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14 flagships · 25 briefs staged (weekly from Oct 13) · 9 dossiers · 25 guides · 2,957 entities — record updated October 12, 2026
The DuSable Black History Museum’s Harold Washington Wing, Chicago — CultureTechLens
Research Brief

Photo: TonyTheTiger, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Research Briefs

Nina Simone — I Put a Spell on You (1965)

CTL Thin Brief · CTL-TB-000123 · Published 2026-10-09

Thin Brief — a short evidence sketch, not a full research brief.

What makes I Put a Spell on You a landmark?

Released in 1965 on Philips Records, the album reworks Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’s title song and includes her indelible reading of “Feeling Good.” SUPPORTED

Key facts

  • Nina Simone was a singer, pianist, and civil rights activist whose range ran from jazz to classical to soul. SUPPORTED
  • I Put a Spell on You was released in 1965 on Philips Records. SUPPORTED
  • The title track is her reinvention of a song by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. SUPPORTED
  • The album includes “Feeling Good,” from the stage musical The Roar of the Greasepaint — The Smell of the Crowd. SUPPORTED
  • The record captures Simone’s gift for turning borrowed material into personal testimony. PROVISIONAL

Sources

  • AllMusic: I Put a Spell on You album page
  • Philips Records catalog
  • CTL Knowledge Graph: Nina Simone

Evidence grades: VERIFIED — strong primary or multiple corroborating sources. SUPPORTED — credible, partly corroborated. PROVISIONAL — single source or general knowledge, uncorroborated.

Cite as: CultureTechLens, "Nina Simone — I Put a Spell on You (1965) (CTL-TB-000123)," 2026-10-09.

Source: CultureTechLens

From the Archive

The archive in pictures

The people, places, and institutions this work documents. Photographs from the CultureTechLens research record — rights-cleared, credited, and cited like everything else here.

Shoeshine, 47th Street, Chicago's main Negro business street, Chicago, Illinois, Chicago, 1941 — CultureTechLens
Shoeshine, 47th Street, Chicago's main Negro business street, Chicago, Illinois, Chicago, 1941 — CultureTechLensPhoto: Rosskam, Edwin, 1903-1985, FSA-OWI, Public Domain, via Library of Congress
Where the Negro and white sections on the South Side meet, the white and Negro children sometimes play together, Chicago, Illinois, Chicago, 1941 — CultureTechLens
Where the Negro and white sections on the South Side meet, the white and Negro children sometimes play together, Chicago, Illinois, Chicago, 1941 — CultureTechLensPhoto: Lee, Russell, 1903-1986, FSA-OWI, Public Domain, via Library of Congress
Spalding's base ball guide, and official league book for ... - a complete hand book of the national game of base ball .. (IA spaldingsbasebal04chic) — CultureTechLens
Spalding's base ball guide, and official league book for ... - a complete hand book of the national game of base ball .. (IA spaldingsbasebal04chic) — CultureTechLensPhoto: John H. White, U.S. EPA DOCUMERICA, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Trust & evidence

Evidence before authority. CultureTechLens publishes its methods, its limits, and its corrections alongside its findings. Claims carry grades — VERIFIED, SUPPORTED, PROVISIONAL, DISPUTED, UNRESOLVED — and unknowns are never reported as zero.

Every claim graded. Every source named. Every correction public — see the corrections log.