What Happened, Miss Simone?

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Alan Light. What Happened, Miss Simone?

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What happened,

Miss Simone?

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Even after her best performing days had passed, though, Simone’s influence endured. “To me, she was the quintessential woman: strong, unafraid, brutally honest, genuine, vulnerable, soulful and passionate,” Alicia Keys wrote. “She made me want to practice the piano twenty hours a day until my skill was as great as hers. She made me want to live life, learn and experience it earnestly and use my voice to say SOMETHING!! Say something that could ring true in the spirit of the people.”

Other wildly successful artists also took cues from Simone. At 1994’s American Music Awards, on the heels of her performance in The Bodyguard, Whitney Houston—then arguably the biggest pop star in the world—constructed a medley that cemented her own place within American musical history’s lineage, while paying homage to the honored position Nina held there. For the performance’s opening, Houston chose Simone’s very first single and highest-charting song in the United States, “I Loves You, Porgy,” belting the George and Ira Gershwin song Nina had made famous before launching into “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going,” the show-stopping climax from the musical Dreamgirls. Houston concluded the appearance by tearing into a wrenching version of The Bodyguard’s “I Have Nothing,” seamlessly fusing multiple decades of black female passion and strength in ten minutes. And when the night ended, Whitney walked away with eight AMAs, the most trophies ever awarded to a female performer in a single night.

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