What Happened, Miss Simone?

by Alan Light

  “I said, ‘Let’s go out commercially, make the money, and then you can contribute to these causes like the other artists do.’ And she thought that was a good idea—but the thing is, she would swear, she would promise, ‘Okay, I’m going to be good,’ then get onstage and go absolutely the other direction. She had no control over her emotions. When she got onstage, nothing else mattered. She had to do her thing.”

  But maybe Simone simply had a different vision for her work and assumed that her fans would eventually catch up. Her refusal to compromise or adjust her music to comply with genres and expectations had been working so far. She had finally found a sense of purpose for her music, something she had lacked since leaving the classical world. It seemed as if—however realistic given her newly confrontational style—she expected to bend the audience to her will, or at least to be able to proceed precisely as she wished with her music and still maintain their acceptance.

  The sense that she and Stroud were working at cross-purposes shows up in a letter, in which she indicated that even her feelings about Lisa were growing strained. In what would become a theme recurring throughout her life, she complained about exhaustion and proposed a temporary separation.

  Dear Andy—I’m sorry you feel so bad—you must understand that I understand (at least with the part of me that’s rational) that you couldn’t help it—you had been pushed too far with worrying over me, trying to keep up with my ever-changing demands + moods, living 24 hrs a day in a constant vacuum of crying, complaining, negativism and madness—And accept it for now—I must hurt someone—I can’t help it—I’m also pushed too far….Work most of the time is like a deadly poison seeping into my brain, undoing all the progress I’ve made, causing me not to see the sun in the daytime, not to smile, not to want to get dressed, not to care about anything except death—and death to my childish mind is simply escaping into the unconscious.

  Lisa is okay as long as she doesn’t want too much from me and is just content with my presence and letting me watch her at play…And I’m too tired to even talk about it. Why working pains me to this extent I don’t know—why I consider it my responsibility to “give” something to those people show after show I don’t know.

  so I’d rather it remained this way for a while…when I get to the place where I must have human contact, I’ll find you…I don’t wish to hurt you further so please try to do without me as much as possible until this job is over—to make myself perfectly clear: please do and go anyplace you like—However, when this stage is over I shall want a verbal report of where you’ve been and what you’ve done—Is that too much to ask?

  A note scrawled to herself on a record sleeve in September indicates that the issues with Stroud had now extended into their sex life:

  Do I want sex? yes, but why + how do I encourage it? do I tell Andrew now I want it—let’s go to bed?—So cold (so technical) if not, what and who stimulates me—(nobody for years)…

  Andrew calls me a coward—why—because I’ve never hit him back? Is that why?

  Despite this increasing strain, Simone continued to tour (she returned again to Carnegie Hall on September 20, this time opening for jazz trumpeter Harry James), but she was becoming more volatile. Schackman said that she was becoming aggressive with people on the road, starting arguments with strangers, and that he and the other musicians needed to start monitoring her behavior. She was aware of this problematic irritability and its potential consequences. She wrote in her diary,

  I can sleep when and if I choose I can stop picking on Rose—my bad temper is due to all the times there was no one to take it out on; plus I’m tired of teaching—but I must [not] justify it. I must try always to remember how I would feel in the same boat and forget the past—When I am working I must keep myself in a trance. Must have many things going on in my head to relieve me—must be quiet and let it out on stage only—Andrew will care for me more that way. If I keep this up, i will lose him—

  As these emotions were being churned up, additional turmoil for Simone was introduced when 1965 started off with profound loss. On January 12, thirty-four-year-old Lorraine Hansberry—Simone’s friend, inspiration, teacher, mentor—died of pancreatic cancer. Referring to the horrors of living as a black American, James Baldwin stated, “It is not at all farfetched to suspect that what she saw contributed to the strain which killed her, for the effort to which Lorraine was dedicated is more than enough to kill a man.” At her funeral in Harlem, the presiding minister read a letter from Martin Luther King Jr. celebrating Hansberry’s life. “Her creative ability and her profound grasp of the deep social issues confronting the world today will remain an inspiration to generations yet unborn,” he wrote.

