[audience applauding]
[announcer] Tremendous pleasure and honor to welcome
the incredible, unique, and fantastic, one and only Nina Simone.
[audience applauding]
[applause continues]
[applause fades]
[scattered applause]
[applause stops]
Hello.
[audience member] Hi! We're ready.
[audience laughing]
One, two, three.
I haven't seen you for many years, since 1968.
I have decided that I will do no more jazz festivals.
That decision has not changed.
I will sing for you,
or we will do and share with you a few moments,
after which I shall graduate to a higher class, I hope,
and I hope you will come with me.
We will start from the beginning,
which was about a little girl,
and her name was Blue.
[playing "Good King Wenceslas"]
[playing fades]
[tape recorder rolling]
[interviewer] What's "free" to you, Nina?
-What's "free" to me? -Yeah.
Same thing it is to you. You tell me.
[interviewer] No, no, you tell me.
[both laughing] [interviewer] I don't know.
It's just a feeling.
It's like, "How do you tell somebody how it feels to be in love?"
How are you going to tell anybody who has not been in love
how it feels to be in love?
You cannot do it to save your life.
You can describe things but you can't tell them,
but you know it when it happens.
That's what I mean by "free."
I've had a couple of times onstage when I really felt free,
and that's something else.
-[interviewer laughs] -That's really something else!
Like, all... all... Like... like--
I'll tell you what freedom is to me, no fear.
I mean, really, no fear.
If I could have that
half of my life, no fear.
♪ I wish I could share ♪
♪ All the love that's in my heart ♪
♪ Remove all the bars ♪
♪ That still keep us apart ♪
♪ I wish you could know ♪
♪ What it means to be me ♪
♪ Then you'd see and agree ♪
♪ That every man should be free ♪
♪ I wish I could give ♪
♪ All I'm longing to give ♪
[Lisa Simone Kelly] My mother was one of the greatest entertainers of all time,
hands down...
but she paid a huge price.
People seem to think that when she went out on stage,
that was when she became Nina Simone.
My mother was Nina Simone 24/7...
and that's where it became a problem.
-♪ One day I woke up and I could fly ♪ -[chorus] ♪ Yes, I know ♪
-♪ I'd look down at the sea ♪ -♪ Yes, I know ♪
♪ And I wouldn’t know myself ♪
♪ I'd have new hands ♪
-♪ I’d have new feet ♪ -♪ Yes, I know ♪
-♪ I’d have new vision ♪ -♪ Yes, I know ♪
-♪ My eyes would be open a little better ♪ -♪ Yes, I know ♪
[Lisa] When she was performing, she was brilliant, she was loved.
She was also a revolutionary.
She found a purpose for the stage,
a place from which she could use her voice to speak out for her people.
-♪ Don't get in my way ♪ -♪ Yes, I know ♪
[audience clapping and cheering]
But when the show ended, everybody else went home.
She was alone and she was still fighting...
but she was fighting her own demons...
full of anger and rage.
She couldn't live with herself...
and everything fell apart.
♪ For one moment of my whole life ♪
♪ I would know how ♪
♪ It would feel ♪
♪ To be free ♪
[interviewer] Good evening. Our guest tonight is Nina Simone.
Probably the foremost blues singer, jazz singer, singer of all songs
in the United States today.
Nina, are you happy with the kind of work you are doing?
[Nina] What makes me the happiest,
is when I'm performing and there are people out there
who feel with me and I know I touched them.
But to be completely honest,
the whole thing seems so much like a dream.
I never thought I was gonna stay in show business.
When I first got into show business,
I wasn't a blues singer and I wasn't even a jazz singer.
I was a classical pianist.
I studied to become
the first black classical pianist in America,
and that's all that was on my mind.
That's what I was prepared to be.
I was born Eunice Waymon, which is my real name, by the way,
in a town called Tryon, North Carolina.
I started to play the piano when I was three or four.
My mother was a preacher
and she took me with her on her revivals,
and I started to play the piano in church.
["Children Go Where I Send You" playing]
♪ Children go where I send you ♪
♪ How shall I send you? ♪
♪ I'm gonna send you one by one ♪
♪ One for the little biddy baby was born, born, born in Bethlehem ♪
Revival meetings were some of the most exciting times
that I've ever had.
The music was so intense,
you just sort of went out of yourself.
I felt it tremendously.
I was leading it.
When I was seven, the choir of our church gave a program at the local theater,
and I was on that program...
And I played some song, I don't remember what it was,
and these two women, two white women, in the audience heard me.
One of them was the woman that my mother worked for,
and the other one was a music teacher, Mrs. Mazzanovich,
and they decided right then and there to give me lessons.
And so, for five years after that,
I studied piano, classical piano, with this teacher.
I crossed the railroad tracks every weekend to get to Mrs. Mazzanovich.
And, you know, railroad tracks in the South
are supposed to be dividing the blacks from the whites.
Well, it really did.
I was so scared.
Mrs. Mazzanovich frightened me.
It was her being white, in the sense that I had never seen.
She was alien to me.
Her white hair, the combs in it, her pleasantness...
I loved that.
And she started me on Bach.
And this Bach, I liked him.
Mrs. Mazzanovich had it in her mind
that I was gonna be one of the world's greatest concert pianists.
So it was all very disciplined classical music.
Bach, Beethoven, Debussy, Brahms, you name it.
Then Mrs. Mazzanovich got a fund together, "Eunice Waymon Fund,"
and I gave lots of recitals,
and they would take up collection
to further my education after I had left her.
[Lisa] Mommy took to all of the training like a fish to water,
but it was a double-edged sword.
She had a very lonely life
because she was practicing seven, eight hours a day.
[Nina] When I first started to take lessons,
I became terribly aware
of how isolated I was from the other children,
and how isolated I was
from the white community and the negro community.
I felt it, all the time, even when the kids used to play with me.
They always wanted me just to play the piano for them to dance.
I wasn't asked too much to do anything else.
That was very hard.
Part of that isolation, of course, was the thing about color.
I was a black girl, and I knew about it, and I lived in it.
I lived in the South for 17 years.
[Lisa] My mom rarely referred to Jim Crow and segregation
and a lot of the racial issues that were going on at that stage in her life.
But she did tell me about times when she was told her nose was too big,
her lips were too full and her skin was too dark.
And after she was told that, they probably told her,
"There's only certain things you'll be good for in your life."
[Nina] What I knew, I knew.
But we weren't allowed to mention anything racial in our house.
I wasn't consciously dealing with race.
That wasn't consciously on my mind at all...
until years later.
After I graduated from high school,
the money that had been saved from the Eunice Waymon Fund
sent me to New York to Juilliard for a year and a half.
And then I applied for a scholarship to Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.
I was playing Czerny and Liszt and Rachmaninoff and Bach.
I knew I was good enough, but they turned me down,
and it took me about six months to realize it was because I was black.
I never really got over that jolt of racism at the time.
Then the money ran out
and the reality hit me that I had to go to work.
My parents had moved the whole family to Philadelphia to be near me,
and my family is very poor, so I had to work.
What else was there for me to do?
So, I got myself a job in Atlantic City for a summer.
It was a very crummy bar
and I used to go in in evening gowns. I didn't know any better.
And I played everything that I could think of.
Pop songs, classical, spirituals, all kinds of things.
It was very strange.
And I had never sung before,
and the owner came in the second night
and told me if I wanted to keep the job, I had to sing.
