Early in her career, to make a living, Simone played piano at anightclub inAtlantic City. She changed her name to "Nina Simone" to disguise herself from family members, having chosen to play "the devil's music" or so-called "cocktail piano".[11] She was told in the nightclub that she would have to sing to her ownaccompaniment, which effectively launched her career as a jazz vocalist.[15] After making her debut withLittle Girl Blue in 1958, she went on to record more than 40 albums up to 1974. She released her first and biggest hit single in the United States in 1959 with "I Loves You, Porgy", which peaked inside the top 20 of theBillboard Hot 100 chart.[8] Simone became known for her work in thecivil rights movement during the 1950s and 1960s,[16] and she later left the United States and settled in France followingthe assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.[17] She lived and performed inEurope,Africa, and theCaribbean throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.[18] In 1991, Simone published her autobiography,I Put a Spell on You (taking the title fromher famous 1965 album), and she continued to perform and attract audiences until her death.[19]
Simone was born Eunice Kathleen Waymon on February 21, 1933, inTryon, North Carolina; the sixth of eight children in a respected family.[20] Her father, John Divine Waymon, worked as abarber anddry-cleaner as well as an entertainer. Her mother, Mary Kate Irvin, was a Methodist preacher.[21] Simone began playing piano at the age of three or four; the first song she learned was "God Be With You, Till We Meet Again".[22] Demonstrating a talent with the piano, she performed at her local church. Her concert debut, a classicalrecital, was given when she was 12. Simone later said that during this performance, her parents, who had taken seats in the front row, were forced to move to the back of the hall to make way for white people.[23] She said that she refused to play until her parents were moved back to the front,[24][25] and that the incident contributed to her later involvement in thecivil rights movement.[26] Simone's music teacher helped establish a special fund to pay for her education.[27] Subsequently, a local fund was set up to assist her continued education. With the help of this scholarship money, she was able to attendAllen High School for Girls inAsheville, North Carolina where she graduated as the valedictorian.[28]
After her graduation, Simone spent the summer of 1950 at theJuilliard School as a student ofCarl Friedberg, preparing for an audition at theCurtis Institute of Music inPhiladelphia.[29] Her application, however, was denied. Only three of 72 applicants were accepted that year,[13] but as her family had relocated to Philadelphia in the expectation of her entry to Curtis, the blow to her aspirations was particularly heavy. For the rest of her life, she claimed that her application had been denied because of racial prejudice, a charge the staff at Curtis have denied,[30] particularly as African AmericansBlanche Burton-Lyles andGeorge Walker had both studied at Curtis.[13]
Discouraged, she took private piano lessons withVladimir Sokoloff, a professor at Curtis, but never could re-apply. At the time the Curtis Institute did not accept students over 21. She took a job as a photographer's assistant, found work as an accompanist atArlene Smith's vocal studio, and taught piano from her home in Philadelphia.[29]
In order to fund her private lessons, Simone performed at the Midtown Bar & Grill on Pacific Avenue inAtlantic City,New Jersey, whose owner insisted that she sing as well as play the piano, which increased her income to $90 a week. In 1954, she adopted the stage name "Nina Simone". "Nina", derived fromniña, was a nickname given to her by a boyfriend named Chico,[29] and "Simone" was taken from the French actressSimone Signoret, whom she had seen in the 1952 movieCasque d'Or.[31] Knowing her mother would not approve of her playing "the Devil's music", she used her new stage name to remain undetected. Simone's mixture of jazz,blues, and classical music in her performances at the bar earned her a small but loyal fan base.[32]
In 1958, she befriended and married Don Ross, abeatnik who worked as afairground barker, but quickly regretted their marriage.[33] After leaving Ross, Simone moved to New York.[34] Playing in small clubs in the same year, she recordedGeorge Gershwin's "I Loves You, Porgy" (fromPorgy and Bess), which she learned from aBillie Holiday album and performed as a favor to a friend. It became her onlyBillboard top 20 success in the United States, and her debut albumLittle Girl Blue followed in February 1959 onBethlehem Records.[35][36][37] Because she had sold herrights outright for $3,000, Simone lost more than $1 million in royalties (notably for the 1980s re-release of her version of thejazz standard "My Baby Just Cares for Me") and never benefited financially from the album's sales.[38]
