Princess Noire: The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone

1. Called For and Delivered ~ June 1898–February 1933

1. Called For and Delivered ~ June 1898–February 1933 ~ T he gifts that would turn Eunice Waymon into Nina Simone were apparent by the time she was three, though the passions, the mood swings, and the ferocious intensity that marked her adult life were buried for years under her talent. She was born on February 21, 1933, the sixth of eight children, in Tryon, North Carolina , a town perched at the border between North and South Carolina , on the southern slope of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The beautiful surroundings, the pleasant climate, and the good railroad service established by the turn of the century helped Tryon grow from a rural outpost to a haven for white artists and their friends, many of them from the North. Visitors stayed and put down roots, those with keen business instincts making investments that gave the town its municipal backbone. Eunice’s birth certificate listed her father, John Davan Waymon, as a barber and her mother, Kate Waymon, as a housekeeper. But these descriptions, necessitated by the limited space on the state’s official form, failed to capture the creative, entrepreneurial path John had woven through a world both circumscribed and defined by race. Likewise, “housekeeper” did not do justice to the pursuits of his equally determined wife to stretch the boundaries of their lives and give the family its spiritual core. They were respected members of black Tryon and were treated with the patronizing courtesy whites traditionally reserved for those black residents deemed “a cut above.” The Waymons set an example of hard work for their children, underscored by a deep faith that from Kate’s perspective could ease disappointment and loss. Eunice had her doubts, and in her troubled moments as an adult, she would take little solace from her mother’s lessons. Her father’s buoyant spirit and pragmatic outlook, on the other hand, drew her in. “He was a clever man,” she recalled. “Although he wasn’t educated, he had a genius for getting on.” John Davan Waymon and Kate Waymon came from South Carolina , each the descendant of slaves. John, born June 24, 1898, in Pendleton, a small town near Clemson University, was the youngest of several children. A gifted musician, he played the harmonica, banjo, guitar, and Jew’s harp. “He could take a tub and make music out of it,” one of his children would say later with evident admiration , noting, too, that his father had the unique ability to whistle two notes at once. “We could hear that many blocks away—Daddy whistling in the night.” Tall, with a high forehead and prominent cheekbones, he looked the part of the song-and-dance man he became in his teens, dressed in a sharp white suit, spats over his shoes, cane in hand when he entertained the locals. Kate was born November 20, 1901, and christened Mary Kate Irvin (though some family members spelled it Ervin), the baby among fourteen children—seven girls and seven boys. She was never sure what town her parents lived in when she arrived, only that it was in South Carolina, probably Spartanburg County. Her father was a Methodist minister, and while her mother was not officially trained, she had absorbed enough religion to carry on the ministry if Reverend Irvin was called away. Kate’s heritage on her mother’s side was an unusual mix. She took after her maternal grandfather, who was a full-blooded Indian, tall “and of the yellow kind,” as she recalled, and her maternal grandmother, who was short and dark with luxuri6 · p r i n c e s s n o i r e ant black hair, which Kate inherited. She often wore it in a braid wrapped around her head. One of Kate’s sisters, Eliza, was married to a pastor who led the congregation in Pendleton where John Davan worshipped. Sometime in 1918 he introduced John, then twenty-one, to Kate, only seventeen . Kate remembered that they sang “Day Is Dying in the West” together at church. John was smitten, and he promptly wrote Kate asking to visit her in Inman, where she now lived with her widowed mother. On that first visit they went for a buggy ride, and soon John was coming by every Saturday and staying through Sunday evening. Their routine on these visits usually included a ride in the countryside , the couple entertaining...