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| Verve Jazz Masters 17 |
| Nina Simone |
első megjelenés éve: 1964
61 perc |
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| (1993)
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CD |
Kérjen
árajánlatot! |
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| 1. | Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair
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| 2. | I Put a Spell on You
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| 3. | Love Me or Leave Me
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| 4. | Little Girl Blue [Mono Alternate Take]
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| 5. | My Baby Just Cares for Me [Live]
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| 6. | I Loves You, Porgy
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| 7. | Work Song
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| 8. | Ne Me Quitte Pas
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| 9. | Wild Is the Wind
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| 10. | See Line Women
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| 11. | Strange Fruit
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| 12. | Pirate Jenny
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| 13. | Four Women
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| 14. | Mississippi Goddam
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| 15. | Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood
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| 16. | I Hold No Grudge
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Vocal / Standards; Vocal Jazz
Nina Simone - Piano, Vocals
Aric Lach Morrison Production Assistant
Arthur Adams Bass
Bobby Hamilton Drums
Christina Lage Design
Coleman Brice Research
Cornell McFadden Drums
Etsuko Iseki Design
Fernando Santos Research
Hal Mooney - Producer, Conductor
Horace Ott Conductor
James Gavin Sequencers, Sequencing, Liner Notes
Jon Schapiro Production Assistant
Lisle Atkinson Bass
Lyle Atkinson Bass
Matt Brown Production Assistant
Michael Lang
Peter Pullman Notes Editing
Rudy Stevenson Guitar
Sheryl Lutz-Brown Art Direction
Suha Gur Mastering
Suzanne Bender Design Coordinator, Design
Verve Jazz Masters 17 presents an introduction to the recordings of Nina Simone. Each volume includes a biography and commentary on the songs selected.
Dramatic, defiant and uncategorizable, Nina Simone's stirring voice is matched by a piano style that mixes classical, jazz and blues. She draws upon the widest possible range of songs to tell her story, and in this collection performs the work of Jacques Brel, Oscar Brown, Jr., the Gershwins, and Kurt Weil as well as her own compositions.
Nina Simone's inclusion in Verve's Jazz Masters series is a bit suspect; there was a lot of jazz in Simone, true, but wasn't there quite a bit of pop and soul as well, not to mention some blues? Anyway, this is an excellent survey of her mid-'60s work, with 16 tracks spanning 1964 to 1966 that find Simone at her most versatile and assured. Quite a range is encompassed here: traditional folk ("Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair"), R&B (her jazzy rendition of "I Put a Spell on You"), Jacques Brel ("Ne Me Quitte Pas"), Billie Holiday ("Strange Fruit"), the Gershwins ("I Loves You, Porgy"), Rodgers & Hart ("Little Girl Blue"), and modern jazz (Nat Adderley's "Work Song"). Other highlights are the mesmerizing "See Line Woman" and the original version of "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood," which was a hit for The Animals shortly afterwards. On the two original compositions, "Four Women" and "Mississippi Goddam," Simone confronts racism in a head-on fashion rare for the time. Discographical details: the version of "Little Girl Blue" is a mono alternate take, and the recording of "My Baby Just Cares for Me" is not from the mid-'60s, but a 1987 live album. ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide
Nina Simone
Active Decades: '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s and '00s
Born: Feb 21, 1933 in Tryon, NC
Died: Apr 21, 2003 in Carry-le-Rouet, France
Genre: Vocal
Styles: Ballads, Torch Songs, Standards, Vocal Jazz
Of all the major singers of the late 20th century, Nina Simone was one of the hardest to classify. She recorded extensively in the soul, jazz, and pop idioms, often over the course of the same album; she was also comfortable with blues, gospel, and Broadway. It's perhaps most accurate to label her as a "soul" singer in terms of emotion, rather than form. Like, say, Aretha Franklin, or Dusty Springfield, Simone was an eclectic who brought soulful qualities to whatever material she interpreted. These qualities were among her strongest virtues; paradoxically, they also may have kept her from attaining a truly mass audience. The same could be said of her stage persona; admired for her forthright honesty and individualism, she was also known for feisty feuding with audiences and promoters alike.
