One Woman, Twelve Songs

What does it take to be an artist? Answering this question could fill a book, but there's one characteristic in particular that interests me: You have to be willing to embarrass yourself. The possibility of embarrassment is always there when you decide to share something creative and personal in the world, and nestled down somewhere deep inside the risk of humiliation lies a great power. Because the fear of ridicule is so terrifying, most people never reach that place where they're willing to risk. So they keep their poems underneath the bed or the paintings in the closet or, worse yet, never create anything in the first place. It's much safer to hang the
pictures in your mind.

Nina Simone, who died last week at the age of 70, had guts. It starts with her voice, a deep, rough, raw and expressive instrument a million miles from the controlled virtuosity of someone like Sarah Vaughn. Simone never let her idiosyncratic vocal style stand in the way of communication. Rather than making choices to cover up her weaknesses, she inflated her quirks to cinemascope proportions, channeling her oddness into transcendent art. She strained to hit notes both above and below where god intended her sing regularly, and the courage she showed is an endless source of inspiration. It wasn't just her voice, though, her life was filled with odd and risky moves - bizarre arrangements, ill-advised covers, confrontational subject matter. When her muse led her from the path of convention, she followed it. Anger at institutionalized racism and the fate of the artist in America provided the fuel for Simone's artistic fire, much in the way it did Miles Davis, but her music was ultimately joyous.

And now she is dead. In the end, the only way we know recording artists we've never met is by their music, so the sensible response is to put on some records. Simone released in somewhere around 50 albums and I only have a small handful and a few best-of collections, so I'm not qualified to run them down for you. Maybe in another ten years I'll take a stab at a proper Simone overview. For now, here are twelve great Nina Simone songs worth tracking down.

"The Last Rose of Summer"
A sweeping and ultimately fluffy orchestral pop song notable for the quality of Simone's voice. You hear it and think, "What the hell is this singer doing?" There's an orchestra pit full musicians making union scale and it doesn't sound like she's even tryingto sing on key. And her heavy vibrato and odd enunciation give the song a bordering-on-grotesque theatricality. Despite (or is it because of?) these apparent shortcoming, she makes you feel a pang of longing that perhaps poet Thomas Moore never considered possible.

"Come Ye"
Simone was an excellent pianist and arranger, but her only accompaniment here is percussion. A deep floor tom roll, a shaker, a woodblock and a tambourine create a slinky, sensual rhythmic compliment to Simone's equally swinging voice. It's a song clearly from the civil rights era, about prayer for a better world, but one startling in its timelessness. It could have been performed 100 years earlier, and yet it still sounds up-to-the-minute in terms of its production and tone. Brilliant and deeply moving.

"Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues"
Covering a Dylan song from '65 or '66 is difficult, because the lyrics are so obtuse and his delivery so personal. But Simone had a genius for interpretation, and this is probably the best cover of a Dylan song I know. Simone takes a song from Dylan's most lyrically tangled period and transforms it into a model of clarity. The spare arrangement keeps the focus on her voice, and she sings with an unusually reserved and downcast tone, expertly parsing meaning from the jumble of phrases. She delivers "When you're lost in the rain in Juarez and it's Easter time too/ and your gravity fails and negativity don't pull you through" like Irving Berlin wrote it
and the meaning is plain as day.

"Wild is the Wind"
The sort of track that to me can only be understood in terms outside pop music. Though the song's first half seems a rather conventional piano ballad (still made unique and haunting through Simone's unusual vocal timbre, here in its guttural low end), when it builds to its climaxes and Simone stars howling, "Wild is the Wind" sounds downright avant-garde. Simone's singing transforms into theatrical performance art a la Diamanda Galas or Tom Waits, and I can't help but wonder how the pop market of 1966, where Simone's music was marketed, heard this recording.

"Don't Explain/ Strange Fruit"
Simone released an entire album of songs made famous by Billie Holiday, and
she obviously felt a deep connection to Lady Day. Both were unconventional vocalists who out of necessity valued raw emotional connection over studied technique. The timbres of their voices, however, are at opposite poles, and Simone's interpretations of Holiday-associated standards take on a dramatically different quality. Where Holiday's voice is thin and fragile, conveying a weary acceptance of hardship, Simone's is passionate and indicative of an underlying strength. When Simone tells her lover that she knows he cheats in "Don't Explain," you almost feel sorry for the poor bastard. A woman of this power (though vulnerability is audible as well) doesn't seem like she would take such a thing lying down. The devastating lynching allegory "Strange Fruit" was a natural for the politically minded Simone, and she completely inhabits the song. Where Holiday delivered the disturbing imagery from the remove of a ghost, (a choice which played to her strengths), Simone sounds like a witness to the scene made deranged by the brutal spectacle.

"Four Women"
One of her most famous songs, "Four Women" shows that Simone the songwriter
had a flair for keen lyrical observation. A dirge-like portrait of four women making their way through the turbulent '60s, Aunt Sarah, Siffronia, Sweet Thing and Peaches have different skin color, different pasts, and different ways of dealing with the present, but all are rendered in exquisite detail. The way her voice turns hard and angry as she begins her description of the Peaches, who sounds like she might be a Black Panther, is priceless.

"Mississippi Goddam"
Another Simone composition, more notable for the political content of its lyrics than the tune. A full three years before the Beach Boys used the word "God" in the title of a song, Nina Simone had already worked her way to "Goddam." The showtune structure keeps the song relatively playful but there is no obscuring the rage at its core: she's pissed at those who want equality to happen slowly. "You don't have to live next to me/ Just give me my equality/ Everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam."

"I Think It's Going to Rain Today"
Randy Newman is a master of dark humor, and hearing Simone tackle this early
composition of his, her voice at first seems poorly suited to his sarcasm. She sells the line "Human kindness is overflowing" so completely irony is impossible. But when she lets her guard slips and half-talks the second verse, you realize she's in on Newman's joke. Plus it's a great melody, and always good to hear just Simone and her piano.

"I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl"
As bawdy and frankly sexual as "Mississippi Goddam" was political, and again I'm wondering how it sounded to the pop audience in 1967. Maybe I just have a dirty mind, but "I want a little sugar in my bowl/ I want a little steam on my clothes.come on daddy, drop a little sugar in my bowl" sounds as thinly veiled and graphic as a Prince lyric. Her playful delivery makes it even sexier.

"Lilac Wine"
I imagine a lot of indie rock fans know this song from Jeff Buckley's cover
on Grace. I only heard his version once in a record store and it sounded pretty good, but it's still a long way from Simone's take. Here she inverts her usually strong delivery and becomes a sad and pathetic shell, a person divorced from reality and longing for someone who can never return. The final falsetto always puts a lump in my throat.

"Here Comes the Sun"
The greatest accomplishment of a cover is to take a song you used to enjoy but tired of years ago and make it enjoyable again. The sun means warmth, and Simone dusts off her richest velvet purr for this tune by one of her favorite songwriters. Everything about this song glows, like it was shot with a frosted lens. A million trifling versions have been recorded, but Simone's version makes you glad Harrison had that sentimental urge in his garden.

Mark Richardson
April 28, 2003

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