Princess Noire: The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone

14. My Skin Is Black ~ 1965

14. My Skin Is Black ~ 1965 ~ W hen Nina returned to the studio early in the new year, Andy asked Bernard Gotfryd, the Newsweek photographer , to shoot the session. He found an engaged performer talking over arrangements with Horace Ott, chatting with the backup singers, and studying the music. In one moment, between takes, Gotfryd caught Nina in silhouette, standing against the wall, her head bowed in deep contemplation. Resonant with possible interpretations, the photo offered the kind of intriguing shot to illuminate a future release. This session featured more varied songs than the previous spring, including two rhythm-and-blues tunes from Andy with provocative titles: “Gimme Some” and “Take Care of Business.” The most unusual song, though, was Nina’s remake of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’s wildly entertaining “I Put a Spell on You,” an original full of hollers, moans, and a rat-a-tat sax that in live performances featured Hawkins emerging from a coffin amid swirls of fake smoke like some voodoo prince. Hal Mooney set Nina amid his trademark strings but also added an evocative sax solo from Jerome Richardson that played off Nina’s vocals. She interspersed the lyrics with her version of scat singing, as if Bach was a bluesman and Ella Fitzgerald had done her signature moves in slow motion. This strange musical stew took the menace and camp out of the Hawkins original and turned the song into a mood piece. It was nonetheless effective because Nina sang with such conviction. She did the same in another musical departure , Jacques Brel’s “Ne Me Quitte Pas,” a song that pleads, “don’t leave me.” Surrounded by strings again, Nina cast herself as a chanteuse. Philips planned to package several tracks into an album called I Put a Spell on You, set for a spring release. andy and felix gerstman had joined up again to present Nina in another solo concert at Carnegie Hall January 15, their most 164 · p r i n c e s s n o i r e Nina in the studio, c. 1965 (Bernard Gotfryd) ambitious outing yet. Nina would play the first half with her regular musicians—Lisle, Bobby, Rudy, and Al Schackman, who had temporarily rejoined the group. In the second half she would perform with a thirty-five-piece orchestra conducted by Mooney. Not only that, her parents, Kate and J.D., would be there, and also Miss Mazzy, her beloved first piano teacher. Determined to have a look that matched the evening, Nina enlisted Dorothea Towles to be her fashion consultant. Towles had been the first successful black model in Paris, a regular on the runways of top-tier designers Christian Dior and Elsa Schiaparelli. Having parlayed her success in Europe to help black models in the United States, Towles now found ways to combine her talents with support of civil rights causes. One of her more notable events, “Fashions for Freedom,” combined a fashion show that featured Towles and her models showing off their outfits to the music of Count Basie and his orchestra. According to the Amsterdam News, Nina snapped up sixty tickets. Reflecting Towles’s influence even before she stepped on the Carnegie stage, Nina arrived at the theater swathed in a luxuriant full-length mink coat with the eye-catching accessory of a silver buckle just below the waist. She had acquired a hairdresser for the evening, a man named Frenchie Casimir, and he had pulled Nina’s own hair off her forehead and affixed a three-section circular hairpiece at the back of her head like an elaborate ponytail. Nina had chosen the same evening gown she had worn on The Steve Allen Show four months earlier; it had a white sheath skirt, and a top and removable train that were dark but with white appliquéd flowers. Backstage Towles applied sequins strategically on her eyebrows and eyelids that only accentuated the false eyelashes she had already put on. Though not as dramatic as Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and his smoke-shrouded coffin, Nina’s ensemble sent the message that she, too, could cast a spell. At her mood-setting best in the first set, Nina took the audience through ballads, folk material, and songs that even when secular in nature seemed like hymns. She might start by idly fingering the piano keys to no apparent purpose, humming a little and...