Nina Simone, Langston Hughes and their forgotten creative collaboration

Filed 1h ago · Via The Conversation · The Buffoon Desk

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Court of the Queen

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: John Watson Nicol · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

A new book documents the friendship between Langston Hughes and Nina Simone, beginning with a 1949 lecture Hughes gave at Simone's Asheville high school when she was 16.

Over the following decades Hughes promoted Simone through a Chicago Defender profile used in her liner notes and concert posters, secured her a Newport Jazz Festival slot, and pitched her original lyrics, including the concept that led to her recording 'I Put a Spell on You.'

The book argues the collaboration helped Simone escape constant comparisons to Billie Holiday and shaped the mystique that carried into her 1991 autobiography of the same name.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

Source: Read the original at The Conversation → Scored: Court of the Queen · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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