Nina Simone in Comics

Nina Simone recorded classic love songs, like “My Baby Just Cares for Me” and “I Loves You, Porgy,” as well as powerful protest music, such as “Strange Fruit” and “Mississippi Goddam.” That probably makes this the perfect week to publish a graphic novel biography. That was good marketing strategy from the publisher. The editorial approach also works. There were many facets to the great jazz musician and vocalist, who originally intended to be a classical pianist, so twenty different combinations of artists and colorists illustrate her life-story in Sophie Adriansen’s graphic novel biography Nina Simone in Comics, which goes on-sale today.

Like many jazz greats, Simone (born Eunice Waymon) grew up in Southern poverty, gaining her first exposure to music through the Church. She had a prodigious gift for music, but even learning classical was initially a stretch for her devout preacher mother. Nevertheless, their community rallied to pay for her piano lessons and advanced studies.

In fact, her piano teacher, Muriel “Miz Mazy” Masisnovitch is one of the few decent white figures Simone encountered in her childhood. Classical music was her ambition, but racism and snobbery closed the best conservatories to her. Instead, she found work in studios coaching vocalists, which led to bar gigs, where she was eventually “discovered.”

Frankly, each and every one of the artists has a sophisticated style that shows a hip affinity for jazz. Artist-colorist Antoane aptly channels the vibe of Chuck Stewart’s cover photography for her debut album, Jazz as Played in an Exclusive Side Street Club in the section, “We Start Recording Tomorrow.” Artist-colorist Mademoiselle Caroline illustrates “The Devil’s Music” in in a New Yorker-ish illustrated style, but it still has a strikingly urbane sensibility. In between, artist-colorist Adrien Roche provides another standout passage in “Pivotal Figures,” which vividly evokes the mid-1950s era.

Le Cinema Club: To Be Free (short)

It isn’t easy portraying an icon like Nina Simone. Just ask Zoe Saldana. However, Adepero Oduye takes on the hardest part of playing Simone—her incomparable stage presence—and gets at the essence of the artist in her exquisite short film To Be Free, which premieres today on the new streaming service, Le Cinema Club.

Screenwriter-director Oduye’s short takes its name from “I Wish I Knew How it Would Feel to Be Free,” a song originally composed by Dr. Billy Taylor, which would be covered by many artists—Simone’s recording arguably being the most popular rendition. However, the song Oduye performs while assuming Simone’s persona is actually “My Way,” the tune penned by Paul Anka that became Frank Sinatra’s theme song. Yet, Simone transformed it into something almost completely different.

Heaven knows Nina Simone could be dramatic on stage—just check out her infamous and awesome 1976 Montreux concert if you don’t know what we are talking about—but in this case, Oduye’s Simone is performing in front of a hip and idolizing crowd at an uptown late-night jam spot. They get Simone and her repertoire choices.

Oduye is pretty amazing on the bandstand. Jazz fans will be duly impressed by the real deal music she creates with musical director Vicente Archer on bass, Kwami Coleman on piano, Eric McPherson on drums, and Shakoor Sanders on percussion. Yet, even though most of the film consists of her vocal rendition, but it is still very much a fine piece of screen acting (think of it as being in the tradition of Audra McDonald’s portrayal of Billie Holiday on Broadway in Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill).

To Be Free sounds terrific and it looks great, thanks to the mostly black-and-white cinematography of Bradford Young, who lensed big Hollywood releases like Arrival, as well as smaller jazz-related projects, such I Called Him Morgan and As Told to G/D Thyself. Clearly, he and Oduye were channeling the classic jazz photography of Francis Wolff and Herman Leonard in the way they frame their images and evoke an old school jazz vibe through the use of smoke and stage lights.

It is only thirteen minutes, but To Be Free is arguably Simone’s best big screen treatment yet, better representing her than even the Liz Garbus Netflix documentary. Very highly recommended, To Be Free is now streaming on Le Cinema Club.

The Amazing Nina Simone: There’s More to Her Story

She was an icon of the black power and feminist movements, but Nina Simone had also married a white husband and appeared on Playboy After Dark.  Few artists better represented the complexity and tempestuousness of the 1960s better than her. Classically trained but adopted by the jazz world, she eventually found crossover popularity with soul audiences. To use Ellington’s words, she was truly beyond category. Simone’s life, music, and cultural significance are surveyed in Jeff L. Lieberman’s independent documentary The Amazing Nina (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Yes, Liz Garbus’s high profile Netflix documentary recently started streaming, but there is always room for a new film on an artist of her stature. Ironically, her fiercer fans might just appreciate Lieberman’s film more than the earlier release, even though Garbus’s film had the backing of Simone’s family, whereas Lieberman’s did not. What Happened, Miss Simone? boasts a number of revelations regarding Simone’s mental health problems and her alleged emotional abuse of her daughter. It is eye-opening stuff, but maybe not the way her fans want to remember her.

