BuzzFlash Reviews

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

The late Nina Simone had a distinctive and commanding voice that still sends shivers down our spine.

If you are a Simone fan, this is a marvelous 2 disc CD anthology that covers about all of the diverse Simone song sheet. She could be playful (as in "My Baby Just Cares for Me"), seductive (as in the too hot to handle "I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl") or political (as in the searing "Mississippi Goddamn").

Simone, like Maria Callas, led a tumultuous personal life, perhaps driven by clinical depression -- and lived mostly in exile after a short spellbinding career that coincided with the height of the civil rights movement.

She was a singer with a sense of indignation, but she was a magnificent singer first and foremost. Her repertoire and style could best be categorized as jazz vocalist, but she really created her own genre.

"Strange Fruit" is a horrifyingly moving song about lynching, which is incomparable in its depiction of what hate and racism lead to.

The Simone style is something that doesn't reach the commercial market anymore.

What record executive is going to sign a contract with a strong, charismatic, soulful, enormously talented female black singer when Britney Spears gets out of her umpteenth trip to rehab and is available again to do a bubble gum album?

That about says everything about the decline of American culture, doesn't it?

Despite her years as an expatriate, Simone remains a singer distinctively tied to the American experience.

Oddly enough, like many gifted black musicians, her largest and most enthusiastic audience was perhaps in Europe.

Simone could sing pop standards with ease (some of which are in this anthology), but her strength found itself in the deep songs of love and hate that she made her own.

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS