“Mississippi Goddam” was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry for being “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant”.There is no official music video for the track, however there is a YouTube upload by a user named “Aaron Overfield” in February 2013, where Simone is performing the track live in Antibes in July 1965. Perhaps Nina Simone's most famous song, and one of the landmark protest songs of the … From her 1964 album “Nina Simone in Concert”, “Mississippi Goddam” was written and composed solely by Simone in under an hour, live at Carnegie Hall. Genres, Styles, Moods & Themes for Mississippi Goddam - Nina Simone on AllMusic From her 1964 album “Nina Simone in Concert”, “Mississippi Goddam” was written and composed solely by Simone in under an hour, live at Carnegie Hall. When the track was released as a single, it was banned in large portions of the US, due to having the word ‘Goddam’ in the title. In the biographical film “What Happened, Miss Simone”, there was footage of boxes of records of the track being destroyed in places. Mississippi Goddam, song lyrics. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again. (That date is significant: contrary to popular belief, Simone was already performing "Mississippi Goddam" before the June 21, 1964 triple murder of civil rights workers James Cheney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, so the song was not composed as a response to that tragedy.) Mississippi Goddam “Mississippi Goddam” is one of iconic jazz musician’s Nina Simone’s most controversial tracks, due to Simone labelling the song as her “first civil rights song”. The song captures Simone’s response to the murder of Medgar Evers in Mississippi; as well as the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, which killed four black children. Angry but not strident, with huge reserves of proud dignity, Nina Simone became one of the most important figures in '60s jazz with this song; unlike many protest songs from the same period, which have lost their relevance with the changing social scene, "Mississippi Goddam" remains startlingly fresh. It was released on her album Nina Simone in Concert in 1964. Nonetheless, Simone sings her lyrics with bracing sarcasm that adds to the impact of the dead-serious lyrics in a way that a po-faced, sanctimonious reading would miss. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. The song's genius lies in the ironically cheerful way Simone presents it: in the best-known version, recorded live at Carnegie Hall on March 21, 1964, she wryly calls it a show tune for a show that hasn't been written yet, and about halfway through, she witheringly asks, "I bet you thought I was kidding, didn't ya?" Simone composed "Mississippi G Perhaps Nina Simone's most famous song, and one of the landmark protest songs of the civil rights era, "Mississippi Goddam" is as brilliantly wicked a piece of social satire as one of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's knife-behind-the-back songs from The Threepenny Opera or The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. In the March 24, 1986 issue of Jet, Nina Simone said that her protest songs hurt her career.She further added that, of all the protest songs she released, "Mississippi Goddam" probably hurt her the worst. 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. "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". As of September 2019, it has over 1.7 million views.This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Song: Mississippi Goddamn Lyrics: Nina Simone Music: Nina Simone Year: 1964 Genre: Done as a showtune Country: USA (Spoken Introduction:) The name of this tune is Mississippi Goddamn, And I mean every word of it.