Kaycee Haney NINA SIMONE

• Born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina on February 21st, 1933.

• Started playing piano by ear at the age of three.• Study at Julliard in New York City before applying to the

prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.

LIFE

1954, looking to supplement her income, Eunice auditioned to sing at the Midtown Bar & Grill on Pacific Avenue in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Word spread about this new

singer and pianist who was dipping into the songbooks of Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, and the like, transforming popular tunes of the day into a unique

synthesis of jazz, blues, and classical music. Her rich, deep velvet vocal tones, combined with her mastery of the

keyboard, soon attracted club goers up and down the East Coast. In order to hide the fact that she was singing in bars, Eunice’s mother would refer to the practice as “working in the fires of hell”, overnight Eunice Waymon became Nina

Simone by taking the nickname “Nina” meaning “little one” in Spanish and “Simone” after the actress Simone Signoret.

HER BIG BREAK

“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 song 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.

HER MUSIC

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBiAtwQZnHshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sAbW0ONRBU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKUu_P-wfdQ

HER MUSIC

• Died April 21,2001• She spanned 43 year in her musical career, making

upwards of 50 albums.• Simone was inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall

of Fame in 2009.

HER DEATH