The story of ‘It Is Finished’: Nina Simone’s underrated masterpiece
It takes a lot for a character’s essence to be felt so profoundly years after their passing. Yet, with Nina Simone, who passed away in 2003, even a quick skim of her story gives a potent dose of her elemental force. A unique being right from the beginning, her twisting life and career had many chapters, with her songwriting and voice continuing to be widely influential.
While her career encompassed many genres, including classical, jazz, pop, R&B, and soul, one album is consistently discussed as one of her finest despite being one of her lesser-known ones in the mainstream. This is 1974’s It Is Finished, her first album not on longtime home RCA, which found the American at a strange personal and professional juncture.
An eight-track live album comprised of covers, each number paints a picture of where Simone found herself when recording. This includes the opener, a soulful rendition of proto-metal band Steppenwolf’s ‘The Pusher’, which evokes the drug problem she was trying to escape at the time, as well as the rendition of the traditional classic ‘Kumbaya, My Lord’, titled ‘Com’ By H’Yere Good Lord’. The latter resoundingly conveyed her desire to return to her roots and do away with the extraneous trappings of her career.
Also boasting a rework of the ballad ‘Mr. Bojangles’, made famous by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band in 1970, this eclectic record was a significant step forward for Simone, opening her up to a rebirth brimming with more sonic diversity than ever. Although it comprises covers, ironically, It Is Finished remains one of the most distilled versions of the artist she ever committed to record, with it passionate, defiant, and a show of her timeless talent.
The album’s story is equally as fascinating as the musical choices contained. Speaking to Jet magazine in 1985, Simone maintained that her 1964 civil rights staple ‘Mississippi Goddam’ – her first true foray into political songwriting – had damaged her career. She even asserted that the industry had boycotted her since its release, and this would eventually change the trajectory of her life, leading up to It Is Finished.
After spending much of the 1960s fighting on many fronts against America’s endemic racism and the industry’s machinations, all the while using her music as a vehicle for much of her personal philosophy, by 1970, Simone was exhausted. She needed a change. Done with militancy, drugs, and her country, in September of that year, she took off for the relative tranquillity of Barbados.
Allegedly, when on the island, she waited for her husband and manager, Andrew Stroud, a New York detective, to tell her when to return to performing, but a mix-up in communication, founded on her sudden disappearance and leaving her wedding ring behind, made him conclude that she wanted a divorce.
Simone spent a lengthy period away from the US, but upon her return, she was informed that a warrant for her arrest had been issued for unpaid taxes. This economic inaction is alleged to have been a protest against the government and the country’s role in the Vietnam War. Nevertheless, it saw her flee to Barbados once more to evade prosecution.
She stayed on the Caribbean island for a short while, and in her autobiography, she claimed that she had an affair with Prime Minister Errol Barrow despite misspelling his name. Following her time there, fellow singer and civil rights activist Miriam Makeba persuaded her to travel to Liberia, which influenced the distinctly African and traditional feel of It Is Finished.
Simone had signed to RCA in 1967 after leaving her faciliatory previous home, Philips Records, and her time there saw her release some of her most effective racially-motivated efforts. This included ‘Backlash Blues’, written by her friend, the Harlem Renaissance leader Langston Hughes, which appeared on her first RCA album, that year’s Nina Simone Sings the Blues.
Given what her time with RCA entailed, It Is Finished was a perfect way to close this chapter, from the assertive title to covers of tracks by Black heroes such as Bessie Smith and Exuma.
It proved such a momentous period of metamorphosis for her that she did not make another album for four years until 1978 when CTI Records head Creed Taylor finally persuaded her to get back into the studio and release the cult hit Baltimore, which saw her rebirth start to blossom.
