Nina Simone didn’t sing this often, once saying that it took too much out of her and after singing it she needed seven years to recover. She was born in the south of the United States and when she sang at her first concert, aged 12 in the 1940s, her parents, who had sat in the front row, were forced to move to the back of the hall to make way for white people. She refused to sing until they got their seats back.