Women,” “Solitaire,” “Little Girl Blue,” “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” “Strange Fruit,” and of course, “I Put a Spell on You,” specifics missing in her story became unimportant. All that matters is the Voice, Nina Simone’s greatest gift to the world.
[Split review: 5 stars for the first half, 2 for the second. 3 stars]
Until our younger son gave me a mixed CD that included Simone’s “Lilac Wine,” I had unaccountably not heard of her. I immediately fell in love with her voice, her passion and emotion, her intensity and commitment, her wry humor.
I Put a Spell On You: The Autobiography of Nina Simone, written with Stephen Cleary, is a slim volume. At 176 pages, can Simone effectively tell her story? Yes and no.
Although written with a collaborator, Nina Simone’s (born Eunice Kathleen Waymon) unique and distinct voice is clearly heard. The first half of the book, the history of her hometown, Tryon, North Carolina, of her ancestry and early childhood, is rich in detail. Memories are of a solid, stable, loving home, of her large family riding through both prosperity and the Great Depression with resilience and determination. Comfortable but hardly wealthy before the Depression, the Waymons made do without complaint.
Eunice’s astounding musical gifts were discovered early, and she was admonished not to be “big-headed” about them and to behave with modesty and humility. A regular church pianist by age six, her formal lessons, sponsored the first year by her mother’s employer, Mrs. Miller, were with Mrs. Muriel Massinovitch, “Miz Mazzy,” to whom Eunice/Nina remained close until Miz Mazzy’s death at 102. Six years of lessons with Miz Mazzy set Eunice on the trajectory toward her dream of becoming the first black classical pianist.
At the end of her first year, Mrs. Miller, unable to subsidize Eunice’s piano lessons long-term, “founded the Eunice Waymon Fund, a fund to which everybody in Tryon could contribute and which would ensure [her] musical education not just for the next year but for as long as it was needed.”
An astonishing development, the fund was successful in enabling Eunice to continue her private studies, to pay for her tuition for four years at the Allen High School for Girls, a private school in Asheville (from which she graduated in 1950 as Valedictorian), and for a year of study at Julliard, where she studied with Dr. Carl Friedburg.
Eunice’s passion for music, her love of the lessons, practice, and improvement is clear. She describes his methods and his influence:
My tutor was Dr. Carl Friedburg, a great teacher, very gifted…Lessons with Dr. Friedburg were a joy because, although they took the same shape as the lessons I’d always had, he was the greatest musician I had met up to that time and I learned something new each time I sat down to play for him.
Every week I played a piece for him to criticize. His corrections were so subtle and delicate that individually each one seemed to make hardly any difference at all, but when I played the piece again afterwards with all his alterations included it shone like polished silver. Studying under Dr. Friedburg gave me a satisfaction I couldn’t explain, but I knew this was what I was born to do, what all those hours of practice had been about, and it was leading me to my destiny, the classical concert stage.
The year at Julliard, an intense preparation for the scholarship examination to the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, appeared to be an unobstructed road to achieving her goal. But her world collapsed when she was rejected by Curtis. She was told that she was not good enough, but she then and always believed it was racially motivated.
Remaining in New York after Julliard, Eunice initially made a living as a photographer’s assistant and as an accompanist to a singing teacher, and then as a music teacher herself. Before long, Eunice took a job playing piano at the Midtown Bar and Grill. Not wanting her mother to know, she chose a stage name, “Nina,” a pet name given her by a friend, “Simone,” after the French actress Simone Signoret. At Midtown, the first bar she had ever entered, she was paid a princely sum of ninety dollars a week, plus tips and all the milk she could drink (Not a drinker then, when asked what she wanted, she requested a glass of milk).
From the beginning, with classical training her only performance experience, Nina walked onto the stage in her finest attire, make-up, and hair. Her dignified appearance turned heads (“The guys at the bar must have thought I came from another planet...”) as patrons listened to her inimitable combination of classical and popular music:
I arrived prepared with classical pieces, hymns, and gospel songs and improvised on those, occasionally slipping in a part from a popular tune. Each [piece]…lasted anywhere between thirty and ninety minutes. I just sat down, closed my eyes, and drifted away on the music.
There was only one problem: the bar owner wanted to know why she hadn’t sung.
“I’m only a pianist,” she replied.
“Well, tomorrow night you’re either a singer or your out of a job.”
The next night, she sang. With her signature blend of classical, popular, folk, and jazz piano combined with her evocative vocals, Nina Simone’s career was born.
