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LOS ANGELES, Calif. — Nina Simone was
only 25 years old in 1958 when she entered Beltone Studios in
midtown Manhattan for a one-day recording session for her debut
album, Little
Girl Blue, on Bethlehem Records. The 14 songs she
recorded that day reveal just how well developed Simone’s sound —
her powerhouse vocals, her classically-trained piano-playing, her
inventive, genre-blind arrangements, and her dynamic personality —
already was. Bethlehem, a small and financially faltering jazz
label, picked 11 tracks for Little Girl Blue. This unheralded debut
yielded Simone’s biggest hit, a cover of the Gershwins’ “Porgy (I
Loves You, Porgy),” as well as her last one, “My Baby Just Cares
for Me,” which charted in 1987 after being used in a TV
commercial.
By the time “Porgy (I
Loves You, Porgy)” was moving up the charts, Simone had moved on to
larger and financially stronger Colpix Records. Wanting to capitalize
on Simone’s hit, Bethlehem made the most of their Simone material.
On Nina
Simone and Her Friends, they placed “Porgy’
and the three songs left off of Little Girl Lost (“He’s Got the
Whole World in His Hands,” “African Mailman,” and “For All We
Know”) with songs by her label-mates Chris Connor and Carmen McRae. Between 1959-62,
Bethlehem also put out six singles utilizing all of their Simone
tracks. To commemorate the 60th anniversary of these recordings, BMG/Bethlehem now has compiled these
singles together as Mood Indigo: The Complete Bethlehem
Sessions, due out on February 9, 2019.
The 14-track CD version
of Mood
Indigo follows the chronology
of Bethlehem’s single releases, starting with the first A-side
“Porgy (I Loves You, Porgy)” and ending with the last A-side, “My
Baby Just Cares Me.” The collection contains an alternative take of
“He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands,” as well as seven
single-only tracks that previously have only been available on the
original 45s. The LP version, pressed in standard black and limited
edition blue vinyl, holds 12 tracks plus a bonus 7" replica of
Simone’s first single, “Porgy (I Loves You, Porgy)” backed with
“Love Me or Leave Me.”
The Bethlehem Sessions displays a young Nina
Simone confidently putting her distinctive stamp on the set of jazz
numbers and Broadway tunes. She prefaces Rodgers & Hart’s “Little Girl Blue”
with a bit of “Good King Wenceslas" and drops a Bach-like interlude into the
hot jazz “Love Me or Leave Me.” Although this was her first album,
Simone had written in her contract that she could chose the album’s
musical direction, and she chose songs she was familiar with from
playing in clubs. The session featured Simone performing either
solo on piano or backed by bassist Jimmy Bond and drummer Al “Tootie” Heath, two then-young jazz
players who went on to lengthy careers.
Mood Indigo’s liner notes include a
new interview with Heath, who recalls the one-day session with
Simone. “She sat at the piano and sang, and that was that … Nina
was already Nina by then. She had her sound together — It was quite
different. Her piano playing was something I had never heard before
because it wasn’t typical jazz or it wasn’t typical classical. It
was Nina Simone, it was her stuff.” Heath’s insightful interview is
just part of the enlightening liner notes. Penned by Ashley Kahn, the author of the
books Kind
of Blue and A Love Supreme, the liner notes
provide an excellent history on the making of Little Girl Lost, which was filled with
its complications, much like the Simone itself.
This year not only marks
the 60th anniversary of the Bethlehem Sessions, but it will also see
Nina Simone being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of
Fame, on April 14. Simone, who would have turned 85
on February 21st, has never disappeared from the public’s eye since
she passed away in 2003. Recent years saw the release of two documentaries about her: The Amazing Nina Simone and What Happened, Miss
Simone, the latter a 2016
Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary Feature. What Happened, Miss
Simone also is the name of
Alan Light’s well-received 2016 biography. Simone’s music continues
to appear on TV and movie soundtracks (her tune "Take Care of
Business” was used in the closing credits of 2015’s The Man From U.N.C.L.E. film). Musicians,
moreover, have long cited Simone as an influence. The song “Plain
Gold Ring,” which is on Mood Indigo, has been covered by White Magic, Nick Cave, and Kimbra, while Simone’s version
of “Little Girl Lost” inspired renditions by the likes of Janis Joplin, Diana Ross, and Diana Krall.
Simone’s career was as eclectic as her music. After leaving
Bethlehem, she recorded for the Colpix, Phillips, and RCA labels, releasing more
than 25 albums from 1959-1974. She continued to cover standards and
pop songs, from
Screaming Jay Hawkins’ “I Put a Spell on You”
to
the Bee Gees’ “To Love Somebody”;
from the traditional “Children, Go Where I Send Thee” to the
original version of “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood.” Starting in
the mid-’60s, her music turned more political, highlighted by such
memorable tunes as “Sinnerman,” “To Be Young, Gifted, and Black,”
“Strange Fruit,” "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be
Free," and “Mississippi Goddam.” The last 30 years of her
life, Simone led a more peripatetic expatriate existence. She
continued to perform live (especially overseas) but recorded only
sporadically.
Just as Simone travelled
the world, she also traveled down many musical roads. Mood Indigo, however, captures
Simone at an incandescent moment — when her sound held both a
complexity of style and a purity of youth.
LP
TRACKLIST
SIDE ONE:
1 Little
Girl Blue
2 He Needs
Me
3 Don’t
Smoke In Bed
4 African
Mailman
5 Mood
Indigo
6 Central
Park Blues
SIDE TWO
7 For All We
Know
8 Good
Bait
9 You’ll
Never Walk Alone
10 Plain Gold
Ring
11 He’s Got
The Whole World In His Hands
(Alternate
Take)
12 My Baby
Just Cares For Me
★ Also
includes 7" single featuring “Porgy (I Loves You, Porgy)”
b/w “Love
Me Or Leave Me”
Pre-Order Links:
Barnes & Noble Exclusive Blue Vinyl
CD
& Standard Black Vinyl
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