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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