So, $90 was more money than I had ever heard of in my life,
so I said, "Well, I'll sing," and ever since then, I've been singing.
[Roger Nupie] Eunice Waymon was playing in the bars to support her family
and to have money to continue her classical piano training.
But since she didn't want her mother to know that
she was playing "the devil's music" in bars,
she changed her name.
Eunice Waymon became Nina Simone.
She named herself "Niña," meaning "little one,"
and she had a boyfriend who called her "Niña,"
and "Simone" came from the French actress Simone Signoret.
[Nina] I didn't want my mother to find out.
I knew she would hate it.
So I, kind of, kept it from her for a long, long time.
[interviewer] Was it lonely for a young girl
entertaining in these strange bars?
[Nina] Extremely. Extremely lonely.
[interviewer] Working peculiar hours, I imagine.
[Nina] 12:00 midnight to 7:00 in the morning.
[interviewer] It ruined your social life, uh...
[Nina] Never had much of one.
[interviewer] Why'd you keep on with it? [Nina] Couldn't help it.
I have to play and I needed money.
It was always a matter of necessity from day to day what I'm going to do.
I didn't even know I was going to stay in show business.
I never thought about a choice.
[Nina singing] ♪ Nobody's fault but mine ♪
[Al Schackman] From the beginning, I felt there was something eating at her.
You know, "What's eating at you, Nina?"
And, um...
gradually that got stronger.
♪ For all we know ♪
♪ We may never meet again ♪
[Al] The first time I played with Nina,
it was the summer of 1957 at a restaurant in New Hope, Pennsylvania.
She didn't look at me.
Said nothing, as though I wasn't... I wasn't even there,
and started in on a song.
She never told me what key she was going to be in.
She just started playing, and I knew exactly where I was going to go with it.
It was like we had a telepathic relationship.
Before you knew it, we were just weaving in and out.
And then she looked up.
♪ Until... ♪
♪ ...the last minute ♪
[Nina] Al Schackman is a terribly sensitive, creative man.
He has perfect pitch,
which means that no matter what key I'm in,
he's able to adapt himself immediately, 'cause I do that all the time.
I'll change the key in the middle of a tune.
[Al] Nina had a wonderful way of taking a piece of music, and...
not interpreting it, but... but, like, metamorphosizing it.
You know, morphing it into her experience.
♪ This may only be a dream ♪
[Nina] What I was interested in was conveying an emotional message,
which means using everything you've got inside you
sometimes to barely make a note
or if you have to strain to sing, you sing.
So sometimes I sound like gravel,
and sometimes I sound like coffee and cream.
♪ So baby, love me, love me tonight ♪
♪ Tomorrow was made for some ♪
[George Wein] When I first saw Nina at my club in 1959,
I was impressed. She was different.
She mixed in folk music with jazz.
She played very fine piano.
Her voice was totally different from anybody else.
It was a woman's voice, but it had the depth of a baritone.
That depth and that darkness carried the insight of what was in Nina's soul...
and it reached you very quickly.
♪ For all... ♪
♪ ...we know ♪
She was an artist. She was an original artist.
So we paid attention, and in 1960, I put her on the Newport Jazz Festival,
and she was a hit there.
[band playing]
♪ I got a beau you ain't got none Little Liza Jane ♪
♪ Oh, little Liza, little Liza Jane ♪
[Stanley Crouch] Her sound is so original.
When she first appeared...
she was one of those musicians who...
Once-- You don't have to hear them a bunch.
If you hear them once, then the next time you hear 'em, you say,
"Oh, that's that same one I heard last week.
Nobody sounds like that except her."
♪ Come my love and live with me ♪
♪ I will take good care of thee, little Liza Jane ♪
[Al] At Newport,
she was sitting on a high stool with a tambourine,
and I was in the back.
She wasn't sure she wanted to go through with it.
If I remember right, she was a little, you know, "What am I doing here?"
And I said, "You're here because, you know, you belong here."
♪ He took me to this great big town ♪
♪ Lot of people standing around ♪
♪ Little Liza Jane, Jane, Jane... ♪
And she said, "Okay, Al, but you better play."
[laughs] And I said, "Don't worry, I'll play."
♪ Oh little Liza, little Liza Jane ♪
But then, if you watch during her performance of "Little Liza,"
she has that little smile from time to time.
She let go, and it was really cute.
♪ Little Liza Jane, Jane Little ol' Liza ♪
[Nina] Then I recorded seven or eight tunes
that I had been doing all of those years,
and of course, the public picked out "I Loves You Porgy."
It was not pushed or promoted to be a hit at all.
-Girls! Guys! Hi. -Hi, Hugh, nice to see you.
Real good.
Eleanor, you want to, uh, take Don's coat here,
and maybe you can show the girls where the powder room is and bedroom.
Hello, there.
Very nice to have you with us this evening.
This is Playboy's Penthouse,
and I'm Hugh Hefner, editor/publisher of Playboy magazine.
I'd like you to meet someone that I think most of you know, Nina Simone.
She came out of nowhere in the last year as a recording star.
Now has a very, very big record in "Porgy"
that is breaking all kinds of sales records.
We're very happy she could join us
-tonight on Playboy's Penthouse... -Thanks.
...and she's going to play and sing a little bit for us now with her group.
-[all clapping] -[playing piano]
Do you want to hear "Porgy"?
-[all] Very much! -Right!
Good, that's what we'll do.
♪ I love you, Porgy ♪
♪ Don't let him take me ♪
♪ Don't let him handle me ♪
♪ And drive me mad ♪
♪ If you can keep me ♪
♪ I'm gonna stay here with you forever ♪
♪ And I'll be glad ♪
♪ Yes, I loves you, Porgy ♪
♪ Don't let him take me ♪
♪ Sweetie, don't let him handle me ♪
♪ With his hot hands ♪
♪ If you can keep me ♪
♪ I'm gonna stay here with you forever ♪
♪ I've got my man ♪
[interviewer] Nina, there's a man named Andy Stroud.
He walked into your life and became a permanent part.
How did you meet your husband?
[Nina] He came to see me at a nightclub and a mutual friend introduced us.
Nina came to the table and sat, and I was eating a hamburger plate,
and there were fries, and she dipped into them.
And she wanted to know if it was okay. I said, "All right."
We got cute and then she gave me that card with a note on it.
Then I went over to see her at her place in the next day or two.
♪ But when he comes I know ♪
♪ I'll have to go ♪
♪ I love you, Porgy ♪
[interviewer] How did you know that Andy Stroud was to be your husband
and not just another guy out for a date or something else?
[Nina laughs] That's a hard question.
He told me that he had wanted to meet me for a long time.
And he had come for me. I fell in love with him.
Then later, he scared me to death. He was so, you know...
He knew what he wanted and he just took over.
♪ With you forever ♪
He abandoned his own career as a sergeant of the police department
to manage me,
and for the first time, I knew what it was not to be just floundering out there.
♪ ...got my man ♪
[song ends]
[all clapping]
[Al] I just remember meeting Andy.
Here was a tough, New York, you know, vice squad cop,
that when he stepped out of his car uptown, people ran.
And he had... he had a way of just saying one word...
[in deep voice] "Hey."
...and that could put a lot of fear in people.
But Andy and Nina married in 1961.
He retired from the police force and became her manager,
and he did well for her.
They bought a beautiful house in Mount Vernon, New York.
[Nina] We had a 13-room house, four acres of land, lot of trees.
