‘Gin House Blues’ would become a chart item in the hands of Amen Corner in 1967, while Nina herself would revisit the song on 1968’s ‘Nuff Said’ album. The ten tracks of the original release (augmented here by a generous eight bonus cuts) include three compositions from the outrageously talented Oscar Brown Jr, including the title track and the opening ‘Rags And Old Iron’. Recorded in New York with producer Cal Lampley in 1961 and released that same year, ‘Forbidden Fruit’ was an eclectic mix. She joined them with the promise of complete artistic control and proceeded to exploit that to the full, recording ten LPs before moving on to Philips in 1964. The two albums combined here were her second and third studio efforts for Columbia Pictures’ Colpix label. A night-club date in Atlantic City saw