The other side of Nina Simone

Seeing the late jazz diva play live was a thrilling but dangerous experience, as Keith Shadwick recalls

Nina Simone, who died over the Easter weekend, was a musician with a unique appeal and a talent that at times approached the terrifying. Unfortunately for her career, as well as her audiences and erstwhile music-business partners, she could also be a quite terrifying personality to deal with. The complexities and contradictions in her character, which made her capable of overwhelming warmth and sensitivity towards people, also led to her turning on perceived wrongdoers with a ferocity that had to be experienced to be believed. Yet, as with so many other great artists, from Miles Davis and Frank Sinatra to Billie Holiday and Edith Piaf, she managed to achieve an ideal in her music that was forever beyond her in life.

Her famous recording for the Colpix label at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1960 has long been regarded as a classic, but Burt Goldblatt, in his book on the festival, revealed that immediately after the set's completion she was in such a rage backstage that her manager barred anyone from entering. The impresario John Hammond watched as Jane Pickens, an ex-member of the singing group the Pickens Sisters and unknown to Simone, barged in, walked up and gave her a huge hug, telling her that the set she'd just given was the greatest experience of Pickens's life. Simone's rage quickly abated and everyone breathed again.

It could be like that for an audience, too. I can remember nights at Ronnie Scott's in the 1980s when you felt as though you were walking on eggshells every time you applauded, in case she disapproved of the type of applause, for she was capable of walking off the stage if she felt the audience was "wrong". One evening, one of our party, a woman artist, made a sketch of her as she performed. She noticed: when the set was finished, she came over, snatched the sketch from the artist's pad, smiled grimly at her compliments about the music just played, and said "I'm keeping this". She did.

In a sense, that's also what she did with certain songs: like Sinatra and other vocal greats, she became so closely identified with songs such as "I Loves You, Porgy" and "My Baby Just Cares For Me" that all subsequent versions simply cannot ignore what she did with them. A early 1960s version of "Wild Is the Wind" by Simone became definitive for David Bowie, whose own mid-Seventies version of it sticks religiously to her interpretation.

While acknowledging the contemporary impact of all the political and social commentary pieces that she gave us, and her great talent as a blues singer, Simone's most enduring gift to her listeners will undoubtedly be the devastating emotional payload that she could invest into even the most lightweight of songs. Sometimes, listening to her recordings – live or in the studio – of songs such as "Don't Smoke in Bed", "Will I Find My Love Today", and "I Get Along Without You Very Well", can be akin to witnessing a primary trauma, so intense are the emotions that one is being asked to share. That must have been hell to live with, but it resulted in a legacy that, in time, will perhaps be recognised as being on a par with that of Holiday and Piaf.

Keith Shadwick is the editor of the 'Gramophone Jazz Good CD Guide'