Nina Simone

VIBE

Karen Good

1997

There are just some things I believes to be truth told. Even if ain’t nobody ever tell me. And anyway, anybody that always got to be told something is sho’ nuff a fool. Damned silly. My people—my people—you got to hear yo’ heart when it tells.

As such, I believes it to be truth told that one Miss Eunice Kathleen Waymon-cum-Nina Simone once wrestled with the devil like he was a Mississippi swamp gator. And she won! They say when she got through with him, he didn’t know A from Bullfrog. Threw Ol’ Boy right back into the lake of fire.

Now, if you know anything about Eunice-cum-Nina, born 1933 in Tyron, South Carolina, you know that if ever there was a woman who could put the fear of the Almighty in Beelzebub, it was her. Voice stronger than pot likker, with a warble only God’s fingers could’ve strummed. (Her mama was name Mary; her daddy, John Divine. Understood?) Miss Nina Simone was a blessed child who piano played at three and developed par-tic-u-lar tastes for Bach and chu’ch humnals like “If You Pray Right.”

And eventually, Nina caught the blues (‘cause if you wrestle with a gator, you gon’ get muddy). That’s how Eunice-cum-Nina ‘come Conjurer. Got called High Priestess of Soul. ‘Though she ain’t make the hits of Brother Ray or Sister Aretha, she commanded a mightly, awe-full respect. Onstage next to her piano, dressed better than Jezebel, Nina could hush the house with a cut of an eye. And when an audience wasn’t feeding her pathos, they got told.

America ruint her—the racism and the rigid South. After Medgar Evers murder and a church bombing that took four girl-babies, Nina set out to kill folks but settled for writing “Mississippi Goddamn” in 1963. And then there’s “Pirate Jenny” which, if it wasn’t in protest, it better: “I’m counting your heads as I’m making the beds/’Cause is nobody gonna sleep here/ Tonight/ Nobody’s gonna sleep heah, honey /Nooo-body/ Nobody.”

Last heard, Eunice-cum-Nina was up in the south of France. Word go she laid buckshot in some boys after twice telling then they too loud. Afterward, Eunice-cum-Nina went and rested her shotgun, smiled low, and said: “That’ll learn ya!”

Well, now. Seein’ as they’d been warned.