Princess Noire: The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone

13. Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood ~ 1964

13. Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood ~ 1964 ~ N ina’s appearance in Summit, New Jersey, on January 22 to headline a benefit for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) further confirmed that Andy was right. She did have her music. “I played on stage for a reason, and when I walked off stage those reasons still existed,” she said, long outlasting the applause. In an odd juxtaposition beyond Nina’s control, the Hootenanny show she taped in Clarksburg was broadcast on television just four days before the Summit concert. Perhaps to piggyback on the event, Andy had taken out a two-column, four-inch-high ad in Variety that featured a new, appealing headshot of Nina and proclaimed her “star of the Ford CARavan of Music for 1964.” He had even hired promotion man Paul Brown to help, and his name was featured along with Andy’s as a contact. But the ad ran in Variety’s Vaudeville section, hardly prime space in the weekly. Although only one of Nina’s Colpix albums had touched the charts, that didn’t deter Willem Langenberg, the voluble head of Philips Records, a division of the giant electronics firm, from wanting to sign her. Philips had initially concentrated on classical music but now branched out into other genres as it looked for ways to distribute its product in the United States. When Langenberg, a native of the Netherlands, came across “Mississippi Goddam,” he was smitten . He listened to the record nonstop, as Nina told it, and got on a plane to New York determined to make a deal. He found her at the Village Gate and waited in her dressing room until she came off the stage. An imposing man of nearly three hundred pounds, he wasted no time. “I’ve come to take you back to Holland,” he said in his booming voice, “so you can be on the Philips label.” “There was no question I was going to sign,” Nina recalled, finding “Big Willy,” as she nicknamed him, irresistible. Despite the con- flicts she often felt about her music, when she took stock, she knew it was another step forward to be embraced by a label that wanted her so much. She didn’t actually have to leave the country to make the switch, but “Big Willy” did set things in motion. Andy worked out the details for her to leave Colpix, and on February 22 an announcement appeared in Cash Box that Nina was now recording exclusively for Philips. The label had acquired Mercury Records, the Chicagobased company that once was home to Dinah Washington and Sarah Vaughan, among other notable singers. Mercury president Irving Green released the news. The announcement noted that Nina was going to appear at Carnegie Hall on March 21 in another concert sponsored by Felix Gerstman, and plans were already under way to record the evening for a new live album, this time under the auspices of Philips. But Variety suggested that Colpix wanted to piggyback on pre-concert publicity, noting in a short item that the Carnegie event was “in conjunction with Colpix Records promotion for her eight LPs.” Phil Orlando had left the group, never able to conquer his nerves onstage with Nina. “There were times before he would go on that he would go in the men’s room and throw up,” Lisle said. “So obviously he didn’t play his best.” This time Bobby recommended a successor , Rudy Stevenson, a multitalented musician who not only played the guitar but also played the flute, clarinet, and saxophone. He was a composer-arranger, too. With a weekend back at the Village Gate don’t let me be misunderstood · 149 in February and then another Ford CARavan performance March 12 at Chicago’s Illinois Institute of Technology, Nina had plenty of time to get comfortable with him. He had made an immediate contribution when they rehearsed, fleshing out the arrangement for “SeeLine Woman,” a new song Nina had incorporated into her live dates at Langston’s suggestion. “I think See-Line Woman is particularly suited for you,” Langston had told her in one of his regular notes, “custom-made.” He said it was adapted from an old island folk tune by his secretary, George Bass, who had a musical bent and was studying the arts at New York University. In this arrangement Rudy’s distinctive flute solo alternated with...