[Nina singing] ♪ My baby don't care for shows ♪
♪ My baby don't care for clothes ♪
♪ My baby just cares for me ♪
♪ My baby don't care for cars and races ♪
♪ My baby don't care for... ♪
♪ ...high-tone places ♪
[Nina] And Lisa was born nine months later.
The first three hours after Lisa was born were the most peaceful in my life,
and I was in love with the world.
And Andrew was there.
He was sitting right there, and he said--
I said, "How's the baby?" He says, "How's the mother?"
And I loved him for that.
I loved being a mother.
I was a good mother.
I was a goddamn good mother.
[Lisa] I remember our house in Mount Vernon
like the back of my hand.
It was like a fairy tale.
I remember seeing the paisley on the walls.
The walls were kind of like a... [sighs]
They were hued in gold, but it really wasn't gold.
It was more like a muted gold
but it felt like it was velvet.
So I'd always run my hands, like, over the walls, because it was textured.
And my mom, she had her cold storage
where she kept her fur coats and her costumes.
So I was always in there.
[Andy] These were the good, sweet days.
We were building and growing together.
[song continues]
[Andy] I had an overall plan to develop and create her as an artist.
I had set up an office at 5th Avenue and 42nd Street.
I had a publicist.
I had a guy who was a record-promotion man that I got from Atlantic Records.
I had another fellow who did the college radio station promotion,
and a photographer.
Dad was the original Puff Daddy.
I mean, he really had a vision, and he was a very astute businessman.
[Andy] And of course, she was burning to get on to Carnegie Hall.
She had trained as a classical pianist with the one thought in mind
of being the first black female classical pianist
to appear in Carnegie Hall.
That was her prime objective.
However, none of the New York City promoters
would undertake this project.
So, I took my own money to promote the appearance.
She was ecstatic. I mean, she was out of her mind with joy.
[interviewer] You apparently wrote a letter to your parents saying,
"This is where you wanted me to play,
-but I should have been playing Bach." -[Nina] "Playing Bach."
[interviewer] So this was your glory occasion,
but you were still disappointed?
[Nina] Well, I loved the audience,
but I wasn't playing classical music, and I wanted to be,
and so I wrote,
"Yes, I'm in Carnegie Hall, finally, but I'm not playing Bach."
[applause]
[Nina singing] ♪ I can't go on without you ♪
♪ Your love is all I'm living for ♪
♪ I love all things about you ♪
♪ Your heart, your soul, my love ♪
[song ends]
[applause]
[jazz piano playing]
♪ Say love me, leave me Let me be lonely ♪
♪ You won't believe me but I love you only ♪
[Andy] After Carnegie Hall,
she was getting airplay all over the country,
magazine pictures and stories.
♪ Nighttime is my time for just reminiscing ♪
♪ Regretting instead of forgetting with somebody else ♪
She became highly successful and recognized.
[indistinct chatter]
-Oh! Thank you very much! -[man] Meeting in Japan.
[host 1] A young woman who's made a very emphatic name for herself...
[announcer] An accomplished pianist and distinctive...
[host 2] ...who's now become a rather famous artist.
[host 3] A remarkable blues-soul sound.
[host 4] For the first time on British television,
The High Priestess of Soul...
[speaking French]
-Nina Simone. -Nina Simone.
The great Nina Simone.
[host 1] Miss Simone brings to her music
a kind of technique and discipline
we generally associate with classical music.
She has introduced fugue and counterpoint
into the freewheeling spontaneity of the jazz world.
[interviewer] Nina, do you think that
now that you are successful as a popular artist
that you'd like to do any classical?
[Nina] Yes, but I don't have time to think about it too much.
But you have to realize that when I'm most satisfied with my music,
I call upon all of the things that I have learned in classical music.
[Andy] She wanted everything that money and success could buy.
So I promised her that she was going to be a rich black bitch.
[Nina] We had a blackboard and he used to put on there,
"I'll be a rich black bitch by this such-and-such date,"
and he said, "Then you could quit," and I always believed him,
but I never could quit because he worked me too hard.
[Nina singing] ♪ Breaking up big rocks on the chain gang ♪
♪ Breaking rocks and serving my time ♪
♪ Breaking up big rocks on the chain gang ♪
♪ 'Cause they done convicted me of crime ♪
♪ Hold it right there while I hit it ♪
♪ Well, I reckon that ought to get it ♪
♪ Been workin' and workin' ♪
♪ But I still got so terribly far to go ♪
♪ I committed crime Lord, I needed ♪
♪ Crime of being hungry and poor ♪
[Al] Andy said, "Nina, it's hard work.
You wanna make the money, you have to work."
And she resented that.
Then Lisa was born,
and she resented being torn away, having to go on the road.
♪ Well, reckon that ought to get it ♪
♪ Been working and working... ♪
[Lisa] I didn't realize what my mom did for a living.
I just know that Mom was always traveling.
My mother often told me that I had 13 nannies in seven years.
So, while she was trying to maintain
some sense of a schedule for me and normalcy for me,
she was out there doing what she was doing.
[Nina] Can I have five more minutes? It's very frustrating...
[Al] When we were on the road, there were times we had to be careful.
She could get angry and start arguments with people.
Y'all pushing! You're pushing!
Don't put nothin' in it! Let's do it again.
[Al] If anyone were talking in the audience, she would just sit,
and at first, she would say, "Please..."
and she said, "I'm not continuing."
She'd get up, walk out, and the gig was over.
[Nina] I just want them to listen to the music
like they did in the classical world.
I thought they needed teaching. If they couldn't listen, fuck it!
[Andy] She got into Carnegie Hall,
and she got the big house in the country, but she began questioning herself.
She'd get into moods of depression about the whole business,
the personal relationship, cursing and smashing things,
and this worsened as the time went by.
♪ Gonna see my sweet honey baby ♪
♪ Gonna break this chain off and run ♪
♪ I'm gonna lay down somewhere shady ♪
[Nina] All I did was work, work, work.
I was always tired. I was always tired.
I could never sleep.
You see, music always goes through my head,
which means the more I played, the less I could relax.
I kept thinking Andy would let me rest.
He never did.
♪ But I still... ♪
♪ ...got so terribly far to go ♪
-[song ends] -[applause]
♪ Got my liver ♪
[Al] She felt she was being handled like a racehorse,
and she was always fighting, fighting, fighting it.
Andy would say, "Nina, we've got a career here.
That's not going to continue if you don't nurture it."
So, she came to resent Andy...
but she was afraid of Andy.
[Nina] Andrew protected me against everybody but himself.
He wrapped himself around me like a snake.
I worked like a dog, and I was scared of him...
and Andrew beat me up.
But I've never talked to you about this.
But he beat me up. I was deathly scared of Andrew.
♪ I put a spell on you ♪
♪ 'Cause you're mine ♪
One time, early in the morning, like 4:00, 5:00 in the morning, uh...
the phone rings. It's Nina, and she needed to hide out.
♪ I ain't lying ♪
[Nina] I had gone to a discotheque with Andrew...
and a fan came up to me and gave me a note,
and he saw me take this note and put it in my pocket.
♪ You're runnin' around You know better, Daddy ♪
[Al] She thought nothing of it. I mean, she related this to me.
And Andy came back and grabbed her arm
and took her out from the place and beat her up.
[Nina] And when I got out on the street, he started raining blows on me.
Bloody blows.
He beat me all the way home,
up the stairs, in the elevator, in my room, put a gun to my head.
Then he tied me up and raped me.
She came to my place and... and she was beat up.
