We were suspended for a moment between the grief of having lost our Nina some three weeks before (April 21, the day that Prince would die 13 years later) and ecstatic remembrance as this then-unknown singer, Alice Smith, summoned the potency of our lost patron saint. Her crooning felt sexy and dangerous and inquisitive as she declared, “I want a little sweetness down in my soul.I want a little steam on my clothes.” The crowd swooned. Armed with a startling mezzo-soprano that dipped into the outer limits of audible desire, she was covering “I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl” like her life depended on it. She was rocking garden-green pants and a yellow spaghetti-strap tank top, and she came out late in the Black Rock Coalition Orchestra’s Nina Simone tribute set in New York on June 13, 2003. A bespectacled, lanky, light-skinned sister sporting two braided pigtails stepped up to the mic.
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