10 Things We Learned From New Nina Simone Doc
Filmmaker Liz Garbus was in the audience when Nina Simone performed at the 1976 Montreaux Jazz Festival in Switzerland, her first words to the audience being, “You don’t understand me, you don’t know what I mean when I say I’m tired . . . this is my last jazz concert and I’m graduating to a higher plane.” Garbus’ latest documentary, a Netflix original titled What Happened, Miss Simone?, is her attempt to understand what the iconic singer and civil rights activist meant by that declaration.
Garbus isn’t the first to do so, by any means: Simone wrote an 1991 autobiography, I Put a Spell on You, while several biopics have long been in the works (the first, titled Nina and starring Zoe Saldana as the singer, is scheduled to be released later this year). That is also to say nothing of Simone as an artist, who wrote “To Be Young, Gifted and Black” and skillfully reinterpreted songs by George Gershwin, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and Bob Dylan to reflect her own truth. What makes this documentary remarkable, then, is its voiceover testimonials from the subject herself and interviews with family and friends, offering smaller but illuminating details of how depression, abuse and stardom wore Simone down before her Eighties-era resurgence. Here are 10 things we learned about Simone from the documentary.
1. Simone was lonely as a child.
This biographical detail does make sense, given what fans of hers have known about early life. Simone has talked before about her rigorous classical music training – how she started playing piano at the age of four, then inspired her Tryon, N.C., neighbors to raise money for her to attend Julliard in New York City. Still, to hear both the singer and her daughter Lisa Simone Kelly testify to the sense of isolation she felt is absolutely heartbreaking. “Even when the kids used to play, they always just wanted me to play the piano for them to dance,” Simone’s voiceover says.
2. She performed for Hugh Hefner.
If anything, this archival footage from Hefner’s short-lived TV show, Playboy’s Penthouse, is a remarkable testament to Simone’s mainstream appeal from early on in her career, before her music became increasingly political. “I’d like you to meet someone who I think most of you know,” the Playboy founder says, before Simone performs her breakout version of “I Loves You Porgy” from Porgy and Bess. He is speaking to viewers, of course, but also the men playing poker and Playboy Bunnies who have gathered in his living room – an all-white audience.
3. Radio stations didn’t just ban “Mississippi Goddam” – they sent the records back.
The 1963 bombing of a black Birmingham church lent to the turning point in Simone’s career. She wrote “Mississippi Goddam” in protest, which turned her into a rare female black voice speaking on behalf of the civil rights movement. (“We all wanted to say it, and she said it,” comedian Dick Gregory says.) But just as these activists started embracing Simone, radio stations expressed their disapproval – not only by banning “Mississippi Goddam” from being played, as it has been said before, but sending back the records cracked in half.
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