  Fueled by Hansberry’s more radical political philosophy, Simone was increasingly becoming drawn to the black nationalist teachings of Malcolm X. Although she heard him speak several times, she said that she never met him. (Stroud, meanwhile, said that he had known Malcolm during his police days, when he was still a Harlem street hustler known as “Detroit Red.”)

  “I was always a Malcolm X fan,” Simone said, many years later. “I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X and certainly agreed with him. I still think that separation of the races in America is the best way to live. I think that now.”

  Then, on February 21, 1965—Nina Simone’s thirty-second birthday—Malcolm X was assassinated.

  CHAPTER 7

  Music can change your moods—Gospel music is as close to you as the nearest holiness church. It is most beneficial in helping you to cry or making you dance.

  The murder of Malcolm X immediately affected Nina Simone and her family; it was both a foundation-shaking reckoning about being black in America and an event that changed the shape of their daily lives and introduced them to new neighbors. In the tragedy’s aftermath, a group of friends and supporters banded together in search of a new home that could serve as a safe haven for Malcolm’s widow, Betty Shabazz, and their children. Congresswoman Bella Abzug’s family owned a house two blocks away from Simone and Stroud and offered it to the Shabazz family.

  “Mount Vernon was perfect for our family, short of the fact that my father didn’t make it there with us,” said Attallah Shabazz, the eldest daughter. “I have to say that the community gathered quickly in that small-town way. The global community rallied around our family. ‘Bring those babies in here, Betty,’ is what Bella Abzug said to my mother. So thank God for those kinds of pioneers. It still is one of the things that affirms my idealism—believing in people, but also having to get the work done.”

  The Shabazz sisters were struck by the neighborhood’s beauty, its sense of community, the chance to play in the street and explore the woods. They thought Andy Stroud was handsome and fun; when his sons Bucky and Renny would visit, they thought the boys were cute.

  As for “Aunt Nina,” the Shabazzes had no idea that she was a celebrity, just as they had no real sense that their father had been famous. But their memories of her are dominated by the music in the Stroud house.

  “I think of her at home in front of the grand piano, playing music and singing,” said Ilyasah. “We were so young, but when she sang these songs, you felt big. You felt like you had to make sure you were standing up straight. It made you feel happy and proud and there was something important, but you didn’t know what that was.”

  Attallah recalled music being created on an everyday basis in the Stroud residence. “Music, impromptu music being sung as a kind of prayer through the house,” she said. Nina might be at the piano playing an early version of “To Be Young, Gifted and Black,” but it seemed like just a regular day in the family’s home.

  There was no getting around the fact that Simone was theatrical, and she stood out, even in a community full of creative and progressive people. Attallah remembered looking out the window and seeing Nina taking a walk, dressed in a cape, hood, and wrap—not exactly typical attire in “provincial” Mount Vernon.

  When Nina toured, Lisa was quickly adopted as
a member of the extended Shabazz family. “All I know is that we had a new sister,” said Ilyasah Shabazz. “Lisa and I were the same age, and I think we called one another twins—because I really had twin sisters, who were the youngest, so Lisa and I became twins. She was number seven. I think that speaks a lot about my mother, to already have six girls and to not even think about bringing Lisa in our home.”

  “When you have a tribe, you have a tribe, what’s one more?” asked Attallah. “She even kind of looked like one of the Shabazz girls. She was a very pure, soft, joyous little girl. The backdrop of life had not hit her directly so hard.”

  The same could not be said for Nina. Just days after Malcolm’s assassination, Simone was again battling with her husband. Yet for as much as they fought, she battled even more with herself. Her diary entries spared neither of them.

