Her love of classical music surfaces in the Bach-esque passage in “Love Me or Leave Me” and, most prominently, in the title track, which includes bits of the traditional Christmas carol “Good King Wenceslas.” The closing tune, “Central Park Blues,” is the sole Simone original, a spirited instrumental that touches up together the album’s many moods. Simone delivers haunting, heart-aching ballads like “Plain Gold Ring” and “Don’t Smoke in Bed” along with swinging tunes like “Love Me or Leave Me” and her up-tempo interpretation of Duke Ellington’s “Mood Indigo.” Simone’s inventive interpretative skills also are on display with her haunting arrangements of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “You’ll Never Walk Alone” and “Good Bait,” which is played much moodier than Count Basie’s original. These 11 tracks are still thrilling to experience nearly 65 years after they were recorded. A Barnes & Noble exclusive “clear blue” 180-gram vinyl edition will be available starting July 16, while August 13 is the date Little Girl Blue comes out globally on 180-gram black vinyl and CD. Additionally, this newly restored and remastered stereo version was engineered and produced by Grammy Award winners Michael Graves and Cheryl Pawelski respectively, with the vinyl cut by renowned engineer Kevin Gray. Little Girl Blue’s multi-phased release begins on June 1 with a digital release (on high-definition and standard audio) that coincides with African-American Music Appreciation Month. Brooks, puts it best when she assures that Little Girl Blue presents “an astonishingly daring, dazzlingly confident, endlessly adventurous artist with a deep well of formidable instrumentality up her sleeve as well as a wide and robust, rich and varied knowledge of jazz, blues, American songbook, folk and spiritual standards and aesthetics.” In her essay written specifically for this release, Yale Professor and author of the acclaimed book Liner Notes for the Revolution, Daphne A.
#Nina simone discography rated professional#
It is amazing to consider that she was not yet 25 years old and had only played her first professional gig a little more than three years before recording these tracks - which were done all in one day - at the end of 1957.īMG is proud to present a brand-new reissue of Little Girl Blue, which has been justifiably celebrated as a timeless classic. Released in February, 1959, it reveals Nina Simone as having already honed her unique talents as a singer, pianist, and arranger. It’s rare when a debut album introduces a musician who already has a fully developed artistic vision, but Little Girl Blue is one such recording.