The Book Cooks Me, My Guitar, & Nina Simone
At the age of ninety-two, I have been a professional musician for seventy-five years, forty-three of them as Nina Simone's guitarist, as well as her close friend. Playing with Nina, especially just the two of us alone, was often a soaring and extraordinary experience. Sometimes, in dreams, I can hear us, hear her, and at times, the two of us playing on a song we never even played together. I just knew her so well that even our dreams collided. As her friend, that entanglement continued, as I was challenged to support her difficult psychological problems. I was literally lucky to be able to make a living playing my guitar. So many brilliant musicians never get the right breaks and go on to other careers. As a teenager, I was spurred along by a wonderful teacher and mentor, Rector Baily, and met another of his students, bassist Chris White, who became my close friend, later playing with Nina also, and then with Dizzy Gillespie for many years. I was drafted during the Korean War and ended up in Special Services, playing in a band with fellow draftees Wynton Kelly and Duke Pearson, and even accompanying country star, “Corporal” Faron Young. I then returned to New York in the 1950s, when jazz and R&B guitarists were in demand, and with my various connections, I was able to work full time. Then, in the summer of 1958, I met Nina. I was playing in New Hope Pennsylvania with my trio and one night, a group of people were at the restaurant for dinner. After hearing me play guitar, they approached me about possibly sitting in with a friend of theirs, Nina Simone, who they said was a virtuoso musician playing solo piano at the Bucks County Playhouse Inn nearby. Always curious about any so-called “virtuoso” musician, I said, “Why not?” They came back the next evening, having gotten her okay and arranged for us to play together that Sunday night when I was off. I showed up while she was on a break and, not seeing any familiar faces around, plugged in my amp, tuned up, and waited for her. After a few minutes, she appeared on stage and, without even saying hello or acknowledging my presence, began playing a Bach piece, “Good King Wenceslaus.” I have perfect pitch, an innate ability to identify a note, so I knew what key she was playing in and joined her, developing counterpoint and fugue, challenging each other, with Nina still not even acknowledging me being there. We were totally improvising, totally jazz, totally classical, totally mind-blowing, and at the height of it, while this incredible interaction was going on, she softly began singing the ballad, “Little Girl Blue.” She then looked up at me with a coy, little smile on her face. Whoa, Nellie, we were in uncharted waters. We played out the set with some blues and another ballad, “I Loves You Porgy.” Afterward, her friends introduced us. She extended her hand and said very formally, “How nice to meet you. Would you be interested in visiting for tea next Saturday afternoon?” HUH? She was done for the night and was about to drive back to Philadelphia, where she lived. I said I would be delighted, and was given her address. As she was going through the door, she turned and said, “Oh yes, and would you please bring your guitar. We were heading into the ‘60s. Atlantic, Columbia, RCA, Capital, as well as the independent NY recording studios, were going nonstop, and I found myself right in the thick of it, getting calls for recording sessions. The first recording sessions that I was involved in were, oddly enough, with an Armenian band led by a fantastic musician, Chick Ganimian, whom I had recently met. He played the Oud, a Middle Eastern bowl-shaped lute, and asked me to join his band, playing gigs with him on rhythm guitar. Middle Eastern music and belly dancing were the current rage in the city, and we played in a revue at the Round Table nightclub on Manhattan’s East Side, as well as other clubs and private events. That’s how I learned to play in more exotic time signatures. We “Westerners” are used to singing and dancing in 2/4 (polkas), 3/4 (waltz), and 4/4 (pop, R&B, jazz, and blues) time. Middle Eastern rhythms also include 5/4-, 7/8-, and 9/8-time signatures. These rhythms became easier for me to understand as I watched the flow of folks dancing when we played at Armenian weddings. Chick was a close friend of Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegun, the founders of Atlantic Records. Chick’s band was signed to record an album in order to test out the studio’s new equipment. Multitrack recording was just then becoming a reality, sixteen separate tracks on two-inch-wide recording tape. Their studio was located in Manhattan, just below Columbus Circle, in a small office building. The control room was so cramped that there was only room for the recording console. The sixteen-track machine, the first one introduced to the recording scene in New York, stood out in the hallway. Tom Dowd was the engineer, and he, through the years, became a legendary recording engineer. The album, Come With Me To The Casbah, included a few American standards such as “My Funny Valentine” and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” as well as traditional Middle Eastern music. Those sessions helped launch me into the New York recording scene. I became a first-call session guitarist for Atlantic Records, as well as Columbia, under John Hammond, who was celebrated for discovering Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Aretha Franklin, among dozens of other artists. John phoned one day to tell me about a new find of his, a Nigerian drummer and singer, Michael Babatunde Olatunji and his Drums of Passion. He wanted to merge New York jazz musicians with Olatunji’s group of musicians and singers and asked if I would be available for the sessions. For SURE, Mr. Hammond. Meeting Baba would be an inspiration for me. I would be introduced, close up, to a direct source of African music. It was an incredible experience. I became close with Baba, I introduced him to Nina Simone, and he taught us some of his songs, which Nina recorded and performed.