After the success ofLittle Girl Blue, Simone signed a contract with producerHecky Krasnow atColpix Records and recorded a multitude ofstudio andlive albums. Colpix relinquished allcreative control to her, including the choice of material that would be recorded, in exchange for her signing the contract with them. After the release of her live albumNina Simone at Town Hall, Simone became a favorite performer inGreenwich Village.[39] By this time, Simone performedpop music only to make money to continue her classical music studies and was indifferent about having a recording contract. She kept this attitude toward the record industry for most of her career.[40]
While in New York, Simone became friends with civil rights and gay rights activists and artists such asJames Baldwin,Langston Hughes, andLorraine Hansberry[34], with whom she would also collaborate professionally (see below). She had a number of same-sex affairs[34] and at least one relationship with a woman whom she was in love with;[41] she noted being attracted to men and women in her diary[42] and wasbisexual,[43] but nevercame out as such.[41] In December 1961 Simone married Andrew Stroud, adetective with theNew York Police Department. In a few years he became hermanager and the father of her daughterLisa, but Simone later claimed that he abused her psychologically and physically.[11][44] Simone said that Stroud treated her "like awork horse" in an interview with the BBC in 1999.[17]
In 1964, Simone changed record distributors from Colpix, an American company, to the DutchPhilips Records, which meant a change in the content of her recordings. She had always included songs in her repertoire that drew on her African-American heritage, such as "Brown Baby" byOscar Brown and "Zungo" byMichael Olatunji on her albumNina at the Village Gate in 1962. On her debut album for Philips,Nina Simone in Concert (1964), for the first time she addressed racial inequality in the United States in the song "Mississippi Goddam". This was her response to the June 12, 1963, murder ofMedgar Evers and the September 15, 1963,bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four young black girls and partly blinded a fifth. She said that the song was "like throwing ten bullets back at them", becoming one of many other protest songs written by Simone. The song was released as a single, and it was boycotted in some[vague] southern states.[45][46] Promotional copies were smashed by a Carolina radio station and returned to Philips.[47]
She later recalled how "Mississippi Goddam" was her "first civil rights song" and that the song came to her "in a rush of fury, hatred and determination". The song challenged the belief that race relations could change gradually and called for more immediate developments: "me and my people are just about due." It was a key moment in her path to Civil Rights activism.[48] "Old Jim Crow", on the same album, addressed theJim Crow laws. After "Mississippi Goddam", acivil rights message was the norm in Simone's recordings and became part of her concerts. As her political activism rose, the rate of release of her music slowed.[citation needed]
Simone performed and spoke at civil rights meetings, such as at theSelma to Montgomery marches.[49] LikeMalcolm X, her neighbor inMount Vernon, New York, she supportedblack nationalism and advocated violent revolution rather thanMartin Luther King Jr.'s non-violent approach.[50] She hoped that African Americans could use armed combat to form a separate state, though she wrote in her autobiography that she and her family regarded all races as equal.[51]
Simone andWeldon Irvine turned the unfinished playTo Be Young, Gifted and Black byLorraine Hansberry into a civil rights song ofthe same name. She credited her friend Hansberry with cultivating her social and political consciousness. She performed the song live on the albumBlack Gold (1970). A studio recording was released as a single, and renditions of the song have been recorded byAretha Franklin (on her 1972 albumYoung, Gifted and Black) andDonny Hathaway.[45] When reflecting on this period, she wrote in her autobiography: "I felt more alive then than I feel now because I was needed, and I could sing something to help my people."[55]
In an interview forJet magazine, Simone stated that her controversial song "Mississippi Goddam" harmed her career. She claimed that the music industry punished her by boycotting her records.[56] Hurt and disappointed, Simone left the US in September 1970, flying toBarbados and expecting her husband and manager Stroud to communicate with her when she had to perform again. However, Stroud interpreted Simone's sudden disappearance, and the fact that she had left behind her wedding ring, as an indication of her desire for a divorce. As her manager, Stroud was in charge of Simone's income. When Simone returned to the United States, she learned that a warrant had been issued for her arrest for unpaid taxes (allegedlyunpaid as a protest against her country's involvement with theVietnam War) and fled to Barbados to evade the authorities and prosecution.[57] Simone stayed in Barbados for quite some time and had a lengthy affair with the Prime Minister,Errol Barrow.[58][59] A close friend, singerMiriam Makeba, then persuaded her to go toLiberia.[60] When Simone relocated, she abandoned her daughter Lisa inMount Vernon.[61] Lisa eventually reunited with Simone in Liberia, but, according to Lisa, her mother was physically and mentally abusive.[62] Theabuse was so unbearable that Lisa became suicidal and she moved back to New York to live with her father.[61][62]
Simone recorded her last album for RCA,It Is Finished, in 1974, and did not make another record until 1978, when she was persuaded to go into the recording studio byCTI Records ownerCreed Taylor. The result was the albumBaltimore, which, while not a commercial success, was fairly well received critically and marked a quiet artistic renaissance in Simone's recording output.[63] Her choice of material retained its eclecticism, ranging from spiritual songs toHall & Oates' "Rich Girl". Four years later, Simone recordedFodder on My Wings on a French label,Studio Davout.[citation needed]
During the 1980s, Simone performed regularly atRonnie Scott's Jazz Club in London, where she recorded the albumLive at Ronnie Scott's in 1984. Although her early on-stage style could be somewhat haughty and aloof, in later years, Simone particularly seemed to enjoy engaging with her audiences sometimes, by recounting humorous anecdotes related to her career and music and by soliciting requests.[citation needed] By this time, she stayed everywhere and nowhere. She lived in Liberia, Barbados and Switzerland and eventually ended up in Paris. There she regularly performed in a small jazz club calledAux Trois Mailletz for relatively small financial reward. The performances were sometimes brilliant and at other times Nina Simone gave up after fifteen minutes. Often she was too drunk to sing or play the piano properly. At other times, she scolded the audience,[64] so that manager Raymond Gonzalez, guitarist Al Schackman and Gerrit de Bruin, a Dutch friend of hers, decided to intervene.[citation needed]
In 1987, Simone scored a major European hit with the song "My Baby Just Cares for Me". Recorded by her for the first time in 1958, the song was used in a commercial forChanel No. 5 perfume in Europe, leading to a re-release of the recording. The song reached number 4 on the UK'sNME singles chart, giving Simone a brief surge in popularity in the UK and elsewhere.[64]
Hotel Belvoir,Nijmegen, Netherlands; Simone's apartment between 1988 and 1991 was next to this building.
In the spring of 1988, Simone moved toNijmegen in theNetherlands. She bought an apartment next to the Belvoir Hotel with views of theWaalbrug and Ooijpolder, with the help of her friend Gerrit de Bruin, who lived with his family a few corners away. Simone was diagnosed withbipolar disorder by a friend of De Bruin, who prescribedTrilafon (perphenazine) for her. Despite the diagnosis, it was generally a happy time for Simone in Nijmegen, where she could lead a fairly anonymous life. Only a few recognized her; most Nijmegen people did not know who she was. Slowly but surely her life started to improve, and she was even able to make money from the Chanel commercial after a legal battle. In 1991 Nina Simone exchanged Nijmegen forAmsterdam, where she lived for two years with friends and Hammond.[65][unreliable source?][66]
In 1993, Simone settled nearAix-en-Provence in southern France (Bouches-du-Rhône).[67] In the same year, her final album,A Single Woman, was released. She variously contended that she married or had a love affair with aTunisian around this time, but that their relationship ended because, "His family didn't want him to move to France, and France didn't want him because he's a North African."[68] During a 1998 performance inNewark, she announced: "If you're going to come see me again, you've got to come to France, because I am not coming back."[69] She suffered frombreast cancer for several years before she died in her sleep at her home inCarry-le-Rouet (Bouches-du-Rhône), on April 21, 2003, at the age of 70.[70][71] Her Catholic funeral service at the local parish was attended by singersMiriam Makeba andPatti LaBelle, poetSonia Sanchez, actorsOssie Davis andRuby Dee, and hundreds of others. Simone's ashes were scattered in several African countries. Her daughterLisa Celeste Stroud is an actress and singer who took the stage name Simone, and who has appeared onBroadway inAida.[72]
