What Happened, Miss Simone? Page #2

than I had ever heard of in my life,

so I said, "Well, I'll sing,"

and ever since then, I've been singing.

Eunice Waymon was playing

in the bars to support her family

and to have money to continue

her classical piano training.

But since she didn't want

her mother to know that

she was playing

"the devil's music" in bars,

she changed her name.

Eunice Waymon became Nina Simone.

She named herself "Nia,"

meaning "little one,"

and she had a boyfriend

who called her "Nia,"

and "Simone" came from

the French actress Simone Signoret.

I didn't want

my mother to find out.

I knew she would hate it.

So I, kind of, kept it from her

for a long, long time.

Was it lonely for a young girl

entertaining in these strange bars?

Extremely. Extremely lonely.

Working peculiar hours, I imagine.

12:
00 midnight to 7:00 in the morning.

It ruined your social life, uh...

Never had much of one.

- Why'd you keep on with it?

- Couldn't help it.

I have to play

and I needed money.

It was always a matter of necessity

from day to day what I'm going to do.

I didn't even know I was

going to stay in show business.

I never thought about a choice.

From the beginning,

I felt there was something eating at her.

You know,

"What's eating at you, Nina?"

And, um...

gradually that got stronger.

The first time I played with Nina,

it was the summer of 1957

at a restaurant in New Hope, Pennsylvania.

She didn't look at me.

Said nothing, as though I wasn't...

I wasn't even there,

and started in on a song.

She never told me

what key she was going to be in.

She just started playing, and I knew

exactly where I was going to go with it.

It was like we had

a telepathic relationship.

Before you knew it,

we were just weaving in and out.

And then she looked up.

Al Schackman

is a terribly sensitive, creative man.

He has perfect pitch,

which means that

no matter what key I'm in,

he's able to adapt himself immediately,

'cause I do that all the time.

I'll change the key

in the middle of a tune.

Nina had a wonderful way

of taking a piece of music, and...

not interpreting it, but...

but, like, metamorphosizing it.

You know, morphing it

into her experience.

What I was interested in was

conveying an emotional message,

which means using

everything you've got inside you

sometimes to barely make a note

or if you have to strain to sing,

you sing.

So sometimes

I sound like gravel,

and sometimes

I sound like coffee and cream.

When I first saw Nina

at my club in 1959,

I was impressed.

She was different.

She mixed in folk music with jazz.

She played very fine piano.

Her voice was totally different

from anybody else.

It was a woman's voice,

but it had the depth of a baritone.

That depth and that darkness carried

the insight of what was in Nina's soul...

and it reached you very quickly.

She was an artist.

She was an original artist.

So we paid attention, and in 1960,

I put her on the Newport Jazz Festival,

and she was a hit there.

Her sound is so original.

When she first appeared...

she was one of those musicians who...

Once... You don't have to

hear them a bunch.

If you hear them once,

then the next time you hear 'em, you say,

"Oh, that's that same one

I heard last week.

Nobody sounds like that except her."

At Newport,

she was sitting on a high stool

with a tambourine,

and I was in the back.

She wasn't sure

she wanted to go through with it.

If I remember right, she was a little,

you know, "What am I doing here?"

And I said, "You're here because,

you know, you belong here."

And she said,

"Okay, Al, but you better play."

And I said,

"Don't worry, I'll play."

But then, if you watch during

her performance of "Little Liza,"

she has that little smile

from time to time.

She let go,

and it was really cute.

Then I recorded

seven or eight tunes

that I had been doing all of those years,

and of course, the public

picked out "I Loves You Porgy."

It was not pushed or promoted

to be a hit at all.

- Girls! Guys! Hi.

- Hi, Hugh, nice to see you.

Real good.

Eleanor, you want to, uh,

take Don's coat here,

and maybe you can show the girls

where the powder room is and bedroom.

Hello, there.

Very nice to have you with us

this evening.

This is Playboy's Penthouse,

and I'm Hugh Hefner,

editor/publisher of Playboy magazine.

I'd like you to meet someone that

I think most of you know, Nina Simone.

She came out of nowhere

in the last year as a recording star.

Now has a very, very big record in "Porgy"

that is breaking

all kinds of sales records.

We're very happy she could join us

- tonight on Playboy's Penthouse...

- Thanks.

And she's going to play and sing

a little bit for us now with her group.

Do you want to hear "Porgy"?

- Very much!

- Right!

Good, that's what we'll do.

Nina, there's a man

named Andy Stroud.

He walked into your life

and became a permanent part.

How did you meet your husband?

He came to see me at a nightclub

and a mutual friend introduced us.

Nina came to the table and sat,

and I was eating a hamburger plate,

and there were fries,

and she dipped into them.

And she wanted to know if it was okay.

I said, "All right."

We got cute and then she gave me

that card with a note on it.

Then I went over to see her at her place

in the next day or two.

How did you know that

Andy Stroud was to be your husband

and not just another guy

out for a date or something else?

That's a hard question.

He told me that he had

wanted to meet me for a long time.

And he had come for me.

I fell in love with him.

Then later, he scared me to death.

He was so, you know...

He knew what he wanted

and he just took over.

He abandoned his own career

as a sergeant of the police department

to manage me,

and for the first time, I knew what it was

not to be just floundering out there.

I just remember meeting Andy.

Here was a tough, New York,

you know, vice squad cop,

that when he stepped out

of his car uptown, people ran.

And he had... he had a way

of just saying one word...

"Hey."

and that could put

a lot of fear in people.

But Andy and Nina married in 1961.

He retired from the police force

and became her manager,

and he did well for her.

They bought a beautiful house

in Mount Vernon, New York.

We had a 13-room house,

four acres of land, lot of trees.

And Lisa was born

nine months later.

The first three hours after Lisa was born

were the most peaceful in my life,

and I was in love with the world.

And Andrew was there.

He was sitting right there, and he said...

I said, "How's the baby?"

He says, "How's the mother?"

And I loved him for that.

I loved being a mother.

I was a good mother.

I was a goddamn good mother.

I remember our house

in Mount Vernon

like the back of my hand.

It was like a fairy tale.

I remember seeing

the paisley on the walls.

The walls were kind of like a...

They were hued in gold,

but it really wasn't gold.

It was more like a muted gold

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