The ROTTEN Issue: Emergency Ward! Nina Simone's Fight Against Rotten Execs
WORDS AND ART BY JACOB WOOD
In 1954, at the Midtown Bar & Grill in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Eunice Kathleen Waymon was told her classical piano performances were becoming outdated, and that if she wanted to continue to play, she would have to sing the blues. She knew that singing 'the devil's music' would disgrace her deeply religious family. So she took a stage name, and Nina Simone was born.
This identity change marks the beginning of the pattern of exploitation that would last Nina's entire career, but at this point in the '50s the benefits of a landing record deal far outshined the potential risks. So that's what she did, releasing her debut album Little Girl Blue through a smaller label with enough success to move to the more prestigious Philips records.
While at Philips, Nina recorded several of her most lasting works, notably "I Put A Spell on You," which propelled her into the upper echelon of popular music. Backed by the label's equitable execs, Nina was allowed to write with near complete creative control, a fact which allowed her to release more politically charged songs like the momentous "Mississippi Goddamn." Though songs like these were often censored and removed from radio stations in the south, the boldness of her writing placed Nina at a focal point in the civil rights movement and furthered her popularity.
Even in this period, when Nina's creativity was flourishing, the claustrophobia of the music industry was tangible. Critics would place her music in unwanted boxes, labeling her merely a 'jazz singer' or pushing racist and misogynistic narratives about the volatility of her singing. Still, the fame and notoriety Nina accumulated in this time made it possible for her to move to a larger record label, partnering with the massive RCA Victor records in 1966.
The switch to RCA was the financial initiative of Nina's husband at the time, Andrew Stroud, who served as her manager and a massive piece of shit. Unlike Philips, RCA's approach centered on a paletteable brand image for their artists, a model that did not exactly align with the creative sporadicism which defined Nina's career thus far. As a result, she faced the greatest creative restriction of her career, being barred from recording much of her political writing and often pressured to record pop and soul covers over originals altogether. She became disillusioned with the music industry, and America at large, as her artistry was placed in yet another box and the issues she fought so passionately against persisted.
Yet despite being repressed more than ever before, it was in this period that some of Nina's most transcendent work was released. No album embodies this better than 1972's Emergency
Ward. This album appears, at first glance, to fit RCA's cookie cutter vision for Nina perfectly: four songs, primarily covers of contemporary tracks thematically focused on love and reverence, partially recorded live back in New Jersey. However, listening to the album is a far different experience than the songs it covers.
Across the record Nina displays the power and dynamics of her voice in a way that transcends even her most popular works. She sings with such expression that lyrical themes hardly matter, her passion drags listeners into a detailed, woeful reality. Though each song on the album presents a very different theme and emotional palette, the greatest display of expression on the project is undoubtedly her cover of George Harrison's "Isn't it a Pity.”
The cover is one of the true live recordings on the album, taken from a performance in Fort Dix, New Jersey. In it, Nina sits alone behind a piano with only a bass faintly outlining her playing. For a moment, it's as though she's back in Atlantic City, young and vying for a deal. Now she's under the governance of one of the largest record companies in the country, and she sings with the grandeur to match. Over eleven minutes and several fully improvised verses, Nina takes what was a simple song about taking love for granted and transforms it into a devastating lament over the state of the world and of her life.
In 1974, Nina left RCA, her husband and the U.S. behind. Despite cementing her legacy as one of the greatest singers of all time, the financial and mental weight of the music industry haunted her until her death in 2003. In that time she gave many of her most iconic performances but never stopped having heated run-ins with record companies: at one point she tried to shoot and kill an exec in Switzerland for stealing her royalties.
Though Nina's career gives insight into the unending exploitation of the music industry, what's more profound is her method of fighting against those circumstances. During that odd stretch in the early '70s, in the face of the most exploitation and creative restriction of her career, when she was barred from releasing and recording any lyrically challenging material, Nina managed to express all of her disillusionment and emotion through the power of her voice alone. Nina's story is a reminder that the systems which bind us are not always escapable, certainly not easily, but they're not entirely impenetrable either. The capacity for change lies in one's own initiative to fight within their accessible means.