Nina Simone - Nina Simone

  by Lisa Torem

published: 29 / 4 / 2013

intro

Lisa Torem reflects on the career of soul/jazz icon Nina Simone, who is about to have a new double CD retrospective of her work, 'The Nina Simone Anthology' released

Born Eunice Kathleen Waymon, this North Carolinian preacher’s daughter began her musical career accompanying gospel singers on piano in her father’s church before the age of six. Ultimately she hoped to become a successful concert pianist but, after being rejected for a scholarship at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, she pursued work instead as a nightclub pianist while earning money to study at Julliard. While playing piano, she was also expected to sing and she soon developed a steadfast following at the Midtown Bar and Grill in Atlantic City. The young and ambitious performer played until four a.m. and, fortunately, her rich experiences enabled her to sprinkle her repertoire with snatches of gospel, Bach and hymns. With her newly adapted stage name, Nina Simone - a nod to French film actress Simone Signoret – her jazz/pop vocal styling and sophisticated improvisational arrangements spiked label interest and she landed a deal with Bethlehem Records, recording ‘I Love You, Porgy’ in the late 1950s and charting in the Billboard US Top 20. Simone’s debut album, 'Little Girl Blue', was recorded in 1958 and included bittersweet ballads like ‘Don’t Smoke in Bed’, whilst the title song melded an American classic by Rodgers and Hart with a popular Christmas carol. ‘My Baby Just Cares For Me’ was another song which showcased her carefree delivery and excellent ear for improvisational nuance. She also recorded her follow-up LP, 'Nina Simone at Town Hall', on another American label, Colpix. Her hard work at cultivating a variety of skills and her refusal to be categorised had finally paid off. She married Andy Stroud, a former cop, who would become her manager and became a mother. But it was not until she recorded with the Dutch label Phillips that she found an opportunity to release the anger she felt due to the racism so prevalent in America in 1963. To that end, performing powerful songs like ‘Mississippi Goddam’, which was based on the murder of Medgar Evans and the Birmingham, Alabama church bombings, which killed four schoolgirls, became a critical part of her mission. At the same time, many of her recordings were banned in parts of the American south. Simone’s colleagues supported her concerns, artistically and creatively. When playwright Lorraine Hansberry’s ('Raisin in the Sun') early death prevented her from completing 'To Be Young, Gifted and Black', Simone rose to the occasion and penned an anthemic original song. Simone also developed a close relationship with author Langston Hughes. But whether her intent was to raise consciousness for civil rights or to intrigue audiences with her one-off contralto, she was unarguably prolific - she ultimately recorded more than forty records - nine just on Colpix by 1963, and seven more on Phillips - including a pre-Animals/Dylan version of ‘House of the Rising Sun’ and the intense Brecht/Weill ‘Pirate Jenny’. With RCA in the mid 1960s, she recorded another nine albums and solidified her blues chops. Her own composition ‘I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl’ is an ingenious brew of lust, romance and jazz/blues inference. ‘My Man’s Gone Now’ reeks of bluesy regret yet it is balanced out by wisdom and self-expression. 'Silk and Soul' delivered what it promised but also kept Simone’s activism in the forefront. 'Nuff Said' included bassist Gene Taylor’s think piece: ‘Why? (The King of Love Is Dead)’. Saddened immensely by Martin Luther King, Jr’s. assassination three days earlier, Simone dedicated her live performance at the Westbury Music Fair to her idol. Simone’s legacy was also underscored by her commitment to covers by outstanding songwriters like Bacharach and David, Jimmy Webb, the Bee Gees, Randy Newman, Bob Dylan and George Harrison. On 'The Nina Simone Anthology' forty songs on two CDs document her many moods, themes and styles. Her smoky textures are, of course, there on ‘I Love You, Porgy’ on which the simple but elegant arrangement matches up perfectly with her theme, but with some of the other tunes which appear on the first CD she misses the mark – her cover of Bob Dylan's ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’’ is lengthy at almost six minutes and a bit overblown. ‘Buck,’ on the other hand, is delightful, fun and brassy. “Early to bed and early to rise/I know just what you’re thinking by the look in your eyes,” she sings, teasingly, against resplendent blues harp. ‘Revolution (Parts 1 & 2) is an excellent all-around party – “Let it groove on its own thing,” she sings when her sidemen come on full force. After that phenomenal lead in, her engrossing mix of gospel blues is fiery and unstoppable. Outstanding also is her signature ‘Little Girl Blue’ in which haunting piano prefaces soulful lyrics: “Count the raindrops falling on you each time you knew/All you can ever count on are the raindrops that fall on Little Girl Blue.’ There is a thrilling juxtaposition on ‘Poppies’ – “A child ran through the meadows on a sun-drenched summer day/A man walked through my ghetto on a humid summer day…” The first CD ends with the live ‘Funkier than a Mosquito Tweeter’, which boasts an emphatic beatnik narrative and explosive bongos. The second CD begins with a surprisingly evocative duet/cover of the much-covered ‘Mr. Bojangles’. ‘To Be Young, Gifted and Black,’ certainly was an extraordinary gift to friend Hansberry. ‘Love Me or Leave Me’ features Simone’s impeccable vocal timing. Her piano runs weave in and out of fugue and bass heavy jazz vamps. The Harrison cover, ‘Here Comes The Sun,’ doesn’t showcase her strengths as do so many others. ‘Don’t Smoke In Bed’ has poignant lyrics that just don’t exist anymore and ,although her cover of ‘Turn, Turn, Turn’ piques interest, it doesn’t pack the power of the very theatrical ‘Pirate Jenny.’ The spectacular ‘Since I Fell For You’ blends more blues harp. Simone groans and whimpers in all the right, magical places. ‘The Look of Love,’ would have been majestic had the orchestration not sabotaged her heady references and, clearly, ‘My Man’s Gone Now’ truly reflects her ability to convey warmth and skill. One of Simone’s best covers remains Randy Newman’s ‘I Think It’s Going To Rain Today’ — “Broken windows and empty hallways…”have rarely been depicted so precisely. The collection expands – there’s the R & B flavoured ‘Do What You Gotta Do,’ the funky ‘Go to Hell’ and ‘Save Me,’ her brilliant and bone-chilling’ Nobody’s Fault But Mine’, the energizing ‘Blues For Mama,’ and her breathtaking tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr., ‘The King of Love is Dead.’ From “He had seen the mountain top and he knew he could not stop” to “He was not a violent man/Tell me, folks, if you can, why was he shot down the other day?” Simone summoned a generation whose hopes crashed in a cruel and senseless moment. 'The Nina Simone Anthology' offers a great deal of variety. She’s warm, vindictive, coy, remorseful, on top of the world and elegant. Her voice lays somewhere between a perfectly tuned lyre and a standup bass and nobody can accompany Simone better than Simone, although her sidemen were class acts. Sadly her biographies reveal that her later years were plagued with mental illness, but Nina Simone’s spirit, for most of her recording career, fought like Hell to rise above the ordinary and create a timeless, unprecedented formula, unique to nobody but Nina. 'The Nina Simone Anthology' will be released on the 3rd June,

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