Simone's consciousness on the racial and social discourse was prompted by her friendship with the playwrightLorraine Hansberry.[73] Simone stated that during her conversations with Hansberry "we never talked about men or clothes. It was always Marx, Lenin and revolution – real girls' talk."[74] The influence of Hansberry planted the seed for the provocative social commentary that became an expectation in Simone'srepertoire. One of Nina's more hopeful activism anthems, "To Be Young, Gifted and Black", was written with collaboratorWeldon Irvine in the years following the playwright's passing, acquiring the title of one of Hansberry's unpublished plays. Simone's social circles included notable black activists such asJames Baldwin,Stokely Carmichael andLangston Hughes: the lyrics of her song "Backlash Blues" were written by Hughes.[74]
Simone's social commentary was not limited to thecivil rights movement; the song "Four Women" exposed theEurocentric appearance standards imposed on Black women in America,[75] as it explored theinternalized dilemma of beauty that is experienced between four Black women with skin tones ranging from light to dark. She explains in her autobiographyI Put a Spell on You that the purpose of the song was to inspire Black women to define beauty and identity for themselves without the influence of societal impositions.[76] Chardine Taylor-Stone has noted that, beyond the politics of beauty, the song also describes the stereotypical roles that many Black women have historically been restricted to: themammy, thetragic mulatto, thesex worker, and theangry Black woman.[74]
Simone assembled a collection of songs that became standards in her repertoire. Most were either new arrangements of existing standards or songs written for her by collaborators; only about ten of the songs Simone recorded were written or co-written by her, and three of her solo writing credits were for instrumentals.[77] Nonetheless, she owned her work musically, and many of her covers are taken as definitive.[78] Simone's first hit song in the US was her rendition ofGeorge Gershwin's "I Loves You, Porgy" (1958). It peaked at number 18 on theBillboard magazine Hot 100 chart.[79]
Simone's years at RCA spawned many singles and album tracks that were popular, particularly in Europe. In 1968, it was "Ain't Got No, I Got Life", a medley from the musicalHair from the album'Nuff Said! (1968) that became a surprise hit for Simone, reaching number 2 on theUK Singles Chart and introducing her to a younger audience.[85][86] In 2006, it returned to the UK Top 30 in a remixed version by Groovefinder.[citation needed]
Simone's bearing and stage presence earned her the title "the High Priestess of Soul".[89] She was a pianist, singer and performer, "separately, and simultaneously".[citation needed] As a composer and arranger, Simone moved fromgospel to blues, jazz, andfolk, and to numbers with European classical styling. Besides usingBach-stylecounterpoint, she called upon the particular virtuosity of the 19th-centuryRomantic piano repertoire—Chopin,Liszt,Rachmaninoff, and others.[90] Jazz trumpeterMiles Davis spoke highly of Simone, deeply impressed by her ability to play three-part counterpoint and incorporate it into pop songs and improvisation.[30] Onstage, she incorporated monologues and dialogues with the audience into the program, and often used silence as a musical element.[91] Throughout most of her life and recording career she was accompanied by percussionist Leopoldo Fleming and guitarist and musical directorAl Schackman.[92] She was known to pay close attention to the design and acoustics of each venue, tailoring her performances to individual venues.[30]Rolling Stone once said that Simone could "channel every facet of lived experience." Simone was often credited for her ability to express an expansive emotional range in her music, from immeasurable rage to limitless joy.[93]
