“The songs on this album”: Ntozake Shange, liner notes to A Single Woman, Elektra, 1993, CD.
“A Single Woman aims to do nothing more”: Arion Berger, album review, Rolling Stone, November 11, 1993.
“Don’t like it”: NS, interview by Stephen Cleary, May 23, 1990.
“I don’t want to be alive”: NS, interview by Stephen Cleary, November 10, 1989.
CHAPTER 15
“To be a Christian”: Nina Simone (NS), interview by Mary Martin Niepold, August 14, 1980.
“No, the medicine is downing me”: Gerrit De Bruin, interview by Liz Garbus, March 26, 2014.
“I took the plane”: Ibid.
“She would think that she was cured”: Raymond Gonzalez, interview by Liz Garbus, March 25, 2014.
“something bad happened”: Roger Nupie, interview by Liz Garbus, March 26, 2014.
“She was all alone in the house”: Ibid.
“It’s the one time on record”: Andrew Stroud, interview by Joe Hagan, 2009.
“With the sense of humor”: Clifton Henderson, Nina Simone Live in Brazil, transcript, 2000.
“Clifton cooked for her”: Gerrit De Bruin, interview by Liz Garbus, March 26, 2014.
“Gradually, he took over”: Al Schackman, interview by Liz Garbus, March 26, 2014.
“It’s the old Hollywood story”: Ibid.
“That was not the Nina that I knew”: Gerrit De Bruin, interview by Liz Garbus, March 26, 2014.
“It became very difficult”: Roger Nupie, interview by Liz Garbus, March 26, 2014.
“management and booking services”: Songwriter’s Market ’94 (Cincinnati, OH: Writer’s Digest Books, 1993).
“very angry and violent”: NS in recorded phone call to Rusty Michael, 1990s.
“I’m an excellent negotiator”: Rusty Michael in recorded phone call with NS, 1990s.
“ain’t got no more money”: NS in recorded phone call to Rusty Michael, 1990s.
“like Bill Cosby”: Ibid.
“I told him not to change his hair”: Ibid.
“It was awesome”: Libby Brooks, “Sole Survivor,” Guardian, August 6, 2001, http://www.theguardian.com/g2/story/0,3604,532415,00.html.
“My music is first in my life”: NS, appearance on Tim Sebastian (host), Hard Talk (TV program, BBC), March 25, 1999.
“Nina was very much into that”: Gerrit De Bruin, interview by Liz Garbus, March 26, 2014.
“That’s your problem”: Roger Nupie, interview by Liz Garbus, March 26, 2014.
“There was a time”: Al Schackman, interview by Joe Hagan, 2009.
“To me, Nina was very open”: Gerrit De Bruin, interview by Liz Garbus, March 26, 2014.
“I want the opportunity”: NS, interview by Mary Martin Niepold, August 14, 1980.
“She started saying all kinds of mean things”: Lisa Simone Kelly, interview by Liz Garbus, April 10, 2014.
“I went to the bar”: Gerrit De Bruin, interview by Liz Garbus, March 26, 2014.
“When my daughter was born”: Lisa Simone Kelly, interview by Liz Garbus, April 10, 2014.
“She was sitting in a wheelchair”: Nick Cave, appearance on Melvyn Bragg (host), The South Bank Show (TV program, ITV [UK]), 2003, YouTube video, 2:08, posted by Andy Lynn, July 30, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zkwj2JwB7w.
“The last concert in Paris”: Roger Nupie, interview by Liz Garbus, March 26, 2014.
“That last time was absolutely fantastic”: George Wein, interview by Liz Garbus, March 14, 2014.
“Good night—now go home”: NS, quoted by Wein, ibid.
“She was happy that night”: Ibid.
“She talked about Martin Luther King”: Roger Nupie, interview by Liz Garbus, March 26, 2014.
“All of us just froze”: Lisa Simone Kelly, interview by Liz Garbus, April 10, 2014.
“Miss Revolutionary”: Ibid.
“She was in good spirits”: Ibid.
“When she would feel like a regular lady”: Attallah Shabazz, interview by Liz Garbus, May 16, 2014.
