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Happy birthday, Nina Simone

Take a look back at the life and legacy of an iconic artist and activist

21 February 2026

Today, on what would have been Nina Simone’s 93rd birthday, we’re dedicating the ROLI blog to reflecting on the American singer, pianist, songwriter, and activist’s life, work, and legacy.

Simone was born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in segregated North Carolina in 1933 to Mary Kate Irvin, a Methodist preacher, and John Divine Waymon, a barber and dry-cleaner who had previously worked as an entertainer. She showed a prodigious aptitude for piano as young as three years old, and quickly began performing at various local churches.

A notable incident from this time, recounted by Simone in the Netflix documentary What Happened, Miss Simone?, saw her parents being asked to sit at the back of the room while she performed a recital in a white-only church. Displaying an early glimpse of the conviction that she later became known for, the young pianist refused to play unless they were moved to the front, which they eventually were.

In attendance at one of these early church recitals was an English piano teacher, Muriel Mazzanovich, who recognised the talent on display and took Simone under her wing, fostering a lifelong love of Chopin, Brahms, Beethoven, and especially Bach.

Following a period of training with Mazzanovich, Simone earned a one-year scholarship to Juilliard School in New York and used her time there to prepare for the entrance examination to the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. She took the exam, but was not offered a place at the school. This rejection, Simone maintained, was not due to her performance but rather the fact that she was African American.

Forced to find work but unable to contemplate a career outside of music, Simone began playing piano in Philadelphia’s nightclubs. She adopted her stage name (a combination of “Niña”, the nickname given to her by her then-boyfriend, and “Simone” after French actress Simone Signoret) around this time in an effort to prevent her mother from finding out what kind of music she was playing, and in which kinds of venues.

Simone’s earliest musical ambition was to become America’s first Black classical concert pianist. Not only did her late shifts in Philadelphia see her playing an entirely different kind of music than she had envisioned, but the threat of being fired by one particular club owner saw her forced to sing, too.

While she never lost her love for the classical repertoire she’d learned as a child — and its influence remained clear through much of her work — Simone ultimately embraced this change of direction and went on to achieve great success as a singer, songwriter, and pianist across a range of genres from jazz to R&B, blues, and soul.

Simone recorded and released her debut album, Little Girl Blue, in 1957 to widespread acclaim, quickly establishing herself as a rising star to watch. Her real breakthrough came two years later with “I Loves You, Porgy”, a rendition of a song from George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess that Simone had first heard sung by Billie Holiday. It was an immediate success, but would prove to be Simone’s first and only Top-40 hit in the USA.

“Porgy”, as the song became known, was to be a stylistic template for much of the music Simone is recognised for today: classically-influenced jazz piano with her powerful, unmistakable vocals deftly woven in. It marked the beginning of a prolific ten-album run between 1959 and 1963, during which her record label, Colpix, afforded her a then-rare degree of artistic freedom — especially for a Black woman in the USA.

The sheer variety of musical styles across these albums is proof positive of Simone’s endless ability to hop seamlessly between genres, sometimes within a single song. Despite this apparent range, she was typically pigeonholed as a “jazz singer” during this time — a fact Simone attributed more to the color of her skin than the music she was making.

Songs of resistance: music of the Civil Rights movement

The late 1950s and early 1960s saw racial tensions in America boil over, giving birth to the civil rights movement. Simone, always conscious of the role that race played both in society and in her own life and career, began to associate with several of the movement’s leading figures, including Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X, and often performed at demonstrations.

In 1963, two tragic events catalysed Simone’s deeper involvement in the movement. First, activist Medgar Evans was murdered at his home in Mississippi by a member of the white supremacist organization, the White Citizens’ Council. Barely three months later, members of the Ku Klux Klan detonated bombs at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four young African-American girls.

In response, Simone penned “Mississippi Goddam”, a protest song written in what she described as a "rush of fury, hatred, and determination”. The juxtaposition of the lyrics’ righteous anger and the jaunty, show-tune accompaniment proved a powerful formula, and the song helped establish her as a leading musical voice of the civil rights movement.

Despite its immediate impact, the song was commercially unsuccessful — a refrain that was to mark much of her career from this point onwards. “Mississippi Goddam” was banned from radio play in several states, promotional singles sent to stations were returned broken in two, and her lyrics were censored during a televised performance on The Steve Allen Show.

Undeterred, Simone continued to perform the song at protests and demonstrations, including a legendary rendition accompanied only by her guitarist at the end of the Selma to Montgomery Civil Rights March in 1965. A full 60 years later, Rolling Stone ranked it as the seventh-best protest song of all time.