Simone trained for years as a pianist and never as singer.[94] In a 1970 interview, she described her practice to Arthur Taylor: “In spite of my limited range and limited voice, I sang everything I heard. The piano helped because I have perfect pitch. I would play the songs in the easiest key to sing in, so that nobody could detect that my voice was limited. By the time I got into show business, I had studied the piano seriously for fourteen years, practicing for about six hours a day. I never studied voice, but I had been around people who had studied voice, so I knew a little about it. I just used whatever came naturally to me”.[95] Though Simone's voice registers in the contralto range, her real performance signature was not how deep her voice was, but rather her inclination to hold notes, "elongating them in dynamic tension with the progress of a song’s instrumental melodies".[96]
Simone was perceived as a sometimes difficult or unpredictable performer, occasionally hectoring the audience if she felt they were disrespectful. Schackman would try to calm Simone during these episodes, performing solo until she calmed offstage and returned to finish the engagement. Her early experiences as a classical pianist had conditioned Simone to expect quiet attentive audiences, and her anger tended to flare up at nightclubs, lounges, or other locations where patrons were less attentive.[30] Schackman described her live appearances as hit or miss, either reaching heights of hypnotic brilliance or on the other hand mechanically playing a few songs and then abruptly ending concerts early.[citation needed]
Simone is regarded as one of the most influential recording artists of 20th-century jazz, cabaret and R&B genres.[97] According toRickey Vincent, she was a pioneering musician whose career was characterized by "fits of outrage and improvisational genius". Pointing to her composition of "Mississippi Goddam", Vincent said Simone broke the mold, having the courage as "an established black musical entertainer to break from the norms of the industry and produce direct social commentary in her music during the early 1960s".[98]
Rolling Stone wrote that "her honey-coated, slightly adenoidal cry was one of the most affecting voices of the civil rights movement", while making note of her ability to "belt barroom blues, croon cabaret and explore jazz—sometimes all on a single record".[99] In the opinion ofAllMusic's Mark Deming, she was "one of the most gifted vocalists of her generation, and also one of the most eclectic".[100]Creed Taylor, who wrote the liner notes for Simone's 1978Baltimore album, said the singer possessed a "magnificent intensity" that "turns everything—even the most simple, mundane phrase or lyric—into a radiant, poetic message".[101] Jim Fusilli, music critic forThe Wall Street Journal, writes that Simone's music is still relevant today: "it didn't adhere to ephemeral trends, it isn't a relic of a bygone era; her vocal delivery and technical skills as a pianist still dazzle; and her emotional performances have a visceral impact."[102]
"She is loved or feared, adored or disliked",Maya Angelou wrote in 1970, "but few who have met her music or glimpsed her soul react with moderation."[103]
Simone was diagnosed withbipolar disorder in the late 1980s.[104] She was known for her temper and outbursts of aggression.[105]
Singer-songwriterJanis Ian, a one-time friend of Simone's, related in her autobiographySociety's Child: My Autobiography (2008) an incident in which Simone forced a shoe store cashier at gunpoint to take back a pair of sandals she had already worn, and another in which Simone ripped a payphone from its wall when Ian refused to pay royalties for Simone having recorded one of her songs.[106]
In 1985, Simone fired a gun at a record company executive, whom she accused of stealingroyalties. Simone said she had been trying to kill him but missed.[107] In 1995, while living in France, she shot and wounded her neighbor's son with anair gun after his laughter disturbed her concentration and she perceived his response to her complaints as racial insults.[108][109] She was sentenced to eight months in jail, which wassuspended pending a psychiatric evaluation and treatment.[30]
According to a biographer, Simone took medication from the mid-1960s onward, although this was supposedly only known to a small group of intimates.[110] After her death, the medication was confirmed as the anti-psychoticTrilafon (perphenazine), which Simone's friends and caretakers sometimes illegally mixed into her food without her knowledge when she refused to follow her treatment plan.[30] This fact was kept from the public until 2004 when a biography,Break Down and Let It All Out, written by Sylvia Hampton andDavid Nathan of her UK fan club, was published posthumously.[111]