In contrast, Amazing is a more balanced chronicle in nearly every sense. There is a good deal of material on her early life that will be mostly new to viewers of the earlier doc, especially her first marriage to the white hipster Don Ross, who turned out to be a lazy ne’er do well. We also hear how her defiant spirit manifested itself during her early childhood years. Clearly, Lieberman did his research, delving deeper into the circumstances surrounding her unsuccessful audition for the Curtis Institute of Music.

While daughter Lisa Simone threw her chips in with Garbus and Netflix, Lieberman’s production was not without its own Simone/Waymon family support. Most notably, Simone’s brother, band member, and former manager Sam Waymon is an enthusiastic participant, guiding viewers through the highs and lows of Simone’s life. He is a lively and engaging screen presence, who seems to be quite forthright in his reminiscences.

Simone’s longtime guitarist-musical director Al Schackman again offers his memories of the pianist-vocalist, which are always welcome. However, Amazing is further enriched and diversified by interview segments with Chinese Canadian guitarist Henry Young, whose stint in Simone’s band was relatively short but undeniably eventful. He might just deserve his own doc treatment.

Wisely, Lieberman never loses sight of the music, because for Nina Simone fans that is really what it is all about. If you think you knew her from previous documentaries or the infamous Montreux performance, it turns out there is even more to her story. It is richer and considerably more complicated. Briskly paced but appropriately sensitive when addressing delicate subjects, The Amazing Nina Simone should please the fans who were left somewhat cold by the previous film. In fact, the two documentaries supplement each other quite nicely. Recommended for all fans of jazz-soul-folk crossover music, The Amazing Nina Simone opens this Friday (10/16) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

Sundance ’15: What Happened, Miss Simone?

If you ever heard Nina Simone live, you should have been on your best behavior, because she could vibe an inattentive audience member harder than Keith Jarrett. In all honesty, anyone not fully appreciating her classically trained piano chops and deep smoky vocals deserved a bit of shaming. A forceful presence on stage, Simone knew what she wanted and maintained high expectations—fact we should all respect. However, the tumult in her personal life also contributed to her uncompromising and sometimes self-sabotaging public persona. Through extensive archival recordings and interviews with her closest associates, Liz Garbus paints a complex portrait of the jazz and soul diva in What Happened, Miss Simone? (trailer here), which screens during the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.

You could see Simone’s classical attack in the way she deconstructed and recombined standards into something entirely new and rhapsodic. Her great ambition was to play a classical recital at Carnegie Hall, but that path was not open to an African American child of the Jim Crow Yellow Dog Democrat South. She never really forgave America for that, even though she eventually played the hallowed hall as the folk and soul influenced jazz vocalist we remember so well.

Initially, she indeed had a lot of success with standards like “I Loves You Porgy” and “My Baby Just Cares for Me” and a strong manager in her husband, Andy Stroud. Unfortunately, their union took a sinister turn, with Stroud, the ex-cop, becoming increasingly violent as Simone became more politically radicalized. Although the late Stroud’s abuse is well documented in the film, he has a chance to speak for himself through never before seen footage shot for a prior unrealized documentary project. In fact, the film is remarkably balanced for a music doc, fully exploring Simone’s own abusive behavior to her daughter, executive producer Lisa Simone Kelly. It also suggests some of Simone’s late career scuffling was partly her own fault, as well as a function of her late diagnosed bipolar disorder. To Garbus’s credit, this is definitely not the stuff of hagiography.

Garbus and her producers tracked down a lot of never before heard interviews conducted for Stephen Cleary, the “co-author” of her memoir and an earlier aborted autobiography. However, the holy cats centerpiece of the film is the 1976 Montreux Concert (wherein Simone pretty much gives everyone what-for), which has been available in full on DVD since 2006. Still, Garbus gives more context to better understand the off-stage dynamics at play.

For music fans, some of the best sequences feature Al Schackman, her longtime guitarist and musical director, who survived a baptism of fire to become her close musical collaborator. That is what the spirit of jazz is all about. After watching Miss Simone, you will also probably find “My Baby Just Cares for Me” is stuck in your head, but that’s not a bad thing. Highly recommended for fans of jazz vocals, What Happened, Miss Simone screens again today (in an hour and a half) and next Friday (1/30) in Park City and tonight and next Saturday (1/31) in Salt Lake, as part of this year’s Sundance.

