Her mother, a Methodist minister, and her father, a handyman and preacher himself, couldn’t ignore young Eunice’s God-given gift of music. However, we might not have had the chance to witness the breathtaking range of material Nina could cover if she hadn’t taken the path she did.īorn Eunice Kathleen Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina on February 21st, 1933, Nina’s prodigious talent as a musician was evident early on when she started playing piano by ear at the age of three. This site contains most of Nina’s finest works and press mentions. No one website can fully explore the many nuances and flavors that made up the more than 40 original albums in the Nina Simone library. Nina had sold over one million CDs in the last decade of her life, making her a global catalog best-seller.
Her music was enjoyed by the masses due to the CD revolution, discovery on the Internet, and exposure through movies and television. While thirty-three years separate those recordings, the element of honest emotion is the glue that binds the two together – it is that approach to every piece of work that became Nina’s uncompromising musical trademark.īy the end of her life, Nina was enjoying an unprecedented degree of recognition. When Nina Simone died on April 21, 2003, she left a timeless treasure trove of musical magic spanning over four decades from her first hit, the 1959 Top 10 classic “I Loves You Porgy,” to “A Single Woman,” the title cut from her one and only 1993 Elektra album. She was who the world would come to know as Nina Simone. She earned the moniker ‘High Priestess of Soul’ for she could weave a spell so seductive and hypnotic that the listener lost track of time and space as they became absorbed in the moment. She was the consummate musical storyteller, a griot as she would come to learn, who used her remarkable talent to create a legacy of liberation, empowerment, passion, and love through a magnificent body of works.
She was one of the most extraordinary artists of the twentieth century, an icon of American music.