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IN 1962, NINA was invited to perform at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Unusual, as it was still the segregated South, but Nina was now a famous North Carolina girl, and the college was excited to have her. How “nice” of them. After the concert, it was raining, our flight back to New York was canceled, and we were going to take the train back, the Champion, a streamliner running from Miami to Boston and coming through Chapel Hill at two a.m. It was ten p.m., and we were looking at a four-hour wait. We were driven down to the station with all our gear: Nina’s suitcase, Bobby Hamilton’s drum kit, Chris White’s upright bass, my guitar and amp. The station was a dinky one-room building that had its heyday back in the nineteen thirties, with a ticket man nodding off in a room behind the counter. The accommodations were typical of Southern “hospitality” of those times, separate black seating, water fountains, and restrooms. There was just one other person waiting for the train, an elderly white woman looking none too happy when we startled her awake by our sudden appearance. We were hungry and, leaving Bobby to stay back and mind our gear, Nina, Chris, and I decided to try to find a black diner that might still be open on this cold and wet, miserable night. We walked through some deserted streets, definitely not the white part of town, and lucked out and found a place that was closed but had some lights on. A young girl was still there cleaning up and she put together a bag of food to take out. As we made our way back, we saw a flashing red glow coming from the train station. With a collective “uh oh,” we picked up the pace, and sure enough, standing in front of the station was a police cruiser with its lights going. In we went. Standing in front of us were two officers who had Bobby in handcuffs, and that old lady who had been sitting across the way in the white section was hysterical. Bobby was shaking like a leaf and started to tell us what was going on, “Nina, I was fast asleep and ... “A cop said, “Shut up, we’ll do the talking.” They proceeded to tell us, “While this lady was asleep, this colored boy stole her handbag, and he won’t tell us where he put it. So we’re takin’ him in to get the truth outta him.” That’s all Nina had to hear to get her engine revved. “Now listen here, you two, I’m Nina Fucking Simone. This man works for me, and he makes more money in one night than the two of you make in a month. So you better get those handcuffs offa him right now or I’m gonna put you in some trouble you won’t forget.” The cops looked at each other. Apparently, they never ever had heard a black man, and especially not an “uppity” black woman, talk back that way. “Girl, you’re about to get your own black ass arrested,” he said. On that, Chris and I jumped into our Brooklyn attitude. Chris said, “The two of you going to try and lock us all up? That’ll be interesting.” The cops, now riled, were ready to get into it. Suddenly Nina yelled, “I’ve had enough of this shit, where’s my phone book?” and pulled it out of her purse. “I’m going to call Terry. That’s Governor Sanford to you. He’s a good friend of mine.” Indeed, the Governor of North Carolina was a big fan of the homegrown North Carolina girl. “I have his home telephone number right here, and I’m sure it’ll ring right by his bed. Of course, it’s after one in the morning, and he’ll be real happy to hear about your behavior. Where’s the phone?” Well, now the two cops were scared. They started backpedaling. “But, Ma’am, we’re just here to protect you if there’s any trouble. See? We’re takin’ the cuffs offa him right now, and we’ll get to the bottom of the lady’s missing purse.” The cops said, “Sorry for the misunderstanding. We’ll be outta here if there’s nothin’ more we can do for ya,” and off they went. The South was changing, albeit there was still heavy resistance to what was coming. The times they were a changing, as the song goes, but on that one rainy miserable night ... the times hadn’t changed fast enough for us. The Champion rolled in promptly at two a.m. We boarded, sat down, opened that bag of food, and man, we found fried chicken, biscuits, and a tub of potato salad, which we passed around. That young kid even put in plastic forks and napkins. We ate, looked at each other, and just shook our heads. Bobby looked over at Nina and said, “Nina, you sure know how to do it when the shit goes down.” She laughed and said, “I take care of my boys, shugga. Them peckerwoods didn’t stand a chance.” Nina was right on, and as Bobby said, “She was always front and center when the shit went down.” We were a band of Brothers and one fine Sister. Folk music was opening up to new contemporary sounds, and I believe I was the first electric guitar on the scene. I think they liked having Nina Simone’s guitarist, a jazz guy, bring an amplified sound to their music. If the purists didn’t appreciate it, they didn’t say so to my face. Theo Bikel, a folk artist who had starred on Broadway as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, hosted a Sunday afternoon radio show for WNYC. Tongue in cheek, he would introduce me as “Sparks.” I sure was their novelty. I would sit in with artists like Fred Neal, Tim Hardin, Judy Collins, Bob Gibson of Gibson and Camp, Jim (Roger) McGuinn, and Ian and Sylvia from Canada, along with David Bromberg and Sandy Bull, a couple of really fine acoustic guitarists. Bob Dylan would walk around the tables during intermissions with his harmonica and guitar, entertaining the audience. He was among the new wave of folk artists coming up.
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OUR FAREWELL Nina Simone tour opened on June 8, 2001, at the Palais des Congrés de Paris. Nina and I stood offstage together, holding hands as we always did, ready to go on after the introduction. She turned to me and softly said, “This is all we have, Al, isn’t it. This is our life, and everything else comes after this.” I felt that Nina was saying this, not with sadness but with acceptance of her journey, as reflected in her song, “My Way.” Frail, voice unsteady, and a shadow of her vibrant, explosive past, Nina entered the stage, and was overwhelmed by a tumultuous, standing ovation. She stood by her piano, bowed to the audience. The cheers were deafening. She sat down, reached out toward her loving fans, and with a warm smile said, “Hello, it’s so good to be here with you again. I hope you missed me.”
© 2026 Al Schackman
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