Nina Simone (; born Eunice Kathleen Waymon; February 21, 1933 - April 21, 2003) was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger, and activist in the Civil Rights Movement. Simone employed a broad range of musical styles including classical, jazz, blues, folk, R&B, gospel, and pop. Born in North Carolina, the sixth child of a preacher, Waymon aspired to be a concert pianist.

In an interview for Jet magazine, Simone stated that her controversial song "Mississippi Goddam" hurt her career. She claimed that the music industry reprimanded her by boycotting her records. Hurt and disappointed, Simone left the US in September 1970, flying to Barbados and expecting Stroud to communicate with her when she had to perform again. However, Stroud interpreted Simone's sudden disappearance, and the fact that she had left behind her wedding ring, as an indication of a desire for a divorce. As her manager, Stroud was in charge of Simone's income.  Simone recorded her last album for RCA, It Is Finished, in 1974, and did not make another record until 1978, when she was persuaded to go into the recording studio by CTI Records owner Creed Taylor. The result was the album Baltimore, which, while not a commercial success, was fairly well received critically and marked a quiet artistic renaissance in Simone's recording output. Her choice of material retained its eclecticism, ranging from spiritual songs to Hall & Oates' "Rich Girl." Four years later Simone recorded Fodder on My Wings on a French label.  During the 1980s, Simone performed regularly at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in London, where she recorded the album Live at Ronnie Scott's in 1984. Although her early on-stage style could be somewhat haughty and aloof, in later years, Simone particularly seemed to enjoy engaging her audiences sometimes by recounting humorous anecdotes related to her career and music and by soliciting requests. In 1987, the original 1958 recording of "My Baby Just Cares for Me" was used in a commercial for Chanel No. 5 perfume in Britain. This led to a re-release of the recording, which stormed to number 4 on the UK's NME singles chart, giving her a brief surge in popularity in the UK.  When Simone returned to the United States, she learned that a warrant had been issued for her arrest for unpaid taxes (as a protest against her country's involvement with the Vietnam War), and returned to Barbados to evade the authorities and prosecution. Simone stayed in Barbados for quite some time and she had a lengthy affair with the Prime Minister, Errol Barrow. A close friend, singer Miriam Makeba, then persuaded her to go to Liberia. Later, she lived in Switzerland and the Netherlands, before settling in France in 1993. During a 1998 performance in Newark, she announced, "If you're going to come see me again, you've got to come to France, because I ain't coming back."  Simone published her autobiography, I Put a Spell on You, in 1992. She recorded her last album, A Single Woman, in 1993, where she depicted herself as the "single woman". She continued to tour through the 1990s but rarely traveled without an entourage. During the last decade of her life, Simone had sold more than one million records, making her a global catalog best-seller.

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