And I, you know, put her to bed, and...
and she, you know, rested for a couple of days.
[Nina] He didn't find me for two weeks.
My eyes, I couldn't see.
And he said, "Who beat you up like that?"
And I said, "You did!"
He said, "No, I didn't. I've been looking for you for two weeks."
I said, "You're insane!"
He was brutal... but I... I loved him
and I guess I just believed he wouldn't do it anymore.
♪ You're mine ♪
[Lisa] My mother always said, till the day she died,
Dad was the best manager that she ever had.
But on top of being charismatic,
he could be a bully and he could be very mean,
and she was on the receiving end of that...
more times than, you know, she should have been,
which should have been never.
Mom would allude to, you know,
"He's rammed my head into a concrete wall."
She said that he punched her in the stomach
when she was pregnant with me.
[Lisa] As a child, I remember sitting in the car between them
and they were arguing about something,
and I remember my father reaching across me,
so it was like this, and backhanding her.
[Andy] We're going home in the car, I'm driving, and I slapped her.
Blood spurted... right over this eyebrow.
She had, like, a one-inch cut from my ring, you know.
We got her home
and I clipped the skin together and taped it...
and a week later, there wasn't even a scar.
[Lisa] I think they were both nuts.
She stayed with him.
She had this love affair with fire.
That's like inviting the bull with the red cape,
"Just come on into my kitchen and let's see what we can do."
That's what she did.
-What do I want for her? -[interviewer] Yes.
Myself. What else?
-[laughing] -[interviewer] Career-wise.
[Lisa] My father had a strategic plan in terms of
how Mom's career was going to go.
He wanted her to be able to win all the awards,
and to become the huge star that he knew that she could be...
but she wanted something more.
There was something missing in her, some meaning.
-[booming] -[glass shattering]
[newscaster 1] They died in Birmingham, the nation's most segregated big city.
Dynamite exploded on Sunday morning,
killed four little girls, injured 20 other negroes.
[newscaster 2] It was one of more than 40 bombings
in that Birmingham area.
[indistinct shouting]
[James Baldwin] Kids were murdered in Birmingham on a Sunday
and in Sunday schools in a Christian nation,
-and nobody cares! -[bangs podium]
[Nina] When the kids got killed in that church... that did it.
First you get depressed, and after that, you get mad.
And when these kids got bombed,
I just sat down and wrote this song.
And it's a very... moving, violent song,
'cause that's how I feel about the whole thing.
♪ Alabama's gotten me so upset Tennessee made me lose my rest ♪
♪ Everybody knows about Mississippi, goddam ♪
♪ Can't you see it? I know you can feel it ♪
♪ It's all in the air ♪
♪ I can't stand this pressure much longer ♪
♪ Somebody say a prayer ♪
♪ Alabama's gotten me so upset And Tennessee's made me lose my rest ♪
♪ Everybody knows about Mississippi, goddam ♪
[Dick Gregory] "Mississippi Goddam."
Phew!
Hmm? Got my attention.
What she was doing was different.
There's something about a woman...
if you look at all the suffering that black folks went through...
not one black man would dare say, "Mississippi, goddam."
And then to have someone with her stature talking about your problem,
you know how happy they had to be?
We all wanted to say it. She said it.
"Mississippi, goddam!"
♪ Hound dogs on my trail ♪
♪ School children sitting in jail ♪
♪ Black cat cross my path ♪
♪ I think every day's gonna be my last ♪
♪ Oh, but my country is full of lies ♪
♪ We all gonna die and die like flies ♪
♪ I don't trust nobody any more ♪
♪ They keep on saying, "Go slow" ♪
[Lisa] For Mommy to write a song called "Mississippi Goddam"
was revolutionary.
They didn't have cursing on the radio or on television or anything.
DJs refused to play it,
and boxes of the 45s used to be sent back from the radio stations cracked in two.
-♪ Well, that's just the trouble ♪ -[chorus] ♪ Too slow ♪
-♪ Washing the windows ♪ -♪ Too slow ♪
-♪ Pickin' the cotton ♪ -♪ Too slow ♪
-♪ We're nothin' but rotten ♪ -♪ Too slow ♪
-♪ We're too damn lazy ♪ -♪ Too slow ♪
-♪ Our thinkin' is crazy ♪ -♪ Too slow ♪
♪ Where am I going? Or what am I doing? ♪
♪ I don't know, I don't know ♪
[Al] As the civil rights movement really swung into high gear,
she swung into high gear with it.
In '65, we played at the Selma March in Montgomery, Alabama.
[Martin Luther King Jr.] We have a legal and constitutional right
-to march from Selma to Montgomery! -[crowd cheering]
[Al] It was extremely dangerous.
The federal Marshals were called in,
and they were standing on the tops of all the buildings downtown
with guns.
[Andy] Seated in front of the stage facing the audience
was Martin Luther King,
Ralph Bunche from the UN and a lot of other worldwide dignitaries.
[Al] You had Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Sidney Poitier,
Bill Cosby, Leonard Bernstein, Harry Belafonte,
and we did "Mississippi Goddam."
♪ Can't you see it? Can't you feel it? ♪
♪ It's all in the air ♪
♪ I can't stand the pressure much longer ♪
♪ Somebody say a prayer ♪
♪ Alabama's got me so upset ♪
♪ Selma made me lose my rest ♪
[crowd cheering]
♪ Everybody knows about Mississippi, goddam ♪
[Lisa] My mother said that after she sang that song,
she got so angry that her voice broke...
and from "Mississippi Goddam" on,
it never, ever returned to its former octave.
[crowd singing "Go Tell It On The Mountain"]
But I think that Mom's anger is what sustained her.
The energy and the creativity and the passion of those days
is really what kept her going.
[Andy] When she wrote "Mississippi Goddam,"
I thought it was something else.
You know, I liked it.
They put a 45 out on it, and I knew it had a lot of impact.
But my complaint was that
while I was always pushing for the commercial side of the picture,
she got sidetracked with all of these civil rights activities.
[Nina] When the civil rights thing came up, all of a sudden,
I could let myself be heard about what I'd been feeling all the time.
When I was young, I knew to stay alive.
As a black family, we had to work at it.
We had to keep secrets.
We never complained about being poor,
or being taken advantage of or not getting our share.
We had to keep our mouths shut
as I walked across that railroad track every Saturday.
So I knew to break the silence
meant a confrontation with the white people of that town.
[Nina singing] ♪ Southern trees ♪
And though I didn't know I knew it,
if the black man rises up and says, "I'm just not gonna do that anymore..."
♪ Bearin' strange fruit ♪
...he stands to get murdered.
♪ Blood on the leaves ♪
But no one mentioned that, which is, indeed, quite strange.
♪ And blood at the roots ♪
♪ Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze ♪
[Nina] It touched me first time when I gave a recital at this library.
Everybody was seated
and they told me my parents had to sit in the back,
and I said,
"If they have to sit in the back, I won't perform."
They fixed it that time
and they brought them to the front and they let them sit down,
but it was my first feeling of being discriminated against,
and I recoiled in horror at such a thing.
[people clamoring]
[playing "The Backlash Blues"]
[people screaming]
♪ Mr. Backlash ♪
♪ Who do you think I am? ♪
♪ You raise my taxes and freeze my wages Send my only son to Vietnam ♪
♪ You give me second class houses ♪
♪ You give me second class schools ♪
♪ You think all colored people are just second class fools ♪
♪ Mr. Backlash ♪
♪ I'm gonna leave you with the blues Yes, I am ♪
I choose to reflect the times and the situations in which I find myself.