Following a high school romance with a local boy, Edney Whiteside, the love of her life, and after a brief first marriage, Nina married former New York City police officer Andrew Stoud, who fathered her daughter, Lisa, became her manager---and her abuser. After many tumultuous years, they divorced.
This is where I Put a Spell On You begins to fall apart. It is as though Nina was two different people, or that she was unable to deal with the difficult aspects of her story. The book is split in two, schizophrenic. The full memories that populate the story of her early years disintegrate into a rote list of musical gigs, her involvement in civil rights, and her many affairs, some inexplicably bizarre or surreal.
The rightful anger that arose at her rejection by the Curtis Institute becomes a leitmotif throughout the rest of her life, but the details are skimmed over, lacking the heart that was a hallmark of her earlier words. I finished the book ultimately dissatisfied.
And yet, after I put away I Put a Spell On You, I listened again to Nina Simone sing: “Mississippi Goddam,” “Four Women,” “Solitaire,” “Little Girl Blue,” “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” “Strange Fruit,” and of course, “I Put a Spell on You,” specifics missing in her story became unimportant. All that matters is the Voice, Nina Simone’s greatest gift to the world.
[Split review: 5 stars for the first half, 2 for the second. 3 stars]
August 2, 2020
This book had a lot of interesting parts, from her humble beginnings, to her involvement in the civil rights movement, an interesting marital/business relationship, living abroad and the general life on the road of a mother. She was rather unapologetic about many things in her life, which was kind of refreshing - she didn't make excuses for the way she was, she just was who she was, which was a very interesting person.
October 23, 2022
Nina Simone in her own words. The book starts with a very clear depiction of her childhood, Simone tells the reader about her experience with growing up poor, racism, having a deeply religious, but also distant mother, expectations put on her, and feeling the influence of music from her earliest years.
"church taught me the rhythm"
Then she pretty much follows the path of her entire life... delving into accounts of her beginnings as an unknown artist playing in a bar, and then touring as a 'big star'. She explains how she had gotten into being more politically active, and how she ended up giving a performance one day and receiving heartbreaking news the other... she struggled with the reconciliation of the movement, her career, and her family.
Simone tells us what it was like for her to be famous, she describes her dynamics with the audience and feeling dependent on her husband, record company, lawyer, and manager, as they all had to make all of her decisions 'for' her. She also explains why she hated being compared to jazz musicians, and why this label does not suit her.
She writes about her depression, as well as about moments of ease, and rest. This book is full of... everything. That is what her life was like, and she managed to put it all together and create a meaningful piece.
"in the real world things don't always turn out the way you think they will"
The last few sentences nicely put together what reading this book felt like, and what topics it aroused...
"Right now I'm as close to happy as I can be without a husband to love, I started to work on this book, looking back over a life which, after thinking about for months and months, I have no regrets about. Plenty of mistakes, some bad days, and, most resonant of all, years of joy - hard, but joyous all the same - fighting for the rights of my brothers and sisters everywhere; America, Africa, all over the world, years where pleasure and pain were mixed together. I knew then, and I still do, that the happiness I felt, and still feel, as we moved forward together was of a kind that very few people ever experience."
"church taught me the rhythm"
Then she pretty much follows the path of her entire life... delving into accounts of her beginnings as an unknown artist playing in a bar, and then touring as a 'big star'. She explains how she had gotten into being more politically active, and how she ended up giving a performance one day and receiving heartbreaking news the other... she struggled with the reconciliation of the movement, her career, and her family.
Simone tells us what it was like for her to be famous, she describes her dynamics with the audience and feeling dependent on her husband, record company, lawyer, and manager, as they all had to make all of her decisions 'for' her. She also explains why she hated being compared to jazz musicians, and why this label does not suit her.
She writes about her depression, as well as about moments of ease, and rest. This book is full of... everything. That is what her life was like, and she managed to put it all together and create a meaningful piece.
"in the real world things don't always turn out the way you think they will"
The last few sentences nicely put together what reading this book felt like, and what topics it aroused...
"Right now I'm as close to happy as I can be without a husband to love, I started to work on this book, looking back over a life which, after thinking about for months and months, I have no regrets about. Plenty of mistakes, some bad days, and, most resonant of all, years of joy - hard, but joyous all the same - fighting for the rights of my brothers and sisters everywhere; America, Africa, all over the world, years where pleasure and pain were mixed together. I knew then, and I still do, that the happiness I felt, and still feel, as we moved forward together was of a kind that very few people ever experience."
