Princess Noire: The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone »

Nadine Cohodas is the author of several books, most recently Queen: The Life and Music of Dinah Washington, which received an award for Excellence in Research in Recorded Jazz Music from the Association for Recorded Sound Collections. She lives in Washington, D.C.

From the author of the acclaimed Dinah Washington biography Queen comes this complete account of the triumphs and difficulties of the brilliant and high-tempered Nina Simone. Her distinctive voice and music occupy a singular place in the canon of American song.
   
Tapping into newly unearthed material—including stories of family and career—Nadine Cohodas gives us a luminous portrait of the singer who was born Eunice Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina, in 1933, one of eight children in a proud black family. We see her as a prodigiously talented child who is trained in classical piano through the charitable auspices of a local white woman. We witness her devastating disappointment when she is rejected by the Curtis Institute of Music—a dream deferred that would forever shape her self-image as well as her music. Yet by 1959—now calling herself Nina Simone—she had sung New York City’s venerable Town Hall and was on her way.
 
As we watch Simone’s exciting rise to stardom, Cohodas expertly weaves in the central factors of her life and career: her unique and provocative relationship with her audiences (she would “shush” them angrily; as a classically trained musician, she didn’t believe in cabaret chat); her involvement in and contributions to the civil rights movement; her two marriages, including one of brief family contentment with police detective Andy Stroud, with whom she had her daughter, Lisa; the alienation from the United States that drove her to live abroad. Alongside these threads runs a darker one: Nina’s increasing and sometimes baffling outbursts of rage andpain and her lifelong struggle to overcome a deep sense of personal injustice, which persisted even as she won international renown.
 
Princess Noire is a fascinating story, well told and thoroughly documented with intimate photos—a treatment that captures the passions of Nina’s life.

The Washington Post - Louis Bayard

If you believe a singer's job is to sound pretty, you will have no use for Nina Simone (1933-2003). And, as this even-handed biography makes clear, she certainly would have had no use for you.

Prologue 3

1 Called For and Delivered - June 1898-February 1933 5

2 We Knew She Was a Genius - March 1933-August 1941 16

3 Miss Mazzy - September 1941-August 1947 29

4 We Have Launched, Where Shall We Anchor? - September 1947-May 1950 39

5 to a Fugue - June 1950-May 1954 48

6 The Arrival of Nina Simone - June 1954-June 1956 60

7 Little Girl Blue - July 1956-December 1958 71

8 A Fast Rising Star - 1959 80

9 Simone-ized - 1960 91

10 You Can't Let Them Humiliate You - January 1961-December 13, 1961 107

11 Respect - December 14, 1961-December 1962 121

12 Mississippi Goddam - 1963 133

13 Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood - 1964 148

14 My Skin Is Black - 1965 163

15 Images - 1966 182

16 My Only Groove Is Moods - 1967 195

17 Black Gold - 1968 206

18 To Be Young, Gifted and Black - 1969 222

19 I Have Become More Militant - 1970 238

20 Definite Vibrations of Pride - 1971 250

21 This Ain't No Geraldine Up Here - 1972 265

22 Where My Soul Has Gone - 1973-1976 275

23 I Am Not of This Planet - 1977-1978 286

24 Loving Me Is Not Enough - 1979-1981 301

25 Fodder on Her Wings - 1982-1988 314

26 Nina's Back ... Again - 1989-1992 336

27 A Single Woman - 1993-1999 348

28 The Final Curtain - 2000-2003 362

Notes 375

Nina Simone, Briefly, on CD/DVD 417

Bibliography 419

Acknowledgments 425

Index 429