That, to me, is my duty...
and at this crucial time in our lives,
when everything is so desperate, when every day is a matter of survival,
I don't think you can help but be involved.
Young people, black and white, know this,
and so that's why they're so involved in politics.
We will shape and mold this country
or it will not be molded and shaped at all anymore.
So I don't think you have a choice--
How can you be an artist and not reflect the times?
♪ When I try to find a job ♪
♪ To earn a little cash ♪
♪ All you got to offer Is your mean old white backlash ♪
♪ But the world is big ♪
♪ Big and bright and round ♪
♪ And it's full of other folks like me Who are black, yellow, beige and brown ♪
♪ You better believe me ♪
♪ Mr. Backlash ♪
♪ I'm gonna leave you with the blues ♪
[Nina] I've always thought that I was shaking people up,
but now I want to go at it more
and I want to go at it more deliberately and I want to go at it coldly.
I want... I want to shake people up so bad
that when they leave a nightclub where I've performed,
I just want them to be to pieces.
All right!
["Backlash Blues" playing]
♪ I said, when he died ♪
♪ He told me all my life ♪
♪ He said, "Keep on working girl ♪
♪ They open up the door one of these days ♪
♪ You won't have to wait much longer ♪
♪ Just tell 'em exactly how you feel ♪
♪ So I'm gonna leave you with the blues ♪
♪ That's me, yeah" ♪
I want to go in that den
of those elegant people with their old ideas, smugness,
and just drive them insane.
[Nina] Rise up!
[audience cheering]
It's all right if you dance slow!
But it was very exhilarating to be part of that movement at the time
because I was needed.
Now I could sing to help my people, and that became the mainstay of my life.
Not classical piano, not classical music, not even popular music,
but civil rights music.
I got to know Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Andrew Young,
and artists, actors, actresses, poets, writers,
people like myself who felt compelled to make the stand that I have.
[Roger] It was very important for her to connect with
the writers and playwrights of that moment
because those people had
the intellectual background of the movement
and she didn't have that.
She had music, the musical background.
For instance, Langston Hughes,
he wrote the lyrics for "Backlash Blues" for her.
Lorraine Hansberry, Nina took her play, Young, Gifted, and Black,
and made a song out of it.
It's regarded as
one of the most important songs in the civil rights movement.
[Nina] I know that there are only 300 black students here
in this college of 18,000.
So this song is dedicated only to you.
♪ To be young, gifted and black ♪
♪ Oh, what a lovely, precious dream ♪
♪ To be young, gifted and black ♪
[Nina] Lorraine Hansberry was my best friend,
and she wrote plays, Raisin in the Sun and Young, Gifted, and Black.
She taught me a lot about Karl Marx, Lenin, philosophy.
[Lorraine Hansberry] The basic fabric of our society
that has negroes in the situation that they are in
is the thing which must be changed, you know.
♪ Who are young, gifted and black ♪
[Lisa] Those times were pretty amazing.
I look back now and I'm just like, "Wow! Who's who of Black America!"
Lorraine Hansberry was my godmother.
Malcolm X's wife, Betty Shabazz, was my auntie.
They lived right next door in Mount Vernon.
There are six daughters and I was like the seventh.
So I was always riding my bike over there.
Lisa and I were the same age, and...
I think we may have called one another twins.
It was just a great, great time.
There was music, there were discussions.
Whether it was at our house or Lisa's house, Nina Simone's home,
it was definitely party with a purpose.
[Ambassador Shabazz] We happened to be a fly on the wall
with some of the genius poets and poetesses of the time, the era.
And to sit in that room and listen...
These were brilliant, well-read, well-traveled,
charming, alluring, charismatic people
who were moved to make a difference in the world.
I'm born of the Young, Gifted, and Black affirmation.
For me, and those of us in that environment,
it was daring to proclaim it...
and then share it joyously when she sang it.
♪ To be young, gifted and black ♪
[Shabazz] People would stand up and engage in their African-ness
without apology...
and it's a contemporary, hip song of the era.
It means you get to hum it in public. [laughs]
♪ It's where it's at ♪
[crowd cheering]
[Andy] She became a legend in the activists' movement,
and through meetings and discussions that I overheard,
she was convinced that certain things must be done
in order to... push the revolution.
I told them that's not the answer,
and then it began to manifest in her attitude towards me and the business.
She'd fly off.
I remember a few nights, you know,
you go to bed happy and holding one another.
I wake up,
and she'd be sitting up in bed with her arms folded,
looking at me, thinking about killing me.
And this is how it went. The political work became very heavy.
[Nina] To me, we are the most beautiful creatures
in the whole world, black people.
So my job is to make them more curious
about where they came from
and their own identity and pride in that identity.
That's why my songs...
I try to make them as powerful as possible,
mostly just to make them curious about themselves.
We don't know anything about ourselves.
We don't even have
the pride and the dignity of African people,
but we can't even talk about where we came from.
We don't know.
It's like a lost race.
♪ Ain't got no home ♪
♪ Ain't got no shoes ♪
♪ Ain't got no money ♪
♪ Ain't got no class ♪
♪ Ain't got no skirts ♪
♪ Ain't got no sweaters ♪
♪ Ain't got no perfume ♪
♪ Ain't got no love ♪
♪ Ain't got no faith ♪
♪ I ain't got no culture ♪
♪ Ain't got no mother ♪
♪ Ain't got no father ♪
♪ Ain't got no brother ♪
♪ Ain't got no children ♪
♪ Ain't got no aunts ♪
♪ Ain't got no uncles ♪
♪ Ain't got no love ♪
♪ Ain't got no mind ♪
♪ I ain't got no country ♪
♪ Ain't got no schoolin' ♪
♪ Ain't got no friends ♪
♪ Ain't got no nothin' ♪
♪ Ain't got no wine ♪
♪ Ain't got no money ♪
♪ Ain't got no faith ♪
♪ Ain't got no God ♪
♪ Ain't got no love ♪
♪ Then what have I got? ♪
I really mean to provoke this feeling of, like, "Who am I? Where'd I come from?"
You know, "Do I really like me?" and, "Why do I like me?"
And, like, you know, "If I am black and beautiful,
I really am and I know it, and I don't care who cares or says what."
♪ I got my hair, got my head ♪
♪ Got my brains, got my ears ♪
♪ Got my eyes, got my nose Got my mouth ♪
♪ I got my sex ♪
♪ I got my arms, got my hands ♪
♪ Got my fingers, got my legs ♪
♪ Got my feet, got my toes ♪
♪ Got my liver ♪
♪ Got my blood ♪
♪ I've got life ♪
♪ I've got headaches and toothaches ♪
♪ And bad times, too, like you ♪
♪ I got my hair, got my head ♪
♪ Got my brains, got my ears ♪
♪ Got my eyes, got my nose ♪
[Nina] This is what compels me
to push black people to identify with black culture.
Giving out to them that black-ness, that black power.
♪ Got my heart, got my soul ♪
♪ Got my back ♪
♪ I got my sex ♪
[Stanley Crouch] Nina was a real rebel.
She didn't really fit
in the revolutionary black female role that was offered her.
She could avoid pretentious phoniness
and get more depth out of a song
than people are used to hearing out of those songs.
♪ I got my freedom ♪
She was a kind of patron saint of the rebellion.
[song ends]
[audience cheering]
[Al] Nina started to get more aggressive.
