Nina Simone

Nina Simone was not a rock singer per se, and indeed, not readily classified within any popular music style. But she did record quite a few covers of rock, folk-rock, and pop/rock songs during her stint with RCA in the late '60s and early '70s. This thematic compilation has 14 of them (though one stray track, "My Father," was actually recorded for CTI in 1978), including versions of songs by several of the era's most successful rock composers (Bob Dylan, George Harrison, the Bee Gees) and noteworthy emerging singer/songwriters (Randy Newman, Judy Collins, Sandy Denny, Hoyt Axton, and Jerry Jeff Walker). "House of the Rising Sun" (which Simone had first recorded in the early '60s, about half-a-dozen years before she cut the 1967 version featured on this disc) and Pete Seeger's "Turn! Turn! Turn!" were folk songs in their original incarnations, but they qualify too, having been made into chart-topping rock smashes by the Animals and the Byrds. It would be a mistake to regard this anthology as wholly representative of Simone's RCA recordings, or as a sampling of her best work from this or any other era; she recorded a wide swathe of material, including some of her own songs, from numerous genres. Still, these do testify to her abilities as an interpreter in this particular arena, though there are just a few songs (Axton's "The Pusher," Collins' "My Father," Denny's "Who Knows Where the Time Goes") that are relatively off the beaten track. Varying from solo-piano-and-vocal numbers to orchestrated arrangements, the production and performance are usually on the straightforward and restrained side, even if overall the results are somewhat more subdued, jazzy, adult pop-oriented, and tamer than the originals (or the most famous covers of the songs). Here's guessing that Judy Collins' late-'60s albums were a substantial influence on the approach Simone took to this sort of material, since Collins had covered a few of the tunes (Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne," Denny's "Who Knows Where the Time Goes," Dylan's "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues," Randy Newman's "I Think It's Going to Rain Today") not long before Simone did. Don't by any means restrict yourself to this disc if you like what you hear here, since Simone made a lot of other fine recordings with different mindsets for RCA and other labels, though this does offer a reasonably original and consistent slant on well-known songs of the '60s. ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide