Comments on: Nina Simone interlude

By: neo-neocon

neo-neocon — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 15:25:31 +0000

Julia in NYC: yes, her piano playing just seems so effortless, doesn’t it? The product of intense work, no doubt.

I had stopped going to her performances after that one I mentioned, because she was so hostile and it was so uncomfortable being in the audience. But I never stopped listening to her; she was that good.

By: Julia NYC

Julia NYC — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 14:14:02 +0000

Nina Simone was such a great musician. I am enthralled by her talent. What a fantastic stylist, and in this day of particularly uninteresting singers, she seems even more special. The really fine classical piano chops with her low rumbly voice and exquisite phrasing just leave me in awe. Her troubled vibe has made it hard for me to listen to her though. Sometimes it’s best to not know much about an artist, so one can just appreciate their music. Which is probably the best part of them anyway.

By: Susanamantha

Susanamantha — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 13:19:08 +0000

Neo:
Yes, it’s Whitney who’s Dionne’s cousin. I knew that and got it wrong. Thanks for reminding me.

Too bad Whitney let bad choices derail her career. She could have been one of the voices of the century. Her mother was Cissy Huston, one of the Sweet Inspirations.

By: Don Carlos

Don Carlos — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 12:59:37 +0000

I was plum tuckered when I posted re Nina last night, and took short cuts-“lying”, and didn’t edit “40” out. Indeed it is bravado, not lying.

By: Gringo

Gringo — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 12:41:37 +0000

The first Nina Simone song I was exposed to was My Baby Just Cares for Me. It was played a lot on the jukebox of the greasy spoon hippie hangout where I worked the counter while I was in high school. So, that song brings back memories. Nna Simone is not the only vocalist who was also a skilled pianist. Nat King Cole and Sarah Vaughan were also pianists.

By: SteveH

SteveH — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 10:39:07 +0000

Obviously an artist in the realm of aquired taste. I’ll just say i couldn’t aquire it in the 3 or 4 minutes i gave her.

By: Parker

Parker — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 05:46:13 +0000

“.. except when soft rains fall and drip from leaves I recall, the thrill of being sheltered in your arms. Of course I do, but I get along without you very well.”

This phrase is heartbreaking. Her delivery is bittersweet, wounded, defiant, and in the end futile. “That should surely break my heart in two.” Egads, I’m too old to be so swept up in such melodrama, but NS pulls me into her realm as if I am an asteroid destined to orbit her gas giant.

Thanks Neo for a distraction from the bigger, more deadly drama of our own days ahead.

By: neo-neocon

neo-neocon — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 04:55:12 +0000

Don Carlos: It was sometimes whitey, but it was by no means just whitey or always whitey. Nina Simone was bipolar and was angry at just about everyone, including many of the people who worked with her. She was pretty much an equal-opportunity blamer, as far as I can tell. The life may have been a wreck a lot of the time, but she was a great artist. The song you mention is one of her standards, and although you can find other renditions (for example, Shirley Bassey, Nancy Wilson) on YouTube, to my way of thinking Simone's version is by far the best. The song was written by Irving Berlin, by the way. I don't see it as a song about lying to oneself at all, though. It's a song that starts with bravado in the face of rejection by a lover, and soon turns to a plaintive admission of how much the lover actually meant to the woman. It's in the same genre as Hoagy Carmichael's "I Get Along Without You Very Well," in which the title is belied by most of the words. It's someone whistling in the dark. I couldn't find a video of Simone doing the Irving Berlin song. But here she is singing the Carmichael tune (I think the photo is of someone else; perhaps her daughter?):

By: Don Carlos

Don Carlos — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 02:43:29 +0000

Once again I appreciate Artfldgr’s scholarship.

Nina was a perpetually self-pitying woman; nothing was ever her fault or her deficiency, apparently. Always the Other, in her case, Whitey.

That’s why my 40-year old Simone favorite for the past 30-plus years starts, “You can have him, I don’t want him…” A song about lying to herself…I’ve not found it on CD, and don’t play the vinyl anymore.

By: neo-neocon

neo-neocon — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 02:36:28 +0000

Susanamantha: are you sure about the Nina Simone Dionne Warwick connection? I’d never heard that—but it is the case that Whitney Houston is a cousin of Dionne Warwick.

I discovered Nina Simone when I was in high school. My high school boyfriend was a fan, and he played her records a lot. I loved her; she was so unique and wonderful! But the first time I heard the record (before I knew her name), for a few seconds I thought it was a man singing.