  Andrew says I’ve been giving him hell for the last 3 weeks (more than usual). He says that I’m more blase and less passionate than I’ve been—when we met I was hungry and starved for everything….I don’t like being around Andrew all the time—I’ve never liked that—some of my faults are: 1. I [slam?] and [shout?] all the time 2. I fuck when I don’t feel it 3. Fight and argue 4. I blame him for my not having friends but I’m afraid to make new friends—afraid he’ll take them apart. Now that I’m famous I distrust everyone much more than I need to—I wonder how badly my father and mother’s failure at marriage has affected me?

  …Since Andy has been with me the idea of separation from him hurts too much so that I tolerate certain falsities about our marriage in order to hold on to this little bit of security—what is the security? the feeling of belonging—I need people to like me in order to like myself—I can’t seem to do alone—my ego and self confidence was shattered somewhere—

  Nina’s frequent arguments with Andy could be sparked quickly, even more so as a new divide began to open over her growing interest in the civil rights movement, which Andy viewed as an impediment to the smooth running of the Nina Simone career machine. “The argument today started because I wanted to do a benefit for Malcolm X’s wife instead of one Andrew had previously planned—” she wrote. “He told me I didn’t respect him—I told him my energy was limited—(he keeps a calendar in his head about our relationship) the fight got worse included faggots, lesbians, friends, sex or lack of it…”

  As nasty as these disputes might get, she continued working steadily on the club circuit. On March 16, she started another run of dates at the Village Gate, this time for a full three weeks. But in the middle of the engagement, on March 25, Martin Luther King led the historic Selma-to-Montgomery march in Alabama, and the Gate’s owner, Art D’Lugoff, agreed with Nina that this event was too significant for her to miss. He allowed her, Andy, and Al Schackman to fly down and appear at the all-star concert that would greet the marchers at the event’s conclusion in Montgomery.

  As if the situation they were entering wasn’t tense enough, they encountered further hazards during their trip south. They took a commercial flight to Montgomery, but as the plane was approaching the airport the pilot discovered that the runway was filled with trucks, blocking anyone headed to the march from landing. The plane was redirected to Jackson, Mississippi, where Stroud hired a tiny, four-seat private plane to get them to Montgomery.

  Andy and Nina sat in the back, with Stroud holding Schackman’s amp, while the guitarist sat, with his instrument in his lap, next to the pilot. As they took their seats, the weight in the rear was apparently more than the plane could take, and it tipped back, pointing its nose in the air. The pilot said, “Well, I don’t think we can take off this way,” so Andy and Schackman switched seats, moving the amp to the forward seat, and the aircraft’s weight was balanced enough for takeoff.

  The concert was held on a big athletic field, where rain had made everything muddy and messy. The stage was a huge platform with a scrim around the bottom. Schackman went to set up and asked Ralph MacDonald, Harry Belafonte’s percussionist, where he could plug in his amp.

  MacDonald told him to lift up the curtain, that the outlets were under the stage. Taking a step back, he kept an eye on Schackman. When the guitarist picked up the curtain, he felt a chill when he saw that the stage had been built on coffins, donated by the local black funeral parlors.

  The duo performed alongside such other artists as Sammy Davis Jr. and Tony Bennett. But nobody brought the fire that Nina Simone did.

  “She sang ‘Mississippi Goddam,’ ” said Stroud. “And seated in front of the stage, facing the audience, was Martin Luther King, Ralph Bunche from the UN, and a lot of other worldwide dignitaries. And when she screamed out ‘Mississippi Goddam!’ the whole front row turned around and looked at her in amazement.”

  “A number of stars came down and performed,” said Andrew Young, “but I think Nina Simone stole the show. And it was because her music so reflected the soul and the feeling of the people there.”

  Nina and Schackman stayed overnight in a hotel protected by federal marshals. The guitarist—in a suite with the likes of Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Sidney Poitier, Bill Cosby, and Leonard Bernstein—remembers being told to stay away from the windows, and recalls the men staying up late telling stories, maintaining a mood that was a bit giddy with excitement and fear.

