Nina Simone: Rock's Unlikely Rebel

by Denise Sullivan • June 5, 2009

"I want to shake people up. I want to shake people up more." These words were once spoken by international super-artist Nina Simone. It's safe to say she succeeded with her mission: More than 50 years after her debut, few can match Simone's supreme gifts as a vocalist, pianist, and arranger, the diversity of her repertoire, and the way those songs rattled consciences. Her music's agelessness, as well as her delivery, has kept the melodies, as well as her message, fresh. And though her contribution to rock 'n' roll isn't the first thing you may think of when it comes to her virtues, Simone was what we call a rocker: Her fierce attitude and the way she adapted some of rock's best-known songs contributed toward getting across her message of true liberation.

"What we were looking for then was to shake people out of their complacency," says Al Schackman, Simone's musical soulmate and foremost collaborator. Schackman served as the genre-defying artist's musical director, as well as a multi-instrumentalist, guitarist, and musical companion for just about the entirety of her career; the pair shared what both have described as a rare, telepathic communication that served them onstage as well as off. Much of their work together was compiled in 2008 on the four-disc set To Be Free: The Nina Simone Story, which includes a hefty slice of Simone's "rock" repertoire alongside the jazz, folk, standards, and originals for which she is otherwise famous.

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Crawdaddy! Magazine was founded by Paul Williams in 1966 and was the first U.S. magazine of rock criticism. John Lennon, Cameron Crowe, P.J. O'Rourke and many others have contirubted to its pages, and it is currently owned by Wolfgang's Vault, home to the legendary rock promoter Bill Graham's archive.