1933–2003 · Tryon, North Carolina · singer, pianist and composer
Born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina, Simone trained as a classical pianist and built a career that refused to sit in any one genre — classical, gospel, blues, jazz, folk and pop all at once. In 1964 she was newly signed to Philips, and Broadway-Blues-Ballads was her first studio album for the label, following the live Nina Simone in Concert earlier that year. Benjamin and Marcus brought five songs to the project; this was one of them. She took it slowly, over harp and orchestra with a choir surfacing behind her — a reading that several writers have since heard as carrying the subtext of the civil rights work that dominated her music at the time.