Customer Reviews

Princess Noire: The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Nina Simone has often been an enigmatic figure. A tremendously talented singer/musician and a recognized figure in the Civil Rights Movement, she often showed a troubling personality. Nadine Cohodas has done a wonderful job giving us a biography of this prominent lady. Born Eunice Waymon in North Carolina, when she was very young she started showing great musical talent. Usually she is classified as a jazz singer but Simone hated classifications. Her failure to be selected in to a prestigious musical school for being black set a feeling that would follower in her live. Now singing as Nina Simone in New York she became a huge performer and would enter into the world of the black intelligentsia. Soon her passion was the Civil rights Movement. But this book shouts out at the problems she had in life. Often she was perceived as having bad behavior with her audiences, and even friends. Turns out she was suffering from bipolar disorders and these were hidden from almost everyone until after her death. Cohodas does a good job writing about her life and giving us background on her mental issues.

Nadine Cohodas' biography of Nina Simone is well researched, yet I find that the author paints an untrue picture of events that supposedly took place during some of Nina Simone's concert performances. Much is made of her erratic behaviour on stage, in one instance in a Billie Holiday Tribute that Simone took part in at the Hollywood Bowl. I have an audio tape of her complete performance. It was one of Nina's very greatest performances, yet the reader is led to belive that her appearance was a disaster. Cohoda's brief review of Simone's 1976 Montreux Jazz Festival appearance (which exists on DVD) makes one wonder if the author actually watched the entire performance. Too little attention is made of what made Nina Simone such an important and original artist. Her prolific recording activity and filmed performances should have been given more attention. I found another biography, "Nina Simone: Break Down and Let It All Out" by Sylvia Hampton, David Nathan, and Lisa Simone Kelly to be a more intersting read. This book does contain some fascinating photographs, though.

A middlingly written account of the life of the great Nina Simone, not an unkind book, but not, for all its details about Nina's personal descent, an exceptionally engaged portrait. Cohodas fails to establish a tone with her writing, so that what might have been a warm sparkling telling instead trundles along, an account of moods and events. Prevented, of course, is a genuine reckoning with the interior legacy of one of music's modern masters. It's a disappointment ameliorated by spending time with Nina, pure and simple. But I would add that I saw Simone live probably fifty times in various performance settings, and though that's fifty times less what I'd have been happy to have seen and heard this woman and her ineffacable art, I yet know her better and deeper by that than this book gives me. Still, it's good once again to trace in the mind and memory Nina Simone, a gift of the gods to us that will never die.

I really knew so little about Nina Simone, and found a wealth of information about her career and her personal life. The book was in brand new shape, and I am proud to own it. It painted a three dimensional picture about a tortured artist.

This book is a disaster, all the more disappointing because i read this author's last book "Queen" and absolutely loved it. For me, a true Simone fan, this book leads one to believe at a certain point in her career almost every show was a disaster. (i actually know different, and you will too if you can find some of the priceless footage of her performances still available) And the authors reasoning was that she was suffering a long un-diagnosed mental illness.(that seem all-of-a-sudden here) The books starts with a nice read on her humble beginnings, but quickly descends into just a tour schedule of stops and shows, and what happened at each(before and after). Simply Awful. At one point, theres so much yearly detail of shows, you get the feeling that Simone sang everyday, but at the end of one particular year her husband says (through the authors words) She only performed 30 dates! I was perplexed. It felt like i read about 30 in detail, never mind the other dates she breezed through. BUT,,my biggest complaint is the authors treatment of her illness, and how it is used in this book as an excuse for Miss Simone's erratic behavior. I get the feeling, this author knows very little about what it takes to be a real ARTIST, never mind a legend, no matter how many books shes written. Given the time and depth of the problems in America for Blacks in which Miss Simone was at the height of her career, coupled with the relentless scheduling, unbelievable attention to detail, and unrelenting fears of poverty (which ended up coming true) Its no wonder she was at her wits end, in her later years. I for one have worked 30 years in entertainment, and i can say i have been seen several artists continually leaning toward going off the deep end from all the in's and out's of working in this business. The line between MADNESS AND GENIUS is a very thin one, but i guess our author never took that into account, or thought to investigate. Medicines for schizophenia and just straight out heroin abuse, are things that many artists have used to keep themselves able to cope, and sometimes can produce the exact same results. I suggest their is a deeper story within Nina Simones real life, real artistry and real problems that Nadine missed entirely in her attempt to explain a tumultuous life. I for one, am insulted by this book that just scratches the surface and at times vilifies a woman that gave her life and her art to try move her race forward in the United States and the world. She deserves better.

I became a fan of Nina Simone when she first song "I love you Porgy" and later became a friend of hers and grew to truly love her. She was truly the "High Priestess of Soul" and there will never be another like her.