Nina Simone Little Girl Blue CD

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..."