The earliest known recorded version is Les Baxter’s 1956 rendition, though Simone would have almost certainly picked it up from her church, where she was the pianist from an early age. The origin of Sinnerman (or Sinner Man before Simone dispensed with the spacing) is ambiguous, some claiming the traditional African-American spiritual started life as a Scottish folk song. “The excuse was profanity – Goddam! – but the real reason was obvious enough.” “We released it as a single and it sold well, except in the south where we had trouble with distribution,” wrote Simone. Mississippi Goddam was controversial, not least because of the cursing in its title. “Can’t you see it, can’t you feel it in the air?” she wails, “I can’t stand the pressure much longer!”. While Simone had much admiration for Martin Luther King, she didn’t necessarily subscribe to his doctrine of passive righteousness. Mississippi Goddam is a frustrated call to arms, a plea for mercy, a recalcitrant cry of defiance and an angry voice of reason crying out against the most untenable and unjust of situations. Civil rights activist Medgar Evers had been assassinated by a member of the White Citizens’ Council the year before, as well as the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama, where four young girls were killed. With standards in her repertoire such as Work Song evoking the backbreaking toil of the chain gang, it was clear Simone’s sympathies were with the civil rights movement in the early 60s, but a self-penned protest song in response to cold-blooded murder saw her emerge as a figurehead in 1964. As on the beautiful He Needs Me, there’s a sense that the whole conceit about her paramour could be based entirely on a delusion. It’s astonishing that My Baby Just Cares for Me managed to remain relatively obscure for so long given how good it is, featuring a jaw-dropping virtuoso piano solo that is the perfect conflation of her classical training and jazz improvisation, while her dolorous timbre, set against a prideful narrative and generally upbeat mood, creates an odd paradox. (She recorded only one more studio album, A Single Woman, in 1993). That said, the exposure – the song featured in a perfume commercial – brought Simone to a new audience and allowed her to work only when she needed to until her death in 2003. After Simone realised her mistake and went to Colpix Records, Bethlehem put out a cobbled together second album – Nina Simone and Her Friends – but it wasn’t until 1987, when My Baby Just Cares for Me exploded in Europe, that it really hit her pocket. That lack of forethought would cost her a fortune, and it wouldn’t be the last time she demonstrated a lack of financial nous. She signed away the rights to all her early recordings in exchange for $3,000, which probably seemed like a lot of money at the time. The deal Simone agreed with Bethlehem Records was shortsighted. “It was a racist thing: ‘If she’s black she must be a jazz singer.’ It diminished me.” “I didn’t like to be put in a box with other jazz singers because my musicianship was totally different, and in its own way superior,” she wrote in her autobiography, I Put a Spell on You. Simone bristled at the comparisons with Holiday. A beautifully tender version of I Love You, Porgy was laid down at the suggestion of a friend who’d heard Billie Holiday do it, and Simone’s rendition soon started picking up radio play, becoming a surprise Top 20 US hit in 1959. She quickly built up a repertoire and a steady following, leading to interest from Bethlehem Records, which released her first album, Little Girl Blue. After a first night of interspersing gospel songs with Bach, Czerny and Liszt at the Midtown Bar and Grill, Simone was told she’d have to sing in future if she wanted to keep her job. After various legitimate jobs, Eunice adopted a stage name to ensure her Methodist minister mother wouldn’t find out she was playing “the devil’s music” in an Atlantic City bar (Nina was a pet name given to her by a boyfriend Simone came from French actress Simone Signoret). The surprise rejection left her rudderless and in need of money. Nina Simone – born Eunice Kathleen Waymon – was a child prodigy, and a fund had been set up by people in her native Tryon, North Carolina to help her become the first female black concert pianist in the US. The turning point in her career was a rejection from the Curtis Institute of Music in 1951, which she later came to understand was racially motivated. Few artists have thrived so spectacularly while being so disinclined towards the recording industry, but then few have been as talented as Nina Simone.
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