Princess Noire: The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone

15. Images ~ 1966

15. Images ~ 1966 ~ A ndy’s negotiations with CORE had borne fruit. He and the organization agreed that Nina would do six benefit concerts in the Northeast starting January 21, 1966, in Pittsburgh and concluding January 28 in New Rochelle, New York. Something close to military precision would be required to get Nina and the musicians from one place to another, but Andy knew they could do it. Despite the lack of formal training in management or the music business, he had caught on fast. Some of it was instinct, some was learned from his association with pros like Felix Gerstman, who taught him about scheduling and promotion. Perhaps most important , he knew his star well. He understood what Nina needed at each performance to make her comfortable, from sound checks (at least two hours ahead of time) to microphones (two upright, one with a miniature boom) to a Steinway piano tuned at 440 concert pitch. The dressing room had to be clean and with a mirror, preferably full length. And Andy handled all of the finances; for these concerts, Nina got half beforehand, with the rest delivered at intermission. Alfred Wertheimer, a freelance photographer who had accompa- nied Nina and Andy to Buffalo for a December performance, considered Andy “the rudder that kept things moving in the proper direction. He was the businessman, the pragmatist, not the artist who had fifty songs floating through his head. He was thinking about how do we get on the plane, how do we get to the opening. He had to do the nuts and bolts of the business end of things.” Wertheimer captured Andy in full command during the Buffalo trip striding purposefully through an airport, a look of pleasant concentration on his face. Nina hardly lacked for material appropriate to a civil rights bene- fit. “Mississippi Goddam,” “Four Women,” “Old Jim Crow,” “Go Limp,” and “Strange Fruit” were on point. She could also draw on the songs she had arranged with unmistakable allusions to Africa. “Be My Husband,” which Andy had written, never failed to catch on with an audience. Nina turned it into a rhythmic chant, performed away from the keyboard with hand claps and a few spontaneous dance moves. When the San Francisco Chronicle’s popular jazz images · 183 Nina and Andy at an airport terminal in the winter of 1965 (Alfred Wertheimer) 184 · p r i n c e s s n o i r e critic Ralph J. Gleason saw her do a version at the hungry i, one of the city’s popular clubs, he described her as “some exotic queen of some secret ritual” that he was fortunate to witness. The song was even more compelling before an audience that found such common ground with the singer before them. The concerts might have been more successful artistically than financially, however. The Pittsburgh chapter, facing money problems even before the benefit, failed to earn as much as the members hoped. But chapter president Nicholas Flournoy promised the national CORE office that its debts would be paid with proceeds from “new and more intelligent efforts . . . ” Nina was relieved to get back to Mount Vernon before a big winter storm engulfed the city, wanting to enjoy the heavy snowfall from the warm confines of the house. When the weather let up, she wrote in one of the notes she occasionally made about a day’s events, “the whole family got together and we shoveled snow to make slopes for sledding.” Andy’s sons came to play with Lisa and some neighborhood friends, and Nina joined in. “I felt so relaxed and free of any depressing thoughts.” a haunting song called “Images” stood out on Nina’s latest album, Let It All Out, which was released in February. She had set the poem, by Waring Cuney, one of the many writers acclaimed during the Harlem Renaissance, to music, choosing a minor-key melody that resembled a chant one might hear on the Jewish high holy days. It underscored the poignancy of a woman “who does not know her beauty. She thinks her brown body has no glory.” Though the lyrics and Nina’s delivery were much less fierce than “Four Women,” “Images” was nonetheless a first cousin to her own composition . During one of the first live performances early in February at Haverford College, a small liberal arts school outside Philadelphia, Nina told...