The anger that fuelled “Mississippi Goddam” stands in contrast to the uplifting, celebratory tone of “To Be Young Gifted And Black”, recorded by Simone in 1969. It pays tribute to Simone’s late friend Lorraine Hansberry, a Black playwright whose posthumous, autobiographical play gave the song its title. “To Be Young, Gifted And Black” has since been covered by many notable artists, including Donny Hathaway, Elton John, and Aretha Franklin, who asked for Simone’s blessing before recording her own gospel-infused version in 1972.

Simone’s relative lack of commercial success continued towards the end of the sixties, with lacklustre album sales and a perceived loss of support from her record label fuelling the perception that she was being “punished” for her activism.

During much of her career, Simone had also been battling problems in her personal life. Her husband and manager, ex-NYPD detective Andrew Stroud, had been verbally and physically abusive throughout their marriage, and she herself had gained a reputation for erratic and sometimes violent behaviour onstage — later attributed to bipolar disorder.

Around the time of “To Be Young, Gifted And Black”’s release, Simone finally decided she’d had enough of the USA. Aside from the troubles mentioned above, she was disillusioned by the deaths of friends in the civil rights movement, including Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Langston Hughes, and of course, Lorraine Hansberry. During this period, she was also being pursued by the IRS for alleged tax evasion and, she felt, not being fairly compensated by her record companies.

Resurgence among a new generation

Simone first moved to Barbados, beginning a period of self-imposed exile that was to last the rest of her life, returning to the USA only periodically to perform. After Barbados, she spent time in Liberia, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and eventually settled in the south of France.

While in France, Simone continued to perform regularly, albeit on far smaller stages than she had been used to. She remained a revered figure in the country through this time, even while her star faded internationally.

Simone’s fortunes were to change for the better in 1987, when Ridley Scott selected her version of “My Baby Just Cares for Me” for a Chanel No. 5 commercial he was directing. The spot was a hit, and saw Simone propelled back into the limelight, and also the UK Singles Chart after a near 20-year absence. The song also charted in France, Switzerland, Austria, and the Netherlands, but not the USA.

Sadly, “My Baby Just Cares for Me” was taken from Simone’s debut album, Little Girl Blue, for which she was paid a flat fee of $3,000 and thus received no royalties for the song’s use. She did eventually sue, settling for an undisclosed amount.

Nonetheless, the Chanel ad marked the beginning of a late-career resurgence and put Simone on the radar of many new, younger fans. That same year, she was invited back to perform at the legendary Montreux Jazz Festival for the fourth time. Shortly thereafter, she moved to the Netherlands, began treatment for her now-diagnosed bipolar disorder, and began to enjoy a greater sense of both financial and personal stability than she had perhaps ever known. Her 1990 return to Montreux saw her give a performance that’s widely considered one of her best ever.

The last decade of Simone’s life saw a similar resurgence with “Feeling Good” finding new audiences in the 1990s. A symphonic anthem of self-confidence, it was used in a Volkswagen ad in 1994 and once again propelled Simone into the British charts. Curiously, the track was not originally released as a single, and Simone rarely performed it live.

Nina Simone died in 2003, a few months after her 70th birthday and just two days after learning that the Curtis Institute of Music — the school that had originally rejected her — was to award her an honorary degree.

While Simone’s fluid blending of genres makes her musical legacy hard to categorise, it’s easy to trace her influence through countless prominent artists of her own and subsequent generations. The aforementioned Aretha Franklin has cited her as a major inspiration, as have acts as diverse as Jeff Buckley, Paul McCartney, Mary J. Blige, and Nick Cave.

Of course, Simone made an indelible impact as an activist as well as an artist. Her refusal to separate her art from her politics — particularly in an era when many of her contemporaries felt the need to do so — continues to inspire progressive musicians today. "It's an artist's duty to reflect the times in which we live,” she once said.

It’s also worth remembering that Simone paid a high personal and professional cost for her participation in the civil rights movement. She remained undeterred while being placed under surveillance, subjected to censorship, and effectively ostracized from the industry she’d spent her whole life breaking into.

Her music, particularly the protest songs that defined the middle years of her career, remains sadly relevant today, with songs like “Mississippi Goddam”, “Four Women”, and “To Be Young, Gifted and Black” frequently called upon to help express more modern sentiments of hope, despair, and frustration.

With no better way to celebrate her legacy than feeling her enduring spirit resonating through her songs, we’d like to suggest marking the occasion by ither by sitting back and listening to Nina Simone’s incomparable discography, or — better yet — sitting at the piano and playing along with her songs “I Put a Spell on You” and “My Baby Just Cares for Me” in the ROLI Learn app.

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