Two days before her death, Simone learned she would be awarded an honorary degree by theCurtis Institute of Music, the music school that had refused to admit her as a student at the beginning of her career.[14]
The documentaryNina Simone: La légende (The Legend) was made in the 1990s by French filmmakers and based on her autobiographyI Put a Spell on You. It features live footage from different periods of her career, interviews with family, various interviews with Simone then living in the Netherlands, and while on a trip to her birthplace. A portion of footage fromThe Legend was taken from an earlier 26-minute biographical documentary by Peter Rodis, released in 1969 and entitled simplyNina. Her filmed 1976 performance at theMontreux Jazz Festival is available on video courtesy of Mercury Studios and is screened annually in New York City at an event called "The Rise and Fall of Nina Simone: Montreux, 1976", which is curated by Tom Blunt.[126]
Plans for a Simonebiographical film were released at the end of 2005, to be based on Simone's autobiographyI Put a Spell on You (1992) and to focus on her relationship in later life with her assistant, Clifton Henderson, who died in 2006; Simone's daughter,Lisa Simone Kelly, has since refuted the existence of a romantic relationship between Simone and Henderson on account of his homosexuality.[127]Cynthia Mort (screenwriter ofWill & Grace andRoseanne), wrote thescreenplay and directed the 2016 filmNina, starringZoe Saldaña, who since openly apologized for taking the controversial title role.[128][129][130][131]
In 2015, two documentary features about Simone's life and music were released. The first, directed byLiz Garbus,What Happened, Miss Simone? was produced in cooperation with Simone's estate and her daughter, who served as the film's executive producer. The film was produced as a counterpoint to the unauthorized Cynthia Mort film (Nina, 2016), and featured previously unreleased archival footage. It premiered at theSundance Film Festival in January 2015 and was distributed byNetflix on June 26, 2015.[132] It was nominated on January 14, 2016, for a 2016Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.[133]
The second documentary in 2015,The Amazing Nina Simone is an independent film written and directed byJeff L. Lieberman, who initially consulted with Simone's daughter,Lisa before going the independent route and then worked closely with Simone's siblings, predominantly Sam Waymon.[134][135] The film debuted in cinemas in October 2015, and has since played more than 100 theaters in 10 countries.[136]
She is the subject ofNina: A Story About Me and Nina Simone, a one-woman show first performed in 2016 at theUnity Theatre, Liverpool—a "deeply personal and often searing show inspired by the singer and activist Nina Simone"[137]—and which in July 2017 ran at theYoung Vic, before being scheduled to move to Edinburgh'sTraverse Theatre.[138] Simone is the focus of another play that premiered in 2016,Nina Simone: Four Women, by Christina Ham. This "play looks at Nina Simone’s shift from artist to activist after the bombing of the16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham and the murder ofMedgar Evers."[139]
As well as her 1992 autobiographyI Put a Spell on You (1992), written with Stephen Cleary, Simone has been the subject of several books. They includeNina Simone: Break Down and Let It All Out (2004) by Sylvia Hampton andDavid Nathan;[111]Princess Noire (2010) by Nadine Cohodas;[140]Nina Simone (2004) by Kerry Acker;Nina Simone, Black Is the Color (2005) by Andrew Stroud;Nina Simone (2013) by Richard Elliott; andWhat Happened, Miss Simone? (2016) byAlan Light.[141]
Simone inspired a book of poetry,Me and Nina, by Monica Hand,[142] and is the focus of musicianWarren Ellis's bookNina Simone's Gum (2021).[143]
In 2002, the city ofNijmegen, Netherlands, named a street after her, as "Nina Simone Street": she had lived in Nijmegen between 1988 and 1990. On August 29, 2005, the city of Nijmegen, theDe Vereeniging concert hall, and more than 50 artists (among whom wereFrank Boeijen,Rood Adeo, and Fay Claassen)[144] honored Simone with the tribute concertGreetings from Nijmegen.[citation needed]
In 2010, a statue in her honor was erected on Trade Street in her nativeTryon, North Carolina.[146]
The promotion from the French Institute of Political Studies of Lille (Sciences Po Lille), due to obtain their master's degree in 2021, named themselves in her honor.[clarification needed] The decision was made that this promotion was henceforth to be known as 'la promotion Nina Simone' after a vote in 2017.[147]
^"February Album Releases"(PDF).The Cash Box. The Cash Box Publishing Co. Inc., NY. February 14, 1959. RetrievedSeptember 26, 2019.
