Nina Simone

100 Best Albums

Essential Albums

  • Sings the Blues
    Sings the Blues
    Sings the Blues

    The title of Nina Simone’s 1967 RCA debut, Nina Simone Sings the Blues, implies a back-to-basics approach—and, in some ways, that’s the through line of this timeless set. The songs are, naturally, mostly blues, with both new compositions like “Do I Move You?” and “Blues for Mama”; standards like “The House of the Rising Sun” and “Since I Fell for You”; and homages to Simone’s blues-queen forbearers, with renditions of works made famous by Lil Green (“In the Dark”) and Bessie Smith (“I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl”). And, in contrast to a number of Simone’s more heavily orchestrated mid-1960s albums, the playing on Nina Simone Sings the Blues is pared down and live-sounding, centered on the heavyweight grooves of drummer Bernard Purdie, as anchored by Simone’s inescapable dynamism. Yet the album’s seemingly simple blues theme didn’t stop Simone from stretching out with characteristic emotion and musical complexity, and there’s nothing rudimentary here about her piano-playing and singing. For proof, consider her jaw-dropping take on the Porgy and Bess number “My Man’s Gone Now”: According to one biography, it was recorded in a single, spontaneous take—one that still sounds startlingly new and ambitious. And while Simone never shied away from musical confrontation, Nina Simone Sings the Blues showcases her brashness. Its opening track, “Do I Move You?”, is an almost-accusatory demand of her listeners: “Do I groove you, is it thrillin’?” Simone asks with unflinching directness—and with a knowing wink, fully aware of the voyeuristic pleasure her often-white audiences took in the subversion of her onstage expressiveness. And “Backlash Blues,” the lyrics of which are drawn from one of Langston Hughes’ last poems, is an unforgettable rebuke of the American political status quo. “It was his final slap in the face of the white backlash of this country,” Simone told the crowd before performing the song at the Newport Jazz Festival, a few months before the album was released (and less than two months after Hughes’ death). “Do you think that all colored folks are just second-class fools?” she asks over a classic blues groove, easily cutting to the heart of the form and its significance.

  • Wild Is The Wind
    Wild Is The Wind
    Wild Is The Wind

    Nina Simone was busy between 1964 and 1967. She released 10 albums—a mix of live and studio—during those years, Wild Is the Wind among them. It's exceptional, not least because it was built from songs left over from previous sessions; its odds-and-ends quality turns out to be a strength. Horace Ott and Simone herself split the arrangements. Ott’s charts are more traditional, spanning the tough, charging R&B of “I Love Your Lovin’ Ways,” the jazzy, sophisticated pop of “Break Down And Let It All Out,” and the heavily orchestrated ballad “What More Can I Say?” The tunes give Simone very different settings for her voice, and she makes the most of every opportunity, her phrasing moving from sassy to heartsick to forceful. Simone’s arrangements are more experimental. “Four Women,” a deeply stirring character study looking at race and prejudice from many angles simultaneously, is a towering jazz achievement that's enhanced by the song’s subtle build, from its quiet piano opening to its spine-tingling climax. “Lilac Wine,” an aching, slowly unfolding exploration of lost love and emotional torment, is one of Simone’s greatest vocal performances and would prove influential on singers for decades to come. And the album’s title track, an eerie and haunting slow glide through an abandoned ballroom, finds Simone making the most of her formidable lower range. Wild Is the Wind has a bit of everything that made her a defining pop artist of the 20th century—showtunes, heart-wrenching ballads, traditional folk, a politically charged original that became a classic—and is as beautiful an introduction as anything to Simone's mid-'60s style.

