An Atlantic City remembrance of the High Priestess of Soul
One of Nina Simone's first press shots, taken in Atlantic City.
Atlantic City has always been an entertainment town. All the stars — from the Rat Pack to Sam Cooke to the Beatles and Madonna — played Atlantic City, and that’s just a tiny fraction of all the stars who played the resort over the past 150 years. In fact, the entire Jersey shore has played a crucial role in the evolution of modern music and there are so many stories, some that have been told over and over again and some still waiting to be told, that illuminate what an entertainment mecca the southern New Jersey region has been throughout its vibrant history.
From Bill Haley and the Comets playing early on in Wildwood to Bob Dylan finding his electric band The Hawks (later The Band) as they were playing a summer stint in the one-time Somers Point hot spot Tony Mart’s, to the story of a 21-year-old woman from North Carolina by the name of Eunice Waymon who came to Atlantic City in 1954.
Waymon was brought up in a family of eight children and was drawn to the piano. She studied classical music, practicing constantly, and taking lessons. She would eventually go on to study at New York’s Julliard School of Music — a rare chance for an African-American woman in the early 1950s.
After a short time in New York, Waymon set her sights on Philadelphia where she auditioned for the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music. She didn’t get in and blamed racism as the culprit, but it didn’t deter her from chasing her dream to become a classical pianist, and she vowed to practice and re-audition at Curtis.
Waymon set up shop in Philadelphia — at a storefront at 57th Street and Master, according to her 1991 autobiography — where she gave piano lessons to students of different ages, attended church and was alone a lot of the time.
“Mostly I was on my own,” she writes, “working hard, practicing, isolating myself. ... I lived like this for nearly three years, trying to save enough money to stop working and dedicate myself to music and not getting anywhere near it.”
Waymon, as her mother encouraged her along the way, was going to be the “world’s first black classical concert pianist.”
Several of the people she met in Philadelphia talked about how they spent the summer in Atlantic City, including some of her students.
Some of those students — mainly the ones of college age — told Waymon that they had jobs in Atlantic City over the summer months, and one student of hers was set to play piano at a hotel lounge making “ninety dollars a week.”
That one bit of information changed the course of American music and gave the world one of the greatest singers of all time, later known as the High Priestess of Soul, Nina Simone.
In her enlightening 1991 autobiography I Put a Spell On You, penned with Stephen Cleary, Simone writes about the origins of the name Nina Simone and why she first started to sing — something she hadn’t done before — in Atlantic City in June 1954.
“Ninety dollars was double what I earned and that was just what the bar paid,” she writes in the book. “If customers liked you there were tips on top.”
Simone got the number of her student’s agent and called him up. “I wasn’t nervous,” she writes, “figuring if one of my students could get a job as a pianist, so could I. Sure enough the guy called back and told me I had a job for the summer, at a place called the Midtown Bar and Grill.”
The only problem was the chance that her mother might find out she was playing in a bar. (“To her that wouldn’t be any different from working in the fires of hell,” she writes.) So, she changed her first name to Nina (the name an old boyfriend Chico used to call her) and her last name to Simone, a tribute to French film star Simone Signoret. And when summer came, she “left Philly as Eunice Waymon and arrived in Atlantic City as Nina Simone.”
She had never been in a bar, nor had she ever sang before, but both were required for her summer gig at the Midtown, located at 1719 Pacific Avenue, between Indiana and MLK Blvd., and just “two blocks back from the seafront boardwalk,” she recalls in her book.
Simone describes the place as being a “seedy little bar where old guys go to huddle over a drink and fall asleep.” It could hold about 100 patrons and featured a long, skinny bar area as well as a back room with sawdust on the floor for drunks to “sleep it off.”
She tried not to let the smoke bother her eyes, drank milk, and performed for the first time as Nina Simone on an “OK” piano, which sat beneath a dripping air conditioner. The owner of the bar, “a little Jewish guy [with] a fat cigar in his mouth” named Harry Steward, positioned an umbrella beneath it to keep Simone and the piano dry.
1954 was the city’s centennial and Paul Whiteman was broadcasting his ABC TV show from A.C. that summer. The first ad mentioning “Nina Simone” appeared in the Wednesday, June 1, 1955 edition of the Atlantic City Press.
Simone played from 9pm to 4am every night. Three years before she would earn her first record contract, which would eventually solidify her career in entertainment for the next 50 years, Simone weaved classical pieces, hymns and gospel songs into her repertoire, with most songs lasting “anywhere between 30 and 90 minutes,” she recalls in her book.
