Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » Nina Simone: To Be Free: The Nina Simone Story

418

Nina Simone: To Be Free: The Nina Simone Story

By

View read count
Nina Simone: To Be Free: The Nina Simone Story
There was only one Nina Simone, an original and highly imaginative artist whose style embodied a wide range of influences from musical Americana and beyond. To Be Free: The Nina Simone Story (three CDs and a DVD) is a fine boxed set overview of her career, emphasizing the live performances where she was most in her element. Culling material from her Bethlehem, Colpix, Philips, RCA, PM, CTI and Elektra recordings, To Be Free is the most comprehensive and wide-ranging of many available collections; it includes all the Billboard and UK national chart singles plus previously unreleased jewels.

Although Simone's stylistic epicenter might be categorized as soulful folk music (or better, 'folkful soul music'), the cuts are aggressively eclectic: "Mood Indigo"'s medium-swinging jazz; the Billie Holiday-esque crooning of "I Loves You Porgy"; the R&B saunter of "My Baby Just Cares For Me"; the country-blues stylings of "Trouble in Mind"; classic Bessie Smith belting over "Nobody Knows You When Your Down and Out" and "I Want To Put a Little Sugar in My Bowl"; the sophisticated Broadway delivery of "The Other Woman" and "Pirate Jenny" (reinterpreted here with a distinctly Afrocentric theme); folk-rocking covers of Bob Dylan, The Animals and Leonard Cohen; the sanctified sounds of "Let It Be Me," "To Be Young, Gifted and Black" (Simone's self-penned Civil Rights anthem) and George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord"; the boogaloo dance beats of "Turn! Turn! Turn!," "Save Me," "Tanywey" (an offbeat unreleased original); the heavily orchestrated pop arrangements of the Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun," "Poppies" (an anti-drug message song), "A Single Woman" and "Just Like a Woman" and the world-beat fusions of "Westwind," "Nina," "Baltimore" (which would have made an excellent theme song for HBO's The Wire) and "Zungo" (a Babatunde Olatunji cover).

Simone was a formidable and expressive pianist, as evidenced on songs like "Mood Indigo" (one of the few cuts demonstrating her improvisational prowess in the jazz idiom), "I Put a Spell On You," "Seems I'm Never Tired of Loving You," "I Think It's Going to Rain Today," "Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair," "Who Knows Where the Time Goes," "Just Like a Woman" and "Sugar." Her voice, instantly recognizable for its signature fast vibrato, was an instrument of astounding pliability, capable of hoarse shouts and rough growls or gentle murmurs and intimate whispers.

On record and especially in concert her creative flow was unstoppable, her ideas pouring forth with a natural ease and restless fecundity, seldom repeating themselves. Her ability to establish a close rapport with audiences is audible on the box' live tracks and is especially obvious on the DVD cut titled "Percussion/Drums/Clapping/Dancing" that shows Simone expressing her soul with distinctive body language, milking the moment to ever greater peaks of ecstasy. The brief video documentary also gives insight into Simone's personal philosophies about music and life, showing her in casual conversation, in rehearsal and on stage.

Track Listing

Mood Indigo; I Loves You, Porgy; My Baby Just Cares for Me; You Can Have Him; Wild Is the Wind; Trouble in Mind; Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out; When Malindy Sings/Swing Low Sweet Chariot; See- Line Woman; Pirate Jenny; Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood; I Put a Spell On You; Ne Me Quitte Pas; Feeling Good; Four Women; My Man's Gone Now; I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free; To Love Somebody; Sunday in Savannah; Backlash Blues; Mississippi Goddam; In the Morning; Ain't Got No-I Got Life; Do What You Gotta Do; Seems I'm Never Tired of Loving You; Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues; The Times They Are A- Changin'; Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season); The Other Woman; I Think It's Going To Rain Today; Save Me; Revolution; To Be Young, Gifted and Black; Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair; Westwind; Who Knows Where the Time Goes; Suzanne; No Opportunity Necessary, No Experience Needed; Just Like a Woman; Here Comes the Sun; Tanywey; Funkier Than a Mosquito's Tweeter; My Sweet Lord/Today Is a Killer; Let It Be Me; Poppies; Mr. Bojangles; I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl; Nina; Zungo; Baltimore; A Single Woman; Ain't Got No-I Got Life; Pirate Jenny; Don't You Pay Them No Mind; Milestones; Go To Hell; Backlash Blues; Percussion/Drums/Clapping/Dancing; I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free; Precious Lord.

Personnel

Nina Simone
piano and vocals

Unlisted

Album information

Title: To Be Free: The Nina Simone Story | Year Released: 2008 | Record Label: Legacy Recordings

Tags

Comments


PREVIOUS / NEXT




Support All About Jazz

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

Near

More

Tramonto
John Taylor
Ki
Natsuki Tamura / Satoko Fujii
Duality Pt: 02
Dom Franks' Strayhorn
The Sound of Raspberry
Tatsuya Yoshida / Martín Escalante

Popular

Old Home/New Home
The Brian Martin Big Band
My Ideal
Sam Dillon
Ecliptic
Shifa شفاء - Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders
Lado B Brazilian Project 2
Catina DeLuna & Otmaro Ruíz

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.