“She kind of saw it coming”: Ibid.
“She had cancer for a long time”: Lisa Simone Kelly, interview by Liz Garbus, April 10, 2014.
“My mother had had two or three strokes”: Ibid.
“She managed to die”: Gerrit De Bruin, interview by Liz Garbus, March 26, 2014.
“ ‘Nina, I love you’ ”: Al Schackman, interview by Liz Garbus, March 26, 2014.
“She was a great artist”: “Jazz Great Nina Simone Buried,” Billboard, April 25, 2003.
“Nina Simone was a part of history”: Ibid.
“Are you still as temperamental?”: Nina Simone: A Tribute (TV program, BBC), July 17, 2003.
Bibliographical Sources
ARCHIVED LETTERS AND DIARIES
Nina Simone—diaries, 1961–1969; miscellaneous undated entries
Nina Simone—letters to Andrew Stroud, 1961–1969
PRIVATE TRANSCRIPTS OF INTERVIEWS
By Stephen Cleary
Leopoldo Fleming—1990
Frances Fox—January 3, 1990
Raymond Gonzales—November 2, 1989
Jackie (Nina’s assistant)—July 7 and 8, 1989
Roger Nupie—December 6, 1989; April 11, 1990
Al Schackman—April 11, 1990; December 21, 1990
Nina Simone
April 4, 1989
July 4, 5, 8, 9, and 10, 1989
August 21, 1989
October 29, 30, and 31, 1989
November 6 and 10, 1989
December 6, 1989
no exact date, 1989
May 22, 23, 25, 25, 27, and 30, 1990
no exact date, 1990
(with Al Schackman) July 5 and 6, 1989; December 21, 1990
(with Andrew Young and Stanley Wise) January 6, 1990
Carrol Waymon—February 4, 1990
By Mary Anne Evans
Nina Simone—1984
Stanley Crouch—May 16, 2014
Gerrit De Bruin—March 26, 2014
Leopoldo Fleming—April 10, 2014
Raymond Gonzalez—March 25, 2014
Dick Gregory—March 14, 2014
Lisa Simone Kelly—April 10, 2014
Roger Nupie—March 26, 2014
Paul Robinson—March 25, 2014
Al Schackman—March 26, 2014
Attallah Shabazz—May 16, 2014
Ilyasah Shabazz—May 16, 2014
George Wein—March 14, 2014
Group interview: Gerrit De Bruin, Raymond Gonzalez, Roger Nupie, Paul Robinson, and Al Schackman—March 25, 2014
By Joe Hagan
Al Schackman—2009
Andrew Stroud—2009
By Alan Light
John Lydon—May 1, 2015
Pete Townshend—May 29, 2015
By Mary Martin Niepold
Nina Simone
May 7, 8, and 14, 1980
August 6, 14, and 16, 1980
No exact date, 1980
By Kiilu Nyasha
Nina Simone—1986
By Lisa Simone
Andrew Stroud, 2000s
By Rusty Michaels
Nina Simone, telephone conversations, 1990s
TV AND RADIO INTERVIEWS
Nick Cave
Melvyn Bragg (host), The South Bank Show (TV program, ITV [UK]), August 10, 2003, YouTube video, 2:08, posted by Andy Lynn, July 30, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zkwj2JwB7w
Nina Simone
Steve Allen (host), The Steve Allen Show (TV program, ABC), September 3 and September 10, 1964
Pauline Black (host), Black on Black (TV program, Channel 4, UK), 1984
Come Together with Nina Simone: Black Gold Interview LP (interview LP released at the same time as the LP Black Gold and sent to select radio stations to be played as if it were live), 1970
Tim Graham (host), Wired (TV program, Channel 4, UK), 1988
Greg Gumbel an
Dick Hubert (host), Celebrity’s Choice (radio program, WABC), November 12, 1967
Institut national de l’audiovisuel (INA), Nina Simone à Paris, October 23, 1991, concert and TV interview footage, http://www.ina.fr/video/CAC91059386/nina-simone-a-paris-video.html
Eric Kulberg (host), Jazz Now (radio program, WAMU), May 1966
Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan (hosts), This Morning (TV program, ITV [UK]), 1991; bonus feature on the DVD of the BBC program Nina Simone: A Tribute
Sid Mark (host), The Mark of Jazz (radio program, WHAT), 1967
Mavis Nicholson, An Afternoon with Mavis Nicholson (TV program, Channel 4, UK), 1984
Ève Ruggiéri (host), “Les voix noires,” Musiques au coeur (radio program, France 2), October 23, 1991
Tom Schnabel (host), Morning Becomes Eclectic (radio program, KCRW), February 20, 1985