I remember one time as she walked right up to Dr. King and said,
"I'm not non-violent!"
And he said, "That's okay, sister. You don't have to be."
[Nina] I was never non-violent. Never.
I thought we should get our rights by any means necessary.
[Al] And then she met Stokely Carmichael.
Miss Simone says something very significant
in her song "Mississippi Goddam."
She says, "This country..." She says, "This country is built on lies."
You're gonna sit in front of your television set
and listen to LBJ tell you that,
"Violence never accomplishes anything, my fellow Americans."
And the honky drafting you out of school to go fight in Vietnam.
If you don't want any trouble,
keep your filthy white hands off our beautiful black skin.
-Keep them off! -[crowd cheering wildly]
[Nina] I am just one of the people who is sick of the social order,
sick of the establishment, sick to my soul of it all.
To me, America's society is nothing but a cancer,
and it must be exposed before it can be cured.
I am not the doctor to cure it.
All I can do is expose the sickness.
[people clamoring]
Are you ready, black people?
[crowd] Yeah!
Are you ready, black people?
[crowd] Yeah!
[men singing] ♪ Are you ready? ♪
-Are you really ready? -[crowd] Yeah!
[Andy] She wanted to align herself
with the extreme terrorist militants who were influencing her.
And after all of these meetings with all these people,
she would come to me and,
"Let's get the guns. Let's poison the reservoir."
All sorts of violent terrorist acts.
Are you ready to call the wrath of black gods... black magic...
[crowd] Yeah!
...to do your bidding?
[Nina] Black people are never going to get their rights
unless they have their own separate state.
And if we'd have armed revolution, there'd be a lot of blood.
I think we'd have that separate state.
Are you ready to smash white things?
[crowd] Yeah!
To burn buildings, are you ready?
[crowd] Yeah!
[Roger] At a certain point, Nina started to play
only political songs and nothing else,
and that started to hurt her career.
That became a problem to book her,
because promoters were a little bit afraid that
it might only be the political message that you were getting.
Are you ready to kill if necessary?
[crowd] Yeah!
Is your mind ready?
[crowd] Yeah!
-Is your body ready? -[crowd] Yeah!
[Nina] If I'd had my way, I'd have been a killer.
I would have had guns, and I would have gone to the South
and gave them violence for violence, shotgun for shotgun,
but my husband told me...
I didn't know anything about guns, and he refused to teach me,
and the only thing I had was music, so I obeyed him.
But if I'd had my way, I wouldn't be sitting here today.
I'd be probably dead.
Are you really, really, really ready?
[crowd] Yeah!
[Andy] She's putting down the white people...
[mimics dog] I mean, you know, like a barking dog,
but she still wanted all the good things.
Whenever she'd see, like, Aretha Franklin and Gladys Knight and all of these people
on the prime television shows, she, of course, was very upset because
she wasn't able to get on to these shows because of her reputation.
It got so that there wasn't that much work and the expenses were high.
It was cutting the legs out from all the work that I had done.
-See you later. -[crowd cheering]
I'll see you later.
[Lisa] I remember my dad
complaining about the fact that she never stopped speaking out,
but that's who she was.
It was okay when you were onstage.
It's okay 'cause you let it all hang out,
and then when the show ends and the lights go out,
"Okay, let's put the monkey back in the cage,
and eat your banana and, you know, just behave yourself."
It was like she was penalized and punished
for being herself.
That's a very painful, lonely place to be.
[tape rolling]
[interviewer] Good evening.
Tonight my guest in the studio with me needs almost no introduction.
She is Miss Nina Simone.
Nina, when it comes to the artists today, we find that more of the artists
are attempting to alert America to the need for change.
Is this really the artist's role?
[Nina] Well, I think it's something that, um, I have chosen to do
and I have felt compelled to do it.
So it is my role...
but sometimes, I wish it wasn't.
I think that the artists
who don't get involved in preaching messages
probably are happier,
but you see, I have to live with Nina, and that is very difficult.
♪ Baby, do you understand me now? ♪
[applause]
♪ If sometimes you see that I'm mad ♪
♪ No one can always be an angel ♪
♪ When everything goes wrong you see some bad ♪
♪ But I'm just a soul whose intentions are good ♪
♪ Oh, Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood ♪
I think 19 people depend on me for their livelihood.
That's a hell of a lot of people.
I know that if I say, "Well, look, I'm too tired to work tonight,"
I'm gonna get it from both ends.
Nobody's going to understand or care that I'm too tired.
I'm very aware of that.
Now, I would like some freedom, somewhere...
where I didn't feel those pressures.
♪ Don't let me be misunderstood ♪
♪ Cause if I’m misunderstood ♪
♪ All my life would have been in vain ♪
♪ And Lord knows I don’t want to come here again ♪
♪ So don't let me be... ♪
[Al] By the late '60s, I realized that Nina was fighting
demons that could appear at any moment and you wouldn't know it.
She could get violent, she could get really physical,
and the change in her would be dramatic...
boom, like a switch.
And I... I, after a while, realized that I was...
I wasn't with my sister, I was with "that one..."
and that one was... menacing.
♪ Don't let me be misunderstood ♪
[Andy] She was very concerned, in her sane moments,
about these fits of depression and anger.
We even went to Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital,
I think, signed her in for four or five days.
They conducted every test known to... medicine at the time
and they were unable to find anything.
[Nina singing] ♪ Give me a clear mind ♪
♪ Give me the words to say what I mean ♪
♪ Don’t let me be misunderstood ♪
[Andy] And her downward spiral, it just got worse and worse.
We did a tour with Bill Cosby,
and the last night, she became erratic.
She had a can of shoe polish.
She was putting it in her hair.
And she began talking gibberish,
and she was totally out of it, incoherent.
It appeared she was having a nervous breakdown.
And when it came time to go on,
I had to escort her by holding her arm onto the stage
and sat her down at the piano,
and I immediately stood in the wings on the opposite side
where we could see one another.
She's watching me pantomime and she performed.
Basically, she had no control over her emotions,
and underneath it all, sex dominated her.
There were times, once or twice a week,
when there was a sex attack when she goes into a maniacal rage.
There had to be sex. I mean, this is driving her.
[Nina] My attitude towards sex was that we should have it all the time.
[interviewer] How did Andy act towards you?
[Nina] I just wanted him to move me sexually, and he never was able to.
[interviewer] Right.
[Nina] He didn't know how to touch me and he never had enough time.
He'd come to see me late at night and be there two hours and leave.
[Andy] I knew that she was dating other people.
We agreed that we could both have our own outside partners...
but we would work together for the sake of the business and the child.
[Shabazz] I can't sit here and speak about Aunt Nina and Uncle Andy's marriage.
What I can say is that
participation and activism during the '60s...
rendered chaos in any individual's lives.
People sacrificed sanity, well-being, life.
Nina Simone was a free spirit
in an era that didn't really appreciate a woman's genius.
So what does that do to a household and a family?
Not because of income,
but because of your soul not being able to do what you need to do.
[gun cocks]
[gunshot]
[people screaming]
[announcer] Direct from our newsroom in Washington,
this is the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.
Good evening. Dr. Martin Luther King,
the apostle of non-violence in the civil rights movement,
has been shot to death in Memphis, Tennessee.
Jesus!
[sobbing] Jesus.
[Cronkite] There was shock in the nation's negro communities.
Men, women and children poured into the streets.
They appeared dazed. Many were crying.
[Stokely] I think White America made its biggest mistake
when she killed Dr. King last night.
