The Nina Simone song written the day after Martin Luther King Jr was murdered
The debate over the best singer of all time always sparks interesting discussions. What defines a great singer varies widely from person to person, making it a question without a definitive answer. That said, when it comes to infusing raw emotion into a vocal performance, few could rival Nina Simone. Her ability to convey deep feelings through her voice set her apart as one of the most powerful and expressive singers in history.
Whenever she sang, whether she was talking about love, pain, or any emotion that fell between those two extremes, you knew that Nina Simone would be able to deliver her vocals in a way that touched your heart. She was never afraid to wear her heart on her sleeve, either, regardless of how tough a subject could be to write about.
In the track ‘Four Women’, Nina Simone wrote about her experiences with discrimination. “’Four Women’ was written overnight but it took me four months before I had the nerve to play it to somebody because I thought it would be rejected,” she said, “I played it for my husband on an aeroplane one day; I thought he wasn’t going to like it because it was so direct and blatant.”
She isn’t wrong that the lyrics were direct. Simone had no hesitation when it came to putting together the plight of black people in America, particularly women. As she beautifully and hauntingly sang the lyrics, “My skin is black / My arms are long / My hair is woolly / My back is strong / Strong enough to take the pain inflicted again and again.”
When Martin Luther King Jr was killed, America was shaken to its core, and a lot of people, specifically minorities in America, felt a great deal of pain as their symbol of freedom and equality was gunned down. There is no one better than Nina Simone to sing this pain, as the beauty and sorrow she could pack into her voice summed up that which so many other people were feeling. The song ‘Why? (The King of Love is Dead)’ is one of Simone’s most passionate.
Unlike ‘Four Women’, Nina Simone didn’t write this song; it was penned by her bassist Gene Taylor. There was very little time between the murder and the song being written, so the lyrics are one of the genuine recounts of the high emotions people were feeling at the time.
“Now, that’s composed by my bass player. Dr King was killed on Thursday and Gene Taylor composed that tune, Friday,” said Simone, “So it was completely inspired. In a narrative way, it is a folk song.” Simone recited some of the lyrics that stood out to her, “’Why was he killed? It was bigotry that sealed his fat, you can shed your tears, but they won’t change a thing, will my country ever learn, must it kill at every turn? We have to know what the consequences of these acts will bring’.”
Nina Simone acknowledged how powerful the lyrics in the song were and how they resonated with people. The fact it was so raw and performed with such emotion meant that people couldn’t turn away from its meaning. “The song is extremely powerful there,” she said.
