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Mississippi Goddam

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"Mississippi Goddam"
The sleeve for the promo release of the single
Song by Nina Simone
from the album Nina Simone in Concert
Released1964
RecordedNew York City, live at Carnegie Hall
LabelPhilips Records
Songwriter(s)Nina Simone
Composer(s)Nina Simone
Producer(s)Hal Mooney

"Mississippi Goddam" is a song written and performed by American singer and pianist Nina Simone, who later announced the anthem to be her "first civil rights song."[1] Composed in less than an hour, the song emerged in a “rush of fury, hatred, and determination” as she “suddenly realized what it was to be black in America in 1963.” The song was released on her album Nina Simone in Concert in 1964, which was based on recordings from three concerts she gave at Carnegie Hall earlier that year. The album was her first release for the Dutch label Philips Records and is indicative of the more political turn her recorded music took during this period.

Together with the songs "Ain't Got No, I Got Life," "Four Women" and "To Be Young, Gifted and Black," "Mississippi Goddam" is one of her most famous protest songs and self-written compositions. In 2019, "Mississippi Goddam" was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."[2]

Interpretation

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The song captures Simone's response to the racially motivated murders of Emmett Till and Medgar Evers in Mississippi, and the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four black children.[3] On the recording she sarcastically announces the song as "a show tune, but the show hasn't been written for it yet." The song begins jauntily, with a show tune feel, but demonstrates its political focus early on with its refrain "Alabama's got me so upset, Tennessee's made me lose my rest, and everybody knows about Mississippi goddam." In the song, she says: "They keep on sayin' 'go slow' ... to do things gradually would bring more tragedy. Why don't you see it? Why don't you feel it? I don't know, I don't know. You don't have to live next to me, just give me my equality!"

Simone incorporates several political references in “Mississippi Goddam.” In the song, she sings: “Governor Wallace has made me lose my rest,” a reference to George Wallace’s infamous stand in the schoolhouse door, which saw the former governor of Alabama attempt to block two black students from enrolling in the University of Alabama.[4] She continues: “You told me to wash and clean my ears, and talk real fine just like a lady, and you’d stop calling me Sister Sadie.” Sister Sadie, a Black Woman who is portrayed as strong and who doesn’t express her anger or pain, is a character in Mark Twain’s novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.[5] With lyrics such as “You’re just plain rotten” and “You’re too damn lazy,” Simone mocks her racist oppressors by mimicking their language.[6]

Miami University musicology professor Tammy Kernodle explains: “In Mississippi Goddam, we have Nina Simone pulling from the past and invoking it in the present, but also speaking to what is yet to come if America does not enact real social change.”[7]

Reception

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Simone first performed the song at the Village Gate nightclub in Greenwich Village, and shortly thereafter in March 1964 at Carnegie Hall, in front of a mostly white audience.[6] The Carnegie Hall recording was subsequently released as a single and became an anthem during the Civil Rights Movement.[8] "Mississippi Goddam" was banned in several Southern states.[9] Boxes of promotional singles sent to radio stations around the country were returned with each record broken in half.[10]

Simone performed the song in front of thousands of people at the end of the Selma to Montgomery marches when she and other black activists, including Sammy Davis Jr., James Baldwin and Harry Belafonte crossed police lines.[11]

Simone performed "Mississippi Goddam" on The Steve Allen Show on September 10, 1964. First Amendment scholar Ronald Collins felt that Steve Allen, the "famed host of a nationally syndicated TV variety program ... was one of the few who then dared to provide a forum for those with dissident views." Therefore, when Nina Simone "joined Allen at the desk before [the] song, he told her he wanted her to sing 'Mississippi Goddam' because he knew it would provoke a lively discussion about censorship."

Legacy

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In later performances of “Mississippi Goddam,” Simone changed her lyrics to reflect current events. On The Steve Allen Show, she sang “St. Augustine made me lose my rest,” referencing a recent Civil Rights protest that took place there.[12] In March 1965, while performing for activists in Montgomery, she changed the second line to “Selma made me lose my rest,” referring to a violent confrontation that occurred on the Edmund Pettus bridge between the activists and state and local law enforcement. In 1966 at the Newport Jazz Festival, she changed the line to “Watts made me lose my rest,” alluding to the riots that took place in the Watts neighborhood in Los Angeles. After Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination in Memphis, Nina changed her lyrics accordingly, singing: “Memphis made me lose my rest.”

In 2021, "Mississippi Goddam" was listed at No. 172 on Rolling Stone's "Top 500 Greatest Songs of All Time."[13] In 2022, American Songwriter ranked the song number three on their list of the 10 greatest Nina Simone songs,[14] and in 2023, The Guardian ranked the song number one on their list of the 20 greatest Nina Simone songs.[15]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Feldstein, Ruth (March 1, 2005). ""I Don't Trust You Anymore": Nina Simone, Culture, and Black Activism in the 1960s". Journal of American History. 91 (4): 1349–1379. doi:10.2307/3660176. JSTOR 3660176 – via ignacio.
  2. ^ Andrews, Travis M. (March 20, 2019). "Jay-Z, a speech by Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and 'Schoolhouse Rock!' among recordings deemed classics by Library of Congress". The Washington Post. Retrieved March 25, 2019.
  3. ^ Tillet, Salamishah (June 19, 2015). "Nina Simone's Time Is Now, Again". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved July 5, 2015.
  4. ^ "Civil Rights in Song (4): Nina Simone". RGS History. September 25, 2019. Retrieved November 17, 2024.
  5. ^ Lloyd, Robin (February 24, 2021). "Black History Month: Nina Simone's first protest song". KNKX Public Radio. Retrieved November 17, 2024.
  6. ^ a b Pierpont, Claudia Roth (August 11, 2014). "A raised voice: How Nina Simone turned the movement into music". The New Yorker. Retrieved July 5, 2015.
  7. ^ Fields, Liz (January 14, 2021). "The story behind Nina Simone's protest song, "Mississippi Goddam"". PBS. Retrieved November 17, 2024.
  8. ^ "Nina Simone Reveals 'Mississippi Goddam' Song 'Hurt My Career'". Jet. Johnson Publishing Company. March 24, 1986. p. 54.
  9. ^ Smith, Ian K. (March 25, 2010). "Top 20 Political Songs: Mississippi Goddam – Nina Simone – 1964". New Statesman.
  10. ^ Chandler, Adam (June 27, 2015). "How the Civil-Rights Era Made and Broke Nina Simone". The Atlantic. Retrieved July 5, 2015.
  11. ^ Lindsey, Treva B. (April 5, 2022). America, Goddam: Violence, Black Women, and the Struggle for Justice. Univ of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-38449-1.
  12. ^ Cohodas, Nadine (2018). ""Mississippi Goddam"—Nina Simone (1964)" (PDF). Library of Congress. Retrieved November 17, 2024.
  13. ^ "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time". Rolling Stone. September 15, 2021. Retrieved July 19, 2022.
  14. ^ Long, Sam (March 14, 2022). "The Top 10 Nina Simone Songs". American Songwriter. Retrieved August 28, 2023.
  15. ^ Petridis, Alexis (July 20, 2023). "Nina Simone's 20 greatest songs – ranked!". The Guardian. Retrieved August 28, 2023.
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