He was the one man in our race
who was trying to teach our people
to have love, compassion, and mercy for what white people had done.
When White America killed Dr. King last night,
she killed all reasonable hope.
[Nina] We want to do a tune written...
for today...
for this hour for Dr. Martin Luther King.
We had yesterday to learn it, and...
so we'll see.
♪ Once upon this planet Earth ♪
♪ Lived a man of humble birth ♪
♪ Preaching love and freedom ♪
♪ For his fellow man ♪
♪ He was dreaming of the day ♪
♪ Peace would come to Earth to stay ♪
[Nina] Last year, Lorraine Hansberry left us, and she was a dear friend,
and then Langston Hughes left us.
Who can go on?
Do you realize how many we have lost?
Then it really gets down to reality, doesn't it?
Not a performance.
Not microphones and all that crap,
but really something else.
We can't afford any more losses. [voice breaking]
Oh, no. Oh, my God.
They're shooting us down, one by one.
Don't forget that...
'cause they are...
killing us one by one.
♪ If you have to die, it's all right ♪
♪ 'Cause you know what life is ♪
♪ You know what freedom is ♪
♪ For one moment of your life ♪
♪ What's gonna happen ♪
[people clamoring]
♪ Now that the King of love is dead? ♪
[audience applauding]
[sirens blaring]
[Nina] I knew that we were lost.
I felt chased all the time, no matter what I did or how sad I got.
I felt that there was just no life for me in the country.
I knew I had to quit or I had to leave Andy
or do something.
So I took my ring off, put it on the table...
and I left the country.
♪ I left a note on his dresser ♪
♪ And my old wedding ring ♪
♪ With these few... ♪
♪ ...goodbye words ♪
[Lisa] According to my godsister Attallah Shabazz...
I was staying with them, and Mom had gone away,
and the phone would ring and whenever it would ring,
I would go running, saying, "Is that my mommy on the phone?"
And then I remember going back to the house in Mount Vernon
and Dad just wasn't there.
He wasn't there.
And nobody told me anything, you know?
[stammers] And, um, so...
One day you're at home and the staff is there
and your dad's there and the dog's there
and everything that's familiar to you is there,
and then you come back, I don't know, weeks later
and... nothing's there, nobody's there.
♪ Don't look for me ♪
[Nina] I decided that I wanted to go to Africa to live
and never come back to America.
I got a divorce from Andy and I went to Liberia...
and I moved there to stay.
When I got to Africa, I am happy, I'm beyond happy.
Liberia is a place that was founded by the American slaves,
and it only makes sense that I should feel at home there.
I wore... Bikinis and boots is all I wore.
[woman] Yeah.
[Nina] Well, there was no loneliness. There was no boredom.
The days flew into nights,
and you just couldn't keep up with the times
'cause there was so much to do. It was always fun.
I also am keenly aware
that I've entered a world that I dreamed of all my life
and that it is a perfect world.
And I remember thinking of the United States
as something that I had had in a dream
sometime in my life,
but is now gone, like it never existed!
It was a dream that I had had
and I had worked myself out of it
'cause I had toiled so long in that place, in that prison...
and now I'm home, now I'm free,
and there is no going back.
There, it was vast and open,
and everything was natural.
Everything!
I have seen lightning in Africa not flash, but hover,
and what it does is it electrifies you into complete speechlessness.
I have seen it! I have seen God.
[Lisa] In my seventh grade year, Mom moved me to Liberia,
but she was always traveling,
and I never knew half the time if I wasn't going,
that she was leaving or when she was coming back.
So I lived with a family for a year and I went to school there,
and I lived with them
until Mom came and decided to buy a house on the beach,
and I went from living with them to living with her,
and she just...
I could never do anything right.
She went from being my comfort to the monster in my life.
Now she was the person that was doing the beating,
and she was beating me.
One time, we were in public somewhere, I did something, and she just...
she went off on me in front of everybody,
and I didn't show any emotion
because when Mom... when Mom would see you cry,
she knew she could push your buttons.
That's what she wanted,
and I would not give her that satisfaction.
When she would hit me, I would look her dead in her face...
and she'd be like, "You better cry. You better cry."
I wouldn't do it.
Times got really bad,
to the point where I thought about committing suicide.
So, when I was 14, I flew to New York,
and I wound up living with my dad and I never went back.
[Andy] After we broke up, a lot of things happened.
She didn't file taxes. She didn't take care of business.
She lost the house in Mount Vernon.
Everything went crazy.
[Roger] She lived a nomadic life, having no manager, having no husband...
but she always said living in Africa was the happiest time in her life.
She could just be there, enjoy herself. She didn't have to sing at all.
[Lisa] She wasn't playing piano and she wasn't performing.
She said she hated the piano. She hated it.
Think about it. She's playing since she was four years old.
[Roger] On the other hand,
she was very well aware that in Africa, no money came in.
So she had to pick up her career again.
She didn't want to return to what she called,
"The United Snakes of America."
So she moved to Switzerland, which was the complete opposite of Africa,
and the first thing she did was the Montreux concert.
[audience applauding]
You on yet?
Do you hear all those noises?
You didn't forget me, huh?
That's-- That's what's so wild, you didn't forget me.
I didn't expect you to,
but I'm tired.
You don't know what I mean.
And there are many people in show business who said,
"Oh, she-- You know, she used to be a star.
She's gone all the way to the bottom,"
and all kinds of crap which means nothing to me at all.
I hope that you will see me or see the spirit
in another sphere, on another plane very soon now.
And again, I don't wanna let you down and I get this feeling.
So I think the only way to tell you who I am these days...
is to sing a song by Janis Ian.
♪ Stars, they come and go ♪
♪ They come fast, they come slow ♪
♪ They go like the last light of the sun, all in a blaze ♪
Hey, girl, sit down!
Sit down!
[scattered laughter]
Sit down!
♪ Stars, they come and go ♪
♪ They come fast, they come slow ♪
♪ They go like the last light of the sun, all in a blaze ♪
♪ All you see is glory ♪
♪ But it gets lonely there when there's no one there to share ♪
♪ You can shake it away ♪
♪ If you'll hear a story ♪
♪ People lust for fame ♪
♪ Like athletes in a game ♪
♪ They break their collarbones and come up swinging ♪
♪ Some of them are crowned ♪
♪ Some of them are downed ♪
♪ Some are lost and never found ♪
♪ But most have seen it all ♪
♪ They live their lives in sad cafés and music halls ♪
♪ And they always have a story ♪
♪ Some make it when they're young ♪
♪ Before the world has done its dirty job ♪
♪ And later on someone will say, "You've had your day ♪
♪ Now you must make way" ♪
♪ Don't they always? ♪
♪ But you'll never know the pain ♪
♪ Of using a name you never owned ♪
♪ The years of forgetting what you know too well ♪
♪ That you who gave the crown have been let down ♪
♪ You try to make amends ♪
♪ Without defending ♪
♪ Perhaps ♪
♪ Pretending you never saw the eyes ♪
[Nina] In Switzerland, there I had no money.
I never got anything from Andy.
He just cut himself off from me and I was left high and dry.
So I left Switzerland and I went to Paris, thinking that I could resume my career.
I did it alone
and I landed in the wrong place.
I was working every night in a small cafe for about $300 a night.
[stammering]
[speaking French]
No, we just do "Vous Etes Seuls."
It goes like this!