“On my first night,” writes Simone, on which she was dressed in her “best long chiffon gown,” with her hair and make-up fixed as if she was performing at the Metropolitan Opera, “one song I played lasted three hours without a break.”
By the time 4am came around that first night as Nina Simone, Steward seemed very pleased with her playing, but asked her why she didn’t sing at all.
“I’m only a pianist,” she told him, after which, as Simone describes in her book, the bar owner “took his cigar out of his mouth [and said]: “Well, tomorrow night you’re either a singer or you’re out of a job.”
Eventually, all the improvising she had to do during her seven-hour shows, including working in her singing, and learning new songs, primed her for her extraordinary career as a genre-breaking entertainer well-versed in gospel, standards, folk tunes, jazz, blues and soul and beloved around the world.
Kenny Hill got out of the Army in 1953. The following year he was working a night shift at a nearby hotel-resort. “At that particular time, I worked at Haddon Hall, which is now Resorts,” says Hill, 78, and a current member of the Atlantic City Planning Board. “And I used to get off at midnight. Walking home I would come down Pacific Avenue and [one night] the door was open at this bar and I heard this music coming and I said let me stop in here and [Nina Simone] was there. And she played different and she sang different from anyone I ever heard before.
“She was more or less a classical pianist who had this unusual voice. I started going in there for the rest of the summer and we got to be friendly. I’d spend about two hours every night [at the Midtown listening to Simone] and I’d walk her home every night. She had an apartment on North New York Avenue.”
Hill recalls that Simone and the piano were positioned about halfway between the entrance and the back end of the bar. “She played in the center, by herself,” Hill recalls “And it was a small area for the piano — and she faced the people.”
Hill adds: “The people loved her in there,” he says of the Midtown. “And they had regulars who went in there. There wasn’t a lot of summer action in there. It was never too crowded. I never saw the place jammed, but they kept her for the summer.
“She always looked presentable on the stage. You know, she wore long gowns or a long skirt — evening attire. She played formally and she sang formally.”
During the day, Hill surmises that Simone mostly rested up for the night’s show, sometimes going to the beach at Missouri Avenue, dubbed “Chicken Bone Beach,” a segregated beach, which was the only stretch of Atlantic City shoreline for decades where African-American’s could go.
And they did, including all the black performers in town for a summer gig or residency. Along with Simone, everybody from Billie Holiday to Sammy Davis Jr. to Martin Luther King Jr. hung out at Chicken Bone Beach.
After moving back to Philadelphia, Simone and Hill would meet up and continue their friendship as Hill moved to Philly as well following the close of the summer of 1954.
“I saw her again in Philadelphia because I moved to Philadelphia after that summer. I did see her up there; she was a friend of a friend of mine and she lived on Brandywine Street, which was [close to where I lived] at 36th and Spring Garden. She was maybe at 38th and Brandywine — around that area. So I did see her after I moved to Philadelphia. But we were just friends.”
Simone's family had moved to Philly as well, and they saw that the young musician had been transformed. Given the taste of the limelight, she wanted more. And after a few months back in Philly, she decided to try her luck with a career as a singer-pianist.
As the online “Nina Simone Timeline Database” includes, “From then on, Nina quickly gravitated to fame. Her records hit the best-seller lists, bookings poured in, and the entertainment world hailed her as one of the greatest musical finds of all time.”
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A list of Black History Month related events in the Atlantic City region.
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1. Jazz Organist! Dan Fogel said... on Apr 20, 2011 at 06:02PM
“When I was 9 or 10 yrs. old I would go to see Nina Simone at the Mid-town also know as the Center Bar in Atlantic City. I lived in a near by town and later became a Jazz pianist & record producing Jazz Organist playing as Houseband at the Wonder Gardens on Kentucky Ave.also in Atlantic City. I remember speaking with Nina on her breaks and she was always very friendly with me. I knew the owners son so I had no problem getting in as I was very young. I consider myself very lucky to have met and dug Nina's playing before she became famous.>www.danfogel.org”
2. Anonymous said... on Apr 21, 2011 at 09:22AM
“Fabulous article - great to read about one of my favorite artists. Reading what you wrote is like hearing Nina's voice again - very cool!”
3. Anonymous said... on Apr 21, 2011 at 09:47AM
“Loved your article! What an amazing artist she was.”
4. Lynn said... on Apr 21, 2011 at 09:51AM
“Great article. The great performers like Ms. Simone have paved the way for today's performers. They all owe her a debt of gratitude!”