Nina Simone Live on Campus

Great Performances—Live College Concerts and Interviews
By Nina Simone
Orchard Music

Considering Billie Holiday’s sense of ownership of “Strange Fruit” and the song’s visceral lyrics, it remains a bold choice for vocalists. Of course, Nina Simone was not exactly a shrinking violet. As an artist who often sang socially conscious songs and deeply respected Holiday, it was in fact a logical choice or her repertoire. “Strange Fruit,” the grim protest song decrying lynching in Southern states, is indeed representative of Simone’s songs and philosophy, as recorded in Nina Simone: Great Performances—Live College Concerts and Interviews (trailer here), a previously unreleased treasury of Simone recorded live in 1968 at the University of Massachusetts and Morehouse College, now available exclusively on i-tunes, beginning today.

While Simone’s “My Baby Just Cares for Me,” remains one of the definitive versions of the jazz standard, it is not included on College Concerts. Instead, setting the tone is Simone’s funky “Revolution,” with lyrics like: “Yeah, your Constitution. Well, my friend, its gonna have to bend.” However, when a Simone interview track is played on top of the song, it is difficult to distinguish either. It eventually bleeds into the first of two version’s Simone’s distinctive take on “My Way,” reconfigured into an anthem of female empowerment. Other thematically-related songs Simone interprets include: “Black is the Color,” and indeed, “Strange Fruit” (accompanied by gruesome archival photos).

A classically trained pianist, Simone usually sings from the piano bench, but does switch off with a second pianist on the rousing “Ain’t Got No/I Got Life.” By 1968, Simone had refined her sound, seamlessly mixing jazz, pop, and folk, frequently backed by guitars and multiple percussionists. Her performances often had a stark, dramatic quality, like the particularly pronounced folk sound of “Suzanne.”

Simone was a close friend of Raison in the Sun playwright Lorraine Hansberry, whose work clearly inspired her music. Her rendition of the traditional “Take Me to the Water” is dedicated to the writer, and the title of her unfinished play directly inspired “To Be Young, Gifted, and Black,” co-written by Simone with her then music director, Weldon Irvine. In her 1968 performance, she dedicates it to the three hundred-some African-American students out of a student body of roughly fifteen-thousand, in what is probably the emotional high-point of either concert.

College Concerts collects some very deeply felt performances by Simone and also conveys a good sense of the time in which they were recorded. Like her 1976 Montreux set, her 1968 College Concerts is fascinating viewing both for the music it documents and what it reveals of her strong personality.

Nina Simone Live

Live at Montreux 1976
Nina Simone
Eagle Eye Media

Like Miles Davis, Nina Simone was renowned for her uncompromising stage presence. As Live at Montreux 1976 documents, Simone knew what she wanted, and was not reluctant to let stage-hands or audience members have it, if they weren’t with the program.

The 1976 concert is a representatively classic Simone set. Tunes like Langston Hughes’ “Backlash Blues” and “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free” are the kind of political statements (or tunes refashioned into political statements) that formed a significant portion of her repertoire. Nina Simone was another multi-hyphen jazz artist whose work crossed over into soul, folk, and pop. A tune like “Be My Husband” performed sans piano over her drummer’s rhythm exemplifies that genre defiance.

Montreux also captures Simone as a stern stage-manager. At one point she literally scares a soundman off the stage, when he has trouble adjusting her microphone. Towards the end of the show she breaks off from her encore of Laura Nyro’s “Stars” instructing a woman in the back of the hall: “Hey girl, sit down.” Watching Nina Simone at Montreux is always fascinating, although it gets a little uncomfortable at times, as when she keeps asking if David Bowie is in the audience. It is the full Nina Simone experience.

Montreux 1976 is nicely expanded with cuts from Simone at Montreux sets in 1987 and 1990. Amongst the “bonus” cuts are some songs most associated with her, including “My Baby Just Cares for Me,” “I Loves You Porgy,” and “Ne Me Quitte Pas.” Simone’s Montreux performances also serve as reminder of her skills on the piano, which are often overlooked. Simone was originally trained as a classical pianist, and that background is clear on her intro to “Little Girl Blues” and in her recasting of “My Baby” from her original recording which then enjoyed renewed popularity from its use in a Chanel commercial.

The cuts from 1987 and 1990 largely omit any talk between songs from Simone. However, we do see her forcefulness as she directs the audience in the proper way to sing the chorus to “Liberian Calypso.” It is clear Simone knew what she wanted from audience and musicians alike, and got it.

Nina Simone was a unique artist, well captured in these Montreux sets. Few artists had the command (literally) of an audience as she did. It’s quite a show to watch.