[singing "Vous Êtes Seul, Mais Je Désire Être Avec Vous"]
[Nina] I was desperate and no one believed that I was there.
I was too big to be there. No one came to see me.
And I had fallen from grace.
I'm sorry that I didn't become the world's first black classic pianist.
I think I would have been happier.
I'm not very happy now.
I wouldn't change being part of the civil rights movement.
I wouldn't change that.
But some of the songs that I sang have hurt my career.
All of the controversial songs the industry decided to punish me for...
and they put a boycott on all of my records,
and it's, uh...
hard for me to incorporate those songs anymore
because they are not relevant to the times.
In terms of the civil rights movement, how far have we come?
There aren't any civil rights!
What do you mean?
There is no reason to sing those songs. Nothing is happening.
There's no civil rights movement. Everybody's gone.
[Gerrit de Bruin] I met Nina in 1967 and I've been her friend all her life.
She called me in 1982 and she was here in Paris,
living in a very small apartment, hardly with any money.
She did concerts of four hours long at Trois Mailletz, that nightclub,
and she got a few hundred dollars a night.
And that was the worst period.
I visited her in that little apartment and it was so dirty,
so I cleaned it all up and, "Nina, you can't live like this,"
but at that moment, she was still uncontrollable.
This thing in the Grand Hotel in Paris happened.
Somebody looked her in the eyes a bit too long,
and she was already a bit nervous and she kind of... made a movement
and I thought, "She's going to hit him."
Immediately, my arms around her,
and I dragged her out in a taxi and I said to the taxi driver, "Drive!"
[Al] When I saw her in Paris, she was like a street urchin dressed in rags.
I couldn't believe what was happening and I was really, really sad.
Gerrit and I, we knew something was very wrong,
and we were trying to figure out,
and like, "What is it? What is it, really?"
So Gerrit found her a condo in Nijmegen in Holland,
and Gerrit had a friend, a doctor, that he brought to Nina's place,
and the doctor examined her and asked her questions,
and he prescribed a medication
which was kind of new... new spectrum, called Trilafon.
[Lisa] It wasn't till I was in my 20s and I went to visit her in Nijmegen,
that's when I learned the term "manic-depressive" and "bipolar"
and I remember asking,
"Well, what is that? What do you mean by that?"
And her mood swings
and a lot of the things I dealt with earlier in life
when, you know, one minute she'd be happy
and then the next minute...
I'd be dealing with someone that wasn't in the room five minutes ago.
It started to make sense.
[Gerrit] She got so deep in the shit in the end
that she realized it's either dying or give in.
And she gave in because we said, "Nina...
we'll get you a house, we'll get you your musicians,
we'll make the things all right around you,
we'll book your concerts...
but you have to do as we say.
You have to take your medicine. You have to work.
God has given you the possibility to be able to do what you do, so do it!
The only thing we want to hear is either 'yes' or 'no.'"
And she said, with tears in her eyes, "Yes."
[Lisa] When I saw her,
I was very concerned because she had a... a nervous tic.
You know, she'd be talking or sitting and this--
Her mouth would always be twitching,
and when she would walk, it was more of a shuffle.
And I'm like, "What's going on here?"
You know, "Why--
What's going on? What am I missing?"
And they had her on medication.
[Al] She started taking the Trilafon and the doctor said,
"Through the years, it's going to have an effect on her motor skills.
Her voice is going to start to slur and her piano abilities will decline.
You can deal with that
or you can deal with her probably damaging herself or someone else."
But the Trilafon really helped.
I mean, there were times in Holland,
sitting on her terrace in these lounge chairs
and just holding hands...
I mean, she was like-- She was my sister.
...and not talking at all for hours, just enjoying the day.
[Lisa] And I suppose that medication enabled her to perform
and fulfill the business dealings that were taking place
so that her career could get back on track,
but there were times when I questioned that,
you know, "But what about her heart?"
Because at the end of the day, you guys got wives and husbands and lives,
but she's alone.
[Nina] My personal life is a shambles.
I've had a few love affairs and I would love to be married,
but everything has had to be sacrificed for the music.
[crowd cheering and applauding]
[Gerrit] We had to do, first in Holland, eight concerts,
and the word spread that Nina's doing the job well.
Then she was on the road again and it was... poof.
The business was going.
[Roger] She came onstage
and you had this overwhelming, emotional feeling
coming from the audience just because she was there.
Now listen to me.
I love you very much.
I think you know that and I know that you love me.
-I know that. -[audience member whoops]
[cheers and applause]
[Roger] And we never knew too well
what was going to happen and how the mood would be.
So this place is very hot and it's very crowded
and it's very ugly.
[audience laughing]
[Roger] But she opened her heart and soul
at that moment.
That's this special kind of connection she had with an audience.
This song is popular all over France.
It's from our first album...
the very first album we made in this world,
which is at least 25 years old.
I only wish I was as wise...
could have been as wise then as I have become now.
I have suffered.
But there's a Bösendorfer here, so we'll see what happens.
"My Baby Just Cares For Me."
She was helped by "My Baby Just Cares For Me,"
that song that became a hit because of the Chanel advertisement.
[Nina] And when "My Baby Just Cares For Me" came along, I said,
"I have to take this opportunity now to go all over the world
because this is my last chance."
And so I worked very hard to take advantage of my second coming
because it was my last time as far as I was concerned.
♪ My baby don't care for clothes ♪
♪ My baby don't care for shows ♪
♪ My baby just cares for me ♪
♪ My baby don't care for... ♪
♪ cars and races ♪
♪ My baby don't care for... ♪
♪ high-tone places ♪
♪ Liz Taylor is not his style ♪
♪ And even Sally Burton's smile ♪
[Lisa] And she was happiest doing music. I think that was her salvation.
That's the one thing that she didn't have to think about.
When she sat at the piano, her fingers could fly.
♪ My baby don't care who knows it ♪
♪ My baby just cares for me ♪
She was an anomaly.
She was a genius. She was brilliant,
and that brilliance shone through no matter what she was going through.
Even into her old age, she was brilliant.
♪ My baby don't care for clothes ♪
♪ My baby don't care for shows ♪
[Gerrit] She was genius. She could do whatever she liked.
And when she didn't have her medicine,
she, musically, could get even further out.
♪ My baby don't care for... ♪
♪ high-tone places ♪
In one of those little concerts, and it's recorded,
she starts playing one song and she sings another.
And this recording, I made Miles Davis...
while we were on tour, we were on the same jazz tour as Miles Davis,
and I made him listen to it,
and he said, "Gerrit... let me listen to it again!
How is she doing this?"
He couldn't understand.
♪ My baby just cares for me ♪
[Shabazz] As I got older, I started to look at her and I thought to myself,
"Wow, she's from another time!"
But she was not at odds with the times. The times was at odds with her.
I think when a person moves to their own kind of clock, spirit, flow,
if we were living in an environment that allowed us to be exactly who we are,
you're always in congress with yourself.
The challenge is,
"How do we fit in in the world that we're around, but we--
Are we allowed to be exactly who we are?
Was Nina Simone allowed to be exactly who she was?"
As fragile as she was strong,
as vulnerable as she was dynamic,
she was African royalty.
How does royalty stomp around in the mud
and still walk with grace?
Most people are afraid to be as honest as she lived.
♪ My baby just cares for... ♪
♪ He just says he cares for... ♪
♪ My baby just cares for me ♪
[Nina] Good night!
[audience cheering and applauding]
[Nina singing "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free"]
["Sinnerman" playing]
[song ends]