^Callahan, Mike; Edwards, David."The Bethlehem Records Story". Both Sides Now Publications.Archived from the original on July 27, 2018. RetrievedSeptember 26, 2019.
^Popoff, Martin (2009).Goldmine Record Album Price Guide (6th ed.). London: Penguin. p. 2123.ISBN9781440229169.
^abSmith, Maya Angela (2025).Ne me quitte pas: A Song by Jacques Brel and Interpreted by Nina Simone and Others. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press Books.ISBN978-1-47806-044-4.Simone never came out as bisexual but indicated having at least one sexual relationship with a woman, whom she deeply loved
^"Nina Simone".National Museum of African American History and Culture. RetrievedDecember 16, 2025.
^Ford, Tanisha C.Liberated Threads: Black Women, Style, and the Global Politics of Soul. p. 86.
^Feldstein, Ruth (2005). ""I Don't Trust You Anymore": Nina Simone, Culture, and Black Activism in the 1960s".The Journal of American History.91 (4):1349–1379.doi:10.2307/3660176.JSTOR3660176.
Bardin: "You've been married and divorced and had many romances. Do you still get around?"
Simone: "I had an intense love affair with a Tunisian boy last year, but I don't think I want to get involved for a long time again because he opened me up like a volcano, and it almost put me under."
Hunter, Kim D. (2003)."Nina Simone: And She Meant Every Word of It!".Solidarity. RetrievedMarch 4, 2020.In her late sixties, she claimed to have a 'volcanic' love affair with a young Tunisian.
Simone: "Yeah—unlucky atmarriages. Not so unlucky at love."
Sebastian: "Lots of love, few marriages?"
Simone: "Yes, two marriages."
Sebastian: "Why didn't they work out?"
Simone: "The music got in the way in the one where I married the cop from the United States [Andrew Stroud]. The music got in the way, and he treated me like a horse. You know, a nonstop workaholic horse. And the one in Tunisia—well, that was very hot, like a volcano. And his family didn't want him to move to France, and France didn't want him because he's a North African."
Sebastian: "And the volcano didn't last?"
Simone: "No, but it lasted long enough for me to never forget it, I'll tell you that."
Acker, Kerry (2004).Nina Simone. Introduction by Betty McCollum. Philadelphia: Chelsea House.ISBN978-0-791-07456-5.
Brun-Lambert, David (October 2006) [2006].Nina Simone, het tragische lot van een uitzonderlijke zangeres (in Dutch). Introduction by Lisa Celeste Stroud, afterword by Gerrit de Bruin. Zwolle: Sirene.ISBN90-5831-425-1.
Elliott, Richard (2013).Nina Simone. Icons of Pop Music. Sheffield, UK: Equinox.ISBN978-1-845-53988-7.
Hampton, Sylvia; Nathan, David (2004) [2004].Nina Simone: Break Down and Let It All Out. Introduction by Lisa Celeste Stroud. London: Sanctuary.ISBN1-86074-552-0.
Simone, Nina; Stephen Cleary (2003) [1992].I Put a Spell on You. Introduction by Dave Marsh (2nd ed.). New York: Da Capo Press.ISBN0-306-80525-1.
Stein, Jordan Alexander (2024).Fantasies of Nina Simone. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.ISBN978-1-4780-3070-6.
Stroud, Andy (2005).Nina Simone, "Black Is the Color...": A Book of Rare Photographs of Adolescence, Family and Early Career with Quotes in Her Own Words. Introduction by Lisa Simone Kelly. Philadelphia: Xlibris.ISBN978-1-599-26670-1.[self-published source]
Todd, Traci N. (2021).Nina: A Story of Nina Simone. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.ISBN9781524737283.
Williams, Richard (2002).Nina Simone: Don't Let Me Be Understood. Edinburgh: Canongate.ISBN978-1-841-95368-7.
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