If Simone had a chip on her shoulder, it probably arose from the formidable obstacles she had to overcome to establish herself as a popular singer. Raised in a family of eight children, she originally harbored hopes of becoming a classical pianist, studying at New York's prestigious Juilliard School of Music -- a rare position for an African-American woman in the 1950s. Needing to support herself while she studied, she generated income by working as an accompanist and giving piano lessons. Auditioning for a job as a pianist in an Atlantic City nightclub, she was told she had the spot if she would sing as well as play. Almost by accident, she began to carve a reputation as a singer of secular material, though her skills at the piano would serve her well throughout her career.
In the late '50s, Simone began recording for the small Bethlehem label (a subsidiary of the vastly important early R&Brock & roll King label). In 1959, her version of George Gershwin's "I Loves You Porgy" gave her a Top 20 hit -- which would, amazingly, prove to be the only Top 40 entry of her career. Nina wouldn't need hit singles for survival, however, establishing herself not with the rock & rollR&B crowd, but with the adult/nightclub/album market. In the early '60s, she recorded no less than nine albums for the Candix label, about half of them live. These unveiled her as a performer of nearly unsurpassed eclecticism, encompassing everything from Ellingtonian jazz and Israeli folk songs to spirituals and movie themes.
Simone's best recorded work was issued on Philips during the mid-'60s. Here, as on Candix, she was arguably over-exposed, issuing seven albums within a three-year period. These records can be breathtakingly erratic, moving from warm ballad interpretations of Jacques Brel and Billie Holiday and instrumental piano workouts to brassy pop and angry political statements in a heartbeat. There's a great deal of fine music to be found on these, however. Simone's moody-yet-elegant vocals were like no one else's, presenting a fiercely independent soul who harbored enormous (if somewhat hard-bitten) tenderness.
Like many African-American entertainers of the mid-'60s, Simone was deeply affected by the Civil Rights Movement and burgeoning Black Pride. Some (though by no means most) of her best material from this time addressed these concerns in a fashion more forthright than almost any other singer. "Old Jim Crow" and, more particularly, the classic "Mississippi Goddam" were especially notable self-penned efforts in this vein, making one wish that Nina had written more of her own material instead of turning to outside sources for most of her repertoire.
Not that this repertoire wasn't well-chosen. Several of her covers from the mid-'60s, indeed, were classics: her revision of Weill-Brecht's "Pirate Jenny" to reflect the bitter elements of African-American experience, for instance, or her mournful interpretation of Brel's "Ne Me Quitte Pas." Other highlights were her versions of "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood," covered by the Animals for a rock hit; "I Put a Spell on You," which influenced the vocal line on the Beatles' "Michelle"; and the buzzing, jazzy "See Line Woman."
Simone was not as well-served by her tenure with RCA in the late '60s and early '70s, another prolific period which saw the release of nine albums. These explored a less eclectic range, with a considerably heavier pop-soul base to both the material and arrangements. One bona fide classic did come out of this period: "Young, Gifted & Black," written by Simone and Weldon Irvine, Jr., would be successfully covered by both Aretha Franklin and Donny Hathaway. She did have a couple of Top Five British hits in the late '60s with "Ain't Got No" (from the musical Hair) and a cover of the Bee Gees' "To Love Somebody," neither of which rank among her career highlights.
Simone fell on turbulent times in the 1970s, divorcing her husband/manager Andy Stroud, encountering serious financial problems, and becoming something of a nomad, settling at various points in Switzerland, Liberia, Barbados, France, and Britain. After leaving RCA, she recorded rarely, although she did make the critically well-received Baltimore in 1978 for the small CTI label. She had an unpredictable resurgence in 1987, when an early track, "My Baby Just Cares for Me," became a big British hit after being used in a Chanel perfume television commercial. In 1993, her record A Single Woman marked her return to an American major label, and her profile was also boosted when several of her songs were featured in the film Point of No Return. She published her biography, -I Put a Spell on You, in 1991, but grew increasingly frail throughout the late '90s and had to be helped on to the stage during a 2001 Carnegie Hall performance. Nina Simone died on April 21, 2003 at her home in Carry-le-Rouet, France, where she had been spending much of her retirement.
--- Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide |
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