Nina Simone’s ten-minute-long interpretation of the biblical-themed song Sinner Man became a classic in her hands.

Few singers can take a song and make it their own as much as Nina Simone; she owns it the moment she touches the piano keys and starts to sing.

Sinnerman, about a sinner trying to escape divine justice on Judgment Day, is a song that dates back to the 1950s. Until Simone tackled it, tended to be sung in the style of what was once called a “negro spiritual.”

She might have heard it on one of those old recordings by The Swan Silvertones or The Weavers before recording her own extended version – more than ten minutes long – in 1965. 

But she had learned the lyrics at revival meetings in her childhood when her mother, a Methodist minister, used it to encourage her flock to confess their sins.

In the early days of her career during the early Sixties, she often used the long piece to end her live performances on the Greenwich Village folk scene, though she had previously recorded it for her 1962 album Nina At The Village Gate, though it was not included at the time.

There are other notable live performances on YouTube, including a 12-minute one at The Cellar Door in Washington D.C. in 1965. 

Simone’s version has been recorded and sampled multiple times and featured in films, most notably in the 1999 remake of The Thomas Crown Affair and over the end credits of David Lynch’s 2006 film Inland Empire.

Among the notable cover versions are a couple of different ones by a pre-Marley The Wailers – in both ska and reggae versions – and Sinead O’Connor, who covered Peter Tosh’s retitled version, Downpressor Man, on her 2005 reggae album Throw Down Your Arms.