Nina Simone - Backlash Blues

Eunice Kathleen Waymon (1933-2003), also known by her stage name Nina Simone, was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger, and civil rights activist widely associated with jazz music. Simone aspired to become a classical pianist while working in a broad range of styles including classical, jazz, blues, soul, folk, R&B, gospel, and pop. Nina was born in Tryon, NC and was the 6th of 8 children in a very poor family. She began playing the piano at age three, but it wasn't until she was 12 when she played her first classical recital. Simone's bearing and stage presence earned her the title "High Priestess of Soul". She was a piano player, singer and performer, "separately and simultaneously". On stage, Simone moved from gospel to blues, jazz and folk, to numbers with European classical styling, and Bach-style counterpoint fugues. She incorporated monologues and dialogues with the audience into the program, and often used silence as a musical element. Simone had a reputation in the music industry for her volatility. In 1995, she shot and wounded her neighbor's son with a pneumatic pistol after his laughter disturbed her concentration. She also fired a gun at a record company executive whom she accused of stealing royalties. Simone took medication for her condition from the mid-1960s on. All this was only known to a small group of intimates, and kept out of public view for many years, until the biography Break Down And Let It All Out was released in 2004. After battling breast cancer for many years, she passed away in her sleep at her home in France. Today would have been her 78th birthday.

www.myspace.com/ninasimone

Smelly Dog


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