THE OMNIPRESENCE OF NINA SIMONE

"You gotta believe!" A High Priestess Of Soul Beyond, Beyond....

When I wrote the name of the birthplace of Eunice Kathleen Waymon in the first newsletter from the then-newly formed Appreciation Society in the UK for Nina Simone in the summer of 1965 (at the age of 17) - typewritten with the same two fingers that I have used for penning millions of words since - the notion that my Life path would lead me to her birthplace, the town of Tryon, North Carolina decades later lived in a realm beyond imagination. You could say, “Beyond, beyond….”

‘You gotta believe!’ That excited exclamation of the High Priestess of Soul at once thrilled and terrified me during my first one-on-one encounter with Nina in the Wembley television studios of ‘Ready, Steady, Go!’ - the weekly music show that was required Friday night viewing for every Brit teen - as she prepared for her debut appearance.

‘You gotta believe!’ Nina’s emotive declaration remains forever imprinted and etched in my consciousness. You see, I have been blessed with an almost uncanny ability to ‘see’ key events with such vivid recollection that it’s as if my memory bank is a luxuriant canvas filled with faces and places going back, back in time.

Nina and I are ensconced in one of the dressing rooms assigned to the four or five artists who are appearing on the show, including another American artist, one Doris Troy, whose Mother Wit wisdom and counsel would go on to earn her a ‘hallowed’ role as my ‘godmother’ in the music biz.

Nina, five-foot-six with a Presence beyond her height, 32 years into her incarnation; me, a skinny bespectacled 17-year-old, just a year or so out of short trousers, virtually the same height and yet to develop a sense of Self that comes with Life experience.

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‘You gotta believe!’ As we sit waiting for the knock on the dressing room door from then-husband/manager, Andy that signals it’s time for Nina to head onto the set, music is streaming through the tiny speakers. For years later, I mistakenly assigned the version of Billie Holiday’s truth-telling tale that is “God Bless The Child” to the rock/pop group Blood, Sweat & Tears until a little research revealed that it was not.

‘Money, you got a lot of friends….when the money’s gone and the spending ends, they don’t come round no more….’ words of Real Life that would inhabit the fabled story of false friends, limelight lovers and jealous jokers.

Nina stands up and is whirling around the room: “Who is THAT singing Billie’s song?”

She demands an answer and I cower. “David, do you know, who is messin’ with Billie’s song?”

The pure passion and explosive energy she expresses scares the mess out of me! I profess I do not.

I learn later that it is The Righteous Brothers who have whose lovin’ feelin’ has made them one of the first ‘blue-eyed-soul’ teams to have Top 5 R&B hit among Black listeners in the US in early 1965. Nina’s fury at hearing the duo’s ‘take’ on Lady Day’s anthem might have been compounded if she had known their Biblically-associated stage name, righteous…. Hmm.

Nina’s irritation is grounded no doubt in her anger at white pop and rock artists covering the original recordings by Black R&B artists, think “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” her exquisite original that made no impact on the US charts and became a US and UK chart-topper by Eric Burdon & The Animals.

‘You gotta believe!’

As the song fades, Nina’s intensity does not. “Do you believe in God?” she booms, pacing around the room. Before I can answer what for Nina is a unequivocal and pivotal question - one that has never been posed to me before - she is insistent: ‘You gotta believe in God!’

Flushed red, I timidly respond in the affirmative.

I’m now in the presence of Eunice (later morphing-into-Nina), the daughter of Methodist minister Mary Kate Irvin and John Divine Waymon, a sometime preacher and her Faith is real, real.

Is it divine intervention, I might later ponder, that rather than perform what was then her latest recording (as I recall, “I Put A Spell On You”) live on British television for the first time, there isn’t time and instead, Nina is at the piano, treating the teen audience to a rousing Gospel number, “Children, Go Where I Send You?” I stand in Nina’s eyesight and the camera catches her smiling at me…

I have had my first live encounter with Nina, just the two of us, seemingly in a world with little outward commonality…and yet…I have already learned a Life lesson from Nina Simone that will become a bedrock aspect of my journey into adulthood and beyond: Faith Endures. And, as I observe Nina’s artistic authenticity, Freedom No Matter What.

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April 21, 2023, I journey to Tryon, North Carolina, witnessing the deep love and appreciation that Nina Simone has been righteously and rightfully afforded. With hearrfelt gratitude to Crys Armbrust who has tirelessly worked to ensure that Nina is honoured in the town of her birth and beyond, I look at the engraved brick bearing my name and that of my sister Sylvia (who continued to run the UK Nina Simone Appreciation Society in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s). I shake my head in wonder.

‘You gotta believe!’

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Almost a year on, I have the blessing - as part of my work as reissue producer - to put together a box set of the very first recordings of Nina Simone that were my introduction to the extraordinary depth of diversity that informed the choices of music she made for Colpix Records from 1959-1963.

The 8CD set, “Blackbird” with notes provided graciously by Aaron Overfield and Nia Hill is not, for me, simply a testament to the brilliance of Nina Simone.

These days, I often use the phrase ‘beyond, beyond’.

My soul-deep connection with Nina lives in the Universe of ‘beyond, beyond’.

‘You gotta believe!’

© 2024, David Nathan/Blue Butterfly Entertainment Lrd. (UK), All Rights Reserved