5. Lilli said... on Apr 21, 2011 at 10:27AM
“What an amazing article! A beautiful Woman and artist indeed! Will be passing this article on to my children! We need to hear more stories like this! Thank you for the descriptive share of a piece of African-American history!”
6. Anonymous said... on Apr 21, 2011 at 11:30AM
“How wonderful to have Nina brought back for the young folks. I have made sure that my grandkids hear and know about all of those who have passed on but have contributed to our wonderful musical heritage. They are not dead as long as their music lives on. Keep up the good work and keep the ariticles coming.”
7. Anonymous said... on Apr 21, 2011 at 11:30AM
“How wonderful to have Nina brought back for the young folks. I have made sure that my grandkids hear and know about all of those who have passed on but have contributed to our wonderful musical heritage. They are not dead as long as their music lives on. Keep up the good work and keep the ariticles coming.”
8. danimalpower said... on Apr 21, 2011 at 12:02PM
“Amazing article...it's great that someone is still writing about (sadly) forgotten artists - who sound as great today as they did back then. I never knew about the rise of Nina Simone....and now I do. Please keep up the interesting articles...it's a nice change from the usual.”
9. Bethann said... on Apr 21, 2011 at 02:01PM
“Wow...What a interesting article. I live in Kansas City and we have great jazz. I had not heard of Simone and even through she is no longer with us I will look up her:music. This article motiviates me to expand my knowldege of her. :)”
10. Mimi said... on Apr 21, 2011 at 04:34PM
“It was a treat to read the article about Nina Simone. Nina has always been a favorite singer of mine and this article offered intriguing and vibrant information about a singer the world seems to have pushed to the background of great jazz musicians . I look forward to more articles of this caliber and depth in the future. Thanks.”
11. Henrietta Wallace-Shelton said... on Apr 21, 2011 at 05:27PM
“Excellent article Jeff on Nina Simone, I had the opportunity of seeing her in person and she was wonderful. Yes I still enjoy her music. Thanks for your many articles on the famous entertainers that appeared in Atlantic City (AC). Your research validates the history, their lives and give your readers insight and knowledge of the important part their music played in the music world and yes, AC. Chicken Bone Beach (Missouri Avenue) was a part of this history and I enjoyed being on this beach near the hotels and boardwalk with friends and families. Keep the articles coming and thanks .”
12. Ron Christian said... on Apr 22, 2011 at 09:10AM
“Nice article on one of my favorites--didn't know much of that story. Thanks.”
13. Anonymous said... on Apr 22, 2011 at 11:07AM
“Thank you for a wonderfully engrossing and surprising story -- didn't know that Nina Simone started in Atlantic City. These kinds of stories are not only entertaining in their own right, but lend perspective to contemporary Atlantic City and its entertainment scene.
keep 'em coming!”
14. Elaine Shea said... on Apr 22, 2011 at 01:11PM
“Such talent and so much I never knew. And,Nina's music was also recorded and sung by many folk singers during the Civil Rights era.Thanks Jeff for capturing an important part of our history and bringing it to us face-to-face.”
15. Anonymous said... on Apr 22, 2011 at 02:29PM
“Nina was a great gift to the music (jazz,esp)
And to the American culture in general. This article, well- researched and
not overadulatory, represents a very good effort at a personal history while giving a remindervof her music and partial discography. Thanks Nd good work!”
16. Heather PErez said... on Apr 23, 2011 at 08:50AM
“Jeff - really well-researched story on an Atlantic City icon. You found so much more information than we knew! Definitely adding your story to our files. Keep up the great stories on historical figures....they're an important part of Atlantic City's heritage.”
17. Harold L said... on Apr 25, 2011 at 12:47PM
“I never knew this about one of my all-time favorite singers Miss Nina Simone. I'll just have to dig out my old vinyl records and listen to her early ones ... maybe she played more of a classical style early on? Anyone know if she ever returned to AC after the late 1050s?”
18. Vicki gold levi said... on Apr 26, 2011 at 02:42AM
“The Nina simone story adds so much to our knowledge of musical history in atlantic city . Jeff always does in depth reporting on his subjects with a real passion for his material and one of the reasons I read this paper. His work on Sam cooke was masterful and story on Nina Simone is same league. Keep it up.
”
19. Vicki gold levi said... on Apr 26, 2011 at 02:42AM
“The Nina simone story adds so much to our knowledge of musical history in atlantic city . Jeff always does in depth reporting on his subjects with a real passion for his material and one of the reasons I read this paper. His work on Sam cooke was masterful and story on Nina Simone is same league. Keep it up.
”