  The next morning, they flew back to New York to complete their obligation at the Village Gate. “I wanted to stay down and help ferry people back from the march,” said Schackman, “and Nina said, ‘Come on, you done enough, now let’s go to work.’ That was unusual for Nina, but I think she wanted to get out of there. It was great, but it was extremely dangerous, that whole thing.

  “I think it was the first time that Nina could feel the vibe, the energy of a mass of people, the power of a movement. I think it affirmed her purpose.”

  While Nina was growing more confident in her activism, she became less certain of her marriage. Three years in, she strained to reconcile her complicated and contradictory feelings toward Andy—on the one hand, the love, the need for deeper intimacy; on the other hand, a lack of interest that sometimes bordered on disgust. This tortuous emotional whiplash played out in her writing. A diary entry describes a telling dream:

  a wild Beast of a man (fat and hairy looking like Andy) who we thought was normal before—whom she had been in the room with before—and who upon seeing her desire for me turned naked and came to the door of the room and I knew instinctively he was going to attack her and I couldn’t talk—I had knifed a little baby boy before who was trying to kill two of us in Bed (my sister, I guess) The woman coming toward me in the dream was white, golden haired and her eyes were hypnotic—I sensed that she didn’t love me either, but just wanted me in her power—I just wanted Andy (my father) to get there quick

  In another entry, she writes: “Dear Andrew—I resented you so much tonight I couldn’t even talk to you—but I want you to know I wish it were not that way—when the deal goes down, if I had control over my feelings, I would love you 24 hrs a day.”

  Although Nina’s love for Andy could be intense, still another diary entry from the same time shows her frustration and ennui:

  I live inside a cave of old fashioned rocks that refuse to budge when I try to get out. I’m trapped inside—I wish the work didn’t take up as much of our time; I wished we valued something else as much as we do money and work. I don’t “believe” in money any more than I do other things but I’m just going along because Andy says I should to show faith in him never mind if I’m tired, bored and frustrated—just go along with him to prove I trust him. I try—but i ain’t got no faith but he’s thee 2nd man in my life that made me feel like a woman so I’m grateful. Consequently, I whip myself into going along with him. I don’t believe him. I don’t believe anybody.

  While her relationship with Andy had its ups and downs, Nina was also using her diary as a space to think about lifting herself out of those depressive moments. Around this time, she wrote ten “rules to remember in controlling [her] life�
� there. Some were simple maxims (“6. Plan your work—work your plan”; “8. you have always been where you ought to be”). Others revealed an insightful understanding of her own character and proposed strategies for counteracting her more negative impulses (“9. Keep in touch with Friends. They are valuable, As you are A loner by nature”). The tenth and last “rule” (“Do not anticipate Negativism in Any form—especially in something you want to do or something you say—remember you have the power to influence Andrew’s reaction & attitude toward you by the way you Act & your Attitude At the time. But what you project comes first”) revealed that she knew how her downbeat energy could affect her relationship.

  Despite the ongoing tumult in her personal life, Nina’s career continued to thrive. In June, she released I Put a Spell on You, one of her poppiest-sounding and best-known albums. With swinging arrangements featuring brass and strings, the record included not only the title track (her much-loved reading of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’s roof-raising plea) but also Jacques Brel’s “Ne Me Quitte Pas,” which would become a Simone concert staple, and her take on the Broadway number “Feeling Good.” Though there were no original compositions on the album, there were two songs written by guitarist Rudy Stevenson and two credited to Andrew Stroud.

  The album grazed the Top 100, but in England—where her theatricality may have fit more easily into the “music hall” tradition—it was a Top 20 hit, and “I Put a Spell on You” reached number 49 as a single. On top of this success, Simone was also entering the most prolific recording period of her career: over the next three years, she released eight albums, including much of her finest studio work.