  • Pastel Blues
    Pastel Blues
    Pastel Blues

    Nina Simone released a flurry of albums throughout the mid-’60s—Pastel Blues was her second release in 1965, and she dropped no fewer than four new albums the following year. The pace was relentless, and in time it would take a serious toll on her mental and physical health. But this creatively fertile period saw Simone bringing her relentlessly original take to folk songs, jazz standards, and much more—cementing her status as an American original. The short but intense album begins with the deceptively titled “Be My Husband.” The song starts out playfully but turns stranger with each verse, as the singer pleads with her husband—to the tune of a chain-gang chant—to be kinder to her. Equating marriage with forced labor is strong stuff, and the fact that the lyrics were penned by Simone’s abusive second husband, Andy Stroud, only deepens the resonance of this sparse, arresting song. The next track, Bessie Smith’s classic “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out,” shows what happens to a woman cast out on her own. These may not be the blues of Muddy Waters, but they damn sure are the blues. The album concludes with two of the most powerful songs Simone ever recorded: a devastating rendering of the anti-lynching “Strange Fruit” and the absolutely frantic, 10-minute musical explosion that is her arrangement of “Sinnerman.” Simone would go on to release many other extraordinary works, but Pastel Blues deserves a special spot in the pantheon.

  • I Put a Spell On You
    I Put a Spell On You
    I Put a Spell On You

    100 Best Albums Nina Simone’s musical omnivorousness is on display in 1965’s I Put a Spell on You. It’s one of her most pop-skewing albums—yet it’s also, to a degree, obscured by the singer’s superlative ability to make any song unrecognizably her own. I Put a Spell on You became one of Simone’s most successful albums, and its title track—a string-laden, melodramatic cover of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ campy rock classic—would turn out to be Simone’s biggest single since her debut. Still, it was “Feeling Good” that ultimately became the album’s best-known track, and a cornerstone of Simone’s musical legacy, thanks in part to its placement ina 1994 Volkswagen commercial. The scale of the horn section and orchestra are no match for Simone’s vocal force on the completely reimagined show tune; it’s the rare minor-key celebratory anthem. But the album isn’t all blustering horns and weepy strings: “Tomorrow Is My Turn” is a jazzy, gently swinging tune that captures some of the same sentiment as “Feeling Good,” while “Blues on Purpose” is an intimate instrumental interlude. By putting her stamp on so many different types of songs, Simone fought against the somewhat limiting designation of “jazz singer.” “Pop singer” hardly was the best replacement, as evidenced by the way Simone’s musical edge never dulls, no matter how many layers of orchestration get layered atop it. She was simply a singular interpreter, never hampered by the ways other artists might sing a song before or after her. Whether reinterpreting musical numbers (“Beautiful Land”), temporarily transforming into a chanteuse (“Ne Me Quitte Pas,” one of three tracks originally written in French), or casually tossing up familiar-sounding R&B songs like “Gimme Some,” Simone sounds equally comfortable—and equally, relentlessly herself.

  • Broadway-Blues-Ballads
    Broadway-Blues-Ballads
    Broadway-Blues-Ballads

    1964

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About Nina Simone

Nina Simone was one of the most distinctive, elusive, and brilliant musicians in jazz history, but she came to the genre reluctantly. Born in Tryon, North Carolina as Eunice Waymon in 1933, she had her heart set on being a classical pianist. In 1954, economic circumstances persuaded her to take a gig at an Atlantic City club, and she changed her name so her mother wouldn't discover she was playing "the devil's music." Simone forged a singular hybrid she would mine over the rest of her career, zeroing in on the essence of an ever-expanding repertoire of jazz, folk, blues, soul, pop, rock, classical, and gospel music. She toggled nonchalantly but authoritatively between genres, personalizing lyrics, melodies, and allusions in a kind of proto-remix style that revealed an unbounded musicality. A series of albums for Colpix, Philips, and RCA established her as a major star with an uncompromising vision. In the '60s, she recorded a series of politically charged songs—including "Mississippi Goddam," a fiery response to the murder of civil rights activist Medgar Evers—that elevated her appeal beyond the jazz market. In the '70s, she spent an increasing amount of time performing internationally—upbraiding audiences that weren't suitably engaged—while cutting fewer recordings. Simone was diagnosed with a bipolar disorder that explained increasingly erratic behavior, but the "High Priestess of Soul" continued to perform until her death in France in 2003.

HOMETOWN
Tryon, NC, United States
BORN
February 21, 1933
GENRE
Jazz

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