Tim Sebastian (host), Hard Talk (TV program, BBC), March 25, 1999
Del Shields (host), Night Call (radio program, WRVR), May 6, 1969
Sam Waymon
Lynn Neary (host), “ ‘Why?’: Remembering Nina Simone’s Tribute to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.,” Weekend Edition (radio program, NPR), April 6, 2008
FILMS/DVDS
Nina, documentary short (24 min.), dir. Joel Gold, prod. Peter Rodis, 1970
Nina Simone: A Tribute (TV program, BBC), July 17, 2003, released as DVD, BBC, 2003
Nina Simone Great Performances: College Concerts and Interviews (DVD), dir. and prod. Andy Stroud, concert and interview footage from the late 1960s, released as DVD in 2009
Nina Simone: La légende, TV movie (documentary), dir. Frank Lords, prod. La Sept, System TV, and BBC (1991 interviews with Carrol Waymon, Mary Kate Waymon, Vladimir Sokoloff, Sam Waymon, Art D’Lugoff, Stanley Wise, unnamed Village Gate bouncer, Ron Delsener, Andrew Young, Gerrit De Bruin, Lisa Simone Kelly, and Nina Simone), 1992
Nina Simone Live at Ronnie Scott’s, London, 1984 performance and interview segments, Quantum Leap, 2003, DVD
Acknowledgments
The genesis of this book was a bit unconventional. It was conceived as a companion to Liz Garbus’s remarkable documentary What Happened, Miss Simone? and I was initially approached about writing it after that film had already been completed. The understanding was that I would be given access to the astonishing research that Liz and her team had done—the new interviews, as well as an extensive trove of archival material, including Nina Simone’s diaries and letters and the transcripts from her various attempts at a memoir—and as they had made a movie out of all this, I would create a book. The raw files were so powerful and so thorough that it only made me respect the editing and crafting that Liz did even more, and left me with the responsibility of trying to fill in the story and connect the dots beyond what could be done in a 102-minute film.
So thanks must first go to Liz Garbus and the rest of her documentary team for the impressive research from which these pages were drawn. Justin Wilkes, Amy Hobby, Jayson Jackson, Lisa Nishimura, Adam Del Deo, Sidney Beaumont, Jon Kamen, Cindy Holland, Ted Sarantos, Josh Pearson, Joan Aceste, Steven Ames Brown, Talia Gerecitano, Maura Wogan, Adrienne Collatos, and Meghan Schale all contributed immeasurably to this project. And the book only exists because of the original conversations and reporting done by dozens of journalists, but the work of Stephen Cleary, Mary Niepold, Mary Anne Evans, and Joe Hagan was especially crucial.
Kevin Doughten at Crown Archetype has been a friend for a few years, and he was the one who offered me this fantastic opportunity and humbling assignment, and then guided me toward wrestling Simone’s story into coherent shape. Claire Potter provided invaluable assistance shaping and clarifying such a complicated and emotional tale. Thank you to Elisabeth Magnus for thoughtful and deft copyediting.
Thanks always to Sarah Lazin, agent and wise adviser. My gratitude to the New York City Public Library system and to the DTUT coffee shop, where many of these words were written.
Suzanne and Adam, I love you so very much.
About the Author
A veteran music journalist, ALAN LIGHT is the author of The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley and the Unlikely Ascent of “Hallelujah” and Let’s Go Crazy: Prince and the Making of Purple Rain. A frequent contributor to the New York Times, Light was previously the editor in chief of Vibe and Spin and a senior writer for Rolling Stone.
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