From 1964 to
1967, the extraordinary Nina Simone released seven albums on Philips Records,
further establishing her peerless artistic expression and singular voice.
During this exceptional purple patch, she recorded some of her best and most
important work of her career, much of it fuelled by the Civil Rights Movement
and the turmoil of 1960s America. In conjunction with their 60th anniversary
this year, Verve is celebrating the genius of Simone, the supernaturally gifted
singer, pianist and prolific songwriter, and her incredible mid-'60s run with
the release of her entire Philips catalog on vinyl.
Released earlier this summer as a box set titled The Philips
Years, the seven LPs – Nina Simone In Concert ('64), Broadway-Blues-Ballads
('64), I Put A Spell On You ('65), Pastel Blues ('65), Let It All Out ('66),
Wild Is The Wind ('66) and High Priestess Of Soul ('67) – are now available
individually as of today, September 30, on heavyweight 180-gram vinyl in
facsimiles of the original sleeve art. The vinyl masters for the
long-out-of-print titles were cut at Abbey Road using high-resolution audio
transfers direct from the analog master tapes and are all in stereo. This marks
the first time that Broadway-Blues-Ballads and Let It All Out have been made
available on vinyl since their original release. A celebration of Simone's
remarkable talents, these albums contain many of the songs that Simone's legacy
is built upon not only such well-known cuts as "I Put A Spell On You"
and "Feeling Good," but also "Wild Is The Wind," a song that
David Bowie would memorably cover, and Simone's version of Billie Holiday's
"Strange Fruit." In their recent review of the box set, Pitchfork
proclaimed: "The Philips Years is a humble title for a collection that
contains some of the most important moving documents of American history. Nina
Simone's Philips records remain her most essential."
Nina Simone's classic Philips Records catalog is now
available back on vinyl. The titles include: 'Nina Simone In Concert' ('64),
'Broadway-Blues-Ballads' ('64), 'I Put A Spell On You' ('65), 'Pastel Blues'
('65), 'Let It All Out' ('66), 'Wild Is The Wind' ('66) and 'High Priestess Of
Soul' ('67).
Since her death in 2003, Simone's influence, significance
and cultural relevance has only grown, especially most recently as issues of
race, police brutality and civil rights are once again at the forefront of the
cultural conversation. The Netflix feature documentary, What Happened, Miss
Simone? — which just won the 2016 Emmy for Outstanding Documentary this month —
has helped shine a new light on Simone's immense talents and fearless activism,
resulting in a new generation discovering her timeless music and indelible
impact. Of her Philips years, NPR drew parallels to the present: "In a
time when issues of race and gender are reverberating with a newfound
volatility reminiscent of the 1960s — the decade in which Simone forged her
reputation as a politically provocative entertainer — Nina's concerts and
recordings feel like urgent bulletins from a brooding heart and a troubled
land."
In 1964, Simone embarked on a new stage of her career. Her
rejection by the Philadelphia-based Curtis Institute Of Music; time spent as a
pianist in an Atlantic City nightclub; her jazz, gospel, pop and classical
influences – all these had fused to make her one of the most complex,
fascinating and talented artists of the decade. Simone released her debut album
in 1958, but when she signed to Philips in 1964 at the age of 31, her creative
output was about to dovetail with the Civil Rights movement — notably
coinciding with the Civil Rights Act Of 1964, which outlawed discrimination
based on race, color, gender, religious affiliation or nationality. It's
fitting, then, that the first album she released on Philips, 1964's Nina Simone
In Concert, captured some of Simone's most committed Civil Rights-era material,
including her explosive rendition of "Mississippi Goddam." But this
three-year period also saw her satisfy her relentlessly questing muse, with
collections that focused on Broadway showtunes (Broadway-Blues-Ballads), pop
material (I Put A Spell On You) and more, showing the full range of Simone's
talents.
Nina Simone in Concert was taken from three live shows
recorded at New York's Carnegie Hall in March and April 1964 and it features
her then-best known songs – a live version of her first hit "I Loves You,
Porgy" taken from the opera Porgy & Bess by George and Ira Gershwin,
and the mournful "Don't Smoke In Bed," as well as the hilariously
risqué "Go Limp." This album also saw her embrace the theme of civil
rights in song for the first time in her recording career. It features one of
the greatest protest songs in the canon – "Mississippi Goddam," a
deceptively jaunty musical number which was inspired by the murder of civil
rights activist Medgar Evers by the Ku Klux Klan and the bombing of the 16th
Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. Released as a single, the song, an
incendiary cri de coeur that she performed outside Montgomery during the
landmark Selma To Montgomery marches, was banned in several Southern US states.
"Old Jim Crow" and her reading of "Pirate Jenny" from
"The Threepenny Opera" by Kurt Weill and Bertholdt Brecht are
similarly powerful political statements of intent from this fearless artist.
