Description
180 Gram Vinyl! Mysterious, Sensual Ballad Voice! Her Debut Recording! Up-Tempo Jazz Style with Authority and an Enigmatic Down-Home Feel! Pressed at Pallas in Germany!
Nina Simone's first recording, released in 1957, showcases her ballad voice as one of mystery and sensuality backed by Jimmy Bond and Albert "Tootie" Heath.
Nina Simone was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger, and civil rights activist widely associated with jazz music. Simone aspired to become a classical pianist while working in a broad range of styles including classical, jazz, blues, folk, R&B, gospel, and pop.
Her musical style arose from a fusion of gospel and pop songs with classical music, in particular, from her first inspiration, Johann Sebastian Bach, and accompanied with her expressive jazz-like singing in her characteristic contralto. She injected as much of her classical background into her music as possible to give it more depth and quality, as she felt that pop music was inferior to classical. Her intuitive grasp on the audienceperformer relationship was gained from a unique background of playing piano accompaniment for church revivals and sermons regularly from the early age of six years old.
