| | Nina Simone Little Girl Blue CD Nina Simone Discography of CDs
(1 Customer Review)
Nina Simone's debut LP for the Bethlehem label, 1958's LITTLE GIRL BLUE, presents Simone's brooding sound and highly-focused eclecticism fully-formed from the very start. Even from the beginning, she stood to inherit Billie Holiday's mantle as the premiere jazz singer of the moment--a socially significant yet highly musical artist for the civil rights era just beginning to emerge. Whether by design or accident, Simone's classy juxtaposition of Bach, folk, and jazz standards--all '50s supper club staples to be sure--managed to pack a mighty prescient message for the heady days to come. Highlights include the original "My Baby Just Cares For Me" and a tender "I Loves You Porgy."
Little Girl Blue, released in 1957, was Nina Simone's first recording, originally issued on the Bethlehem label. Backed by bassist Jimmy Bond and Albert "Tootie" Heath, it showcases her ballad voice as one of mystery and sensuality, and showcases her up-tempo jazz style with authority and an enigmatic down-home feel that is nonetheless elegant. The album also introduced a fine jazz pianist. Simone was a solid improviser who never strayed far from the blues. Check the opener -- her reading of Duke Ellington's "Mood Indigo" -- which finger-pops and swings while keeping the phrasing deep-blue. It is contrasted immediately with one of the -- if not the -- definitive reads of Willard Robison's steamy leave-your-lover ballad "Don't Smoke in Bed." The title track, written by Rodgers & Hart, features "Good King Wenceslas" as a classical prelude to one of the most beautiful pop ballads ever written. It is followed immediately by the funky swing in "He Needs Me" with a smoking little piano solo in the bridge where Bach meets Horace Silver and Bobby Timmons. It's also interesting to note that while this was her first recording, the record's grooves evidence an artist who arrives fully formed; many of the traits Simone displayed throughout her career as not only a vocalist and pianist but as an arranger are put on first notice here. "My Baby Just Cares for Me" has a stride shuffle that is extrapolated on in the piano break. Her instrumental and improvising skills are put to good use on Tadd Dameron's "Good Bait," which is transformed into something classical from its original bebop intent. "You'll Never Walk Alone" feels more like some regal gospel song than the Rodgers & Hammerstein show tune it was. Of course, one of Simone's signature tunes was her version of "I Loves You, Porgy," which appears here for the first time and was released as a single. Her own "Central Park Blues" is one of the finest jazz tunes here, and it is followed with yet another side of Simone's diversity in her beautiful take on the folk-gospel tune "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands," with quiet and determined dignity and drama. Another of her instrumentals compositions, "African Mailman," struts proud with deep Afro-Caribbean roots and rhythms. [The 2006 Fuel reissue from Varèse Sarabande includes an extended version of "My Baby Just Cares for Me" as a bonus.] ~ Thom Jurek
Recording information: 1957.
Personnel: Nina Simone (vocals); Jimmy Bond (double bass); Albert "Tootie" Heath (drums).
Liner Note Authors: Scott Yanow ; Joe Muranyi.
Stereo Review (3/94, p.103) - Performance: In The Beginning... / Recording: Very Good - "...LITTLE GIRL BLUE is one of those rare albums that keeps on giving with every track. Don't leave a record store without it..." Little Girl Blue Music Review Purchase Little Girl Blue CD To buy, Click on price to add to cart | Rio De Janeiro Jazz Trio Bop Till You Drop CD (1979)
Little Girl Blue album
$10.89 This was the first all-digital recording released by a major label.
Following his conceptual 1978 release, Jazz, Ry Cooder returned the next year with the R&B/soul-based Bop Till You Drop. The first major-label, digitally recorded album, Bop is a nice set of moderately known to obscure tunes from the '50s and '60s (along with a Cooder/Tim Drummond original) that doesn't always live up to its promise. Cooder and his excellent band, which includes the rhythm section of Tim Drummond and Jim Keltner along with guitarist David Lindley, understand the material and are more than capable of laying down a decent groove, but something must have gotten lost in translation from what was played to what came across on the recording. There's a thinness to the tracks that undermines the performances, which according to Cooder is due to the digital recording. If you check out the live version of Bop Till You Drop's opener, "Little Sister," from the No Nukes record (using the same band), you can see what surely could have been. Still, Bop is worthwhile given Cooder's penchant for choosing great tunes, as well as the tight performances, ...
| | Dolly Parton Trio CD (1987)
Little Girl Blue CD music
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From the ultra-pretty Phil Spector pop classic "To Know Him Is To Love Him" to the hard-country Jimmie Rodgers song "Hobo's Meditation" and the high-lonesome "Memories Of You," THE TRIO brims with musicality. There are several traditional songs, a folk song written by Jean Ritchie, ...
| | Dr John Gris-Gris CD (1968)
Little Girl Blue music CDs
$13.59 New Orleans-born pianist Mac Rebennack had been making a living as a Los Angeles session musician for years before he adopted the persona of Dr. John, a name taken from a 19th-century witch doctor. Under that guise, he crafted a sound that mixed the old world of New Orleans (the tribal rhythms of the Mardi Gras Indians, second-line grooves, swamp blues) with the new musical world of 1968 (funk, R&B, rock, free jazz). The resulting gumbo bears a deep, dark, mysterious flavor full of voodoo mysticism and ancient rites.
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Little Girl Blue songs
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