In contrast to her first Philips album, which was
politically laden with civil rights motifs, Broadway-Blues-Ballads is more
playful. It opens with one of the vocalist's signature songs, "Don't Let
Me Be Misunderstood," a tune which was written for her by Bennie Benjamin,
Gloria Caldwell and Sol Marcus, and was later taken to the top of the charts on
both sides of the Atlantic by The Animals. Other standout songs on the album
include Cole Porter's "The Laziest Gal In Town" and "Something
Wonderful" from the Broadway musical The King & I by Rogers &
Hammerstein, and "See-Line Woman," a song based on a traditional
children's folk ditty, which was to become a regular part of Simone's live
repertoire, and a source of material, through sampling, for contemporary
artists including Kanye West and Bruno Mars; Simone's version has also been
covered by Feist.
I Put a Spell on You, Simone's third album for Philips,
introduced the world to several more of her best-loved songs. The title track,
a cover of the Screamin' Jay Hawkins novelty hit, was transformed by Simone's
languid arrangement into a mesmerizing love song and became an instant classic;
its impact was so great she used the title for her 1992 autobiography. The
album also features perhaps her most well-known song to contemporary audiences,
"Feeling Good," which was written by Anthony Newley and Leslie
Bricusse for the musical The Roar Of The Greasepaint – The Smell Of The Crowd;
the track was brought back into currency via an advertising campaign and has
since been covered and sampled by countless other artists including Kanye West,
George Michael, Muse and Michael Bublé, but none match the power of Simone's
definitive version. Other standout songs were sourced in Europe–a heartrending
take on Jacques Brel's "Ne Me Quitte Pas" (tr."Don't Leave
Me") sung in the original French, and two Charles Aznavour songs:
"Tomorrow Is My Turn" and "You've Got To Learn."
Later the same year, Simone followed up with Pastel Blues,
an album best known for its stunning 10-minute rendition of the traditional
song "Sinnerman" that closes the record. President Obama called the
powerful opus one of his favorite songs while Kanye West sampled it as well as
Simone's haunting rendition of the Billie Holiday anti-lynching ballad,
"Strange Fruit." Album opener "By My Husband" had a
different kind of afterlife once Jeff Buckley recorded it for consideration for
his 1993 EP Live At Sin-é (his version finally surfaced on the expanded 2003
edition of the release). Pastel Blues was one of Simone's best-performing
records, entering the Top 10 on Billboard's R&B charts.
Simone's fifth release for Philips, Let It All Out, mixed
studio performances with live recordings. It features beautifully intimate
interpretations of songs by Duke Ellington ("Mood Indigo"), Irving
Berlin ("This Year's Kisses") and Rogers & Hart ("Little
Girl Blue") while Simone takes one of Bob Dylan's most hard-hitting songs,
"The Ballad Of Hollis Brown," and makes it her own. One of the most
striking performances on the record is a live a cappella performance of
"Images" based on a poem about the beauty of blackness by Waring
Cuney. The song was taken from the Carnegie Hall shows that made up Nina Simone
In Concert.
Though compiled from recordings initially earmarked for
previous Philips outings, Wild Is The Wind remains a cohesive artistic
statement whose influence runs deep. Johnny Mathis originally recorded the
title track for the 1957 film of the same name, but it was Simone's beautifully
mournful version that inspired David Bowie to cover it for his groundbreaking
'76 album, Station To Station. Her stunning version of James Shelton's
"Lilac Wine," featured here, once again provided inspiration to Jeff Buckley
who aped her arrangement on his debut album, Grace in '94. Again politically
engaged, Simone's composition "Four Women" (an angry history of black
women's experience) was controversially banned in certain quarters due to
concern over the lyrics.
Once more presenting Simone's vast stylistic range, The High
Priestess Of Soul, her seventh and final album released for Philips, also
introduced Simone's enduring epithet to the wider world. From rock 'n' roll
(Chuck Berry's "Brown Eyed Handsome Man") to spirituals ("Come
Ye," "Take Me To The Water"), jazz, pop and soul, the album saw
Simone end her Philips tenure as confidently – and uncompromisingly – as she
began it.
Nina Simone—born Eunice Kathleen Waymon on February 21,
1933, in Tryon, North Carolina—was a musician as well as a civil rights
activist. Simone took to music at an early age, learning to play piano at the
age of three and singing in her church's choir. She went on to study classical
piano at the Julliard School in New York City, but left early when she ran out
of money. In order to make a living, Simone left classical music to play jazz
and blues in Atlantic City. By the mid-'60s, Simone became known as a main
voice of the Civil Rights Movement and advocated for violent revolution during
that period. Simone passed away April 21, 2003, after struggling with breast
cancer for years in her Carry-le-Rouet, France home.