August 13, 2015
"Looking out into the crowd, I heard Jimmy Baldwin's voice in my head, 'This is the world you have made for yourself, Nina, now you have to live in it.'"
This is a remarkable book that Nina Simone has written of her life. Up to now, I knew little about her - and I only ever had a single (though representative) recording of her singular artistry.
The book breaks down into 4 sections. She begins, naturally, with her upbringing, which - though certainly not easy - is not one of considerable turmoil. ~which allows her unique soul the root it needs for growth.
Growth comes in a manner which is very entertaining to read: She trains to be a classical pianist (most definitely without the intention of ever becoming a singer in the bargain). But life has different plans for her career, which segues in labyrinth fashion to unexpected success as the type of performer who defies categorization. Music companies simply did not know what to do with her...or what to make of her. And the feeling was mutual...so much so that Simone would become infamous for her negative feelings about the music industry in general. ("All record companies prefer third-rate talent to true genius because they can push them around more easily...")
As Simone's career took off, so did her involvement (as an artist) with the black revolution of the '60s. ("People who lived through those times as I did, living and breathing revolution, will tell you the same stories of how their private lives faded away for years at a time.") These are not only very hard but very-hard-working years - during which Simone performs tirelessly (while often being very tired), achieving world renown.
At a price. At heart, Simone reveals herself to be a trusting, independent soul...which causes her no end of trouble, as a result of being vulnerable. As well, come post-revolution, she finds herself somewhat aimless (as well as insecure about her emotional life).
At this point in the story, Simone becomes rather cavalier in her lifestyle - and it's this part of the book which is the saddest. Directionless, Simone saddles herself with a number of unwise decisions (as she battles with financial problems she inherits from an ultimately troublesome marriage). However, in this final section, Simone also triumphs - by way of a herculean effort at re-gaining the confidence necessary to once again grab hold of her life.
This is a slim book - about 170 pages - but it is quite full and there is a large amount to savor. Simone puts forth the details of her life in an extremely economic manner...and she is a very engaging hostess as a storyteller.
My favorite part of the book, I suppose, involves her visit to a 'witch doctor' who shows her how she can re-unite and make peace with her father (who died while they were not on speaking terms). How Simone describes her on-going relationship with her father, thereafter, is both mystical and endearing.
This is a remarkable book that Nina Simone has written of her life. Up to now, I knew little about her - and I only ever had a single (though representative) recording of her singular artistry.
The book breaks down into 4 sections. She begins, naturally, with her upbringing, which - though certainly not easy - is not one of considerable turmoil. ~which allows her unique soul the root it needs for growth.
Growth comes in a manner which is very entertaining to read: She trains to be a classical pianist (most definitely without the intention of ever becoming a singer in the bargain). But life has different plans for her career, which segues in labyrinth fashion to unexpected success as the type of performer who defies categorization. Music companies simply did not know what to do with her...or what to make of her. And the feeling was mutual...so much so that Simone would become infamous for her negative feelings about the music industry in general. ("All record companies prefer third-rate talent to true genius because they can push them around more easily...")
As Simone's career took off, so did her involvement (as an artist) with the black revolution of the '60s. ("People who lived through those times as I did, living and breathing revolution, will tell you the same stories of how their private lives faded away for years at a time.") These are not only very hard but very-hard-working years - during which Simone performs tirelessly (while often being very tired), achieving world renown.
At a price. At heart, Simone reveals herself to be a trusting, independent soul...which causes her no end of trouble, as a result of being vulnerable. As well, come post-revolution, she finds herself somewhat aimless (as well as insecure about her emotional life).
At this point in the story, Simone becomes rather cavalier in her lifestyle - and it's this part of the book which is the saddest. Directionless, Simone saddles herself with a number of unwise decisions (as she battles with financial problems she inherits from an ultimately troublesome marriage). However, in this final section, Simone also triumphs - by way of a herculean effort at re-gaining the confidence necessary to once again grab hold of her life.
This is a slim book - about 170 pages - but it is quite full and there is a large amount to savor. Simone puts forth the details of her life in an extremely economic manner...and she is a very engaging hostess as a storyteller.
My favorite part of the book, I suppose, involves her visit to a 'witch doctor' who shows her how she can re-unite and make peace with her father (who died while they were not on speaking terms). How Simone describes her on-going relationship with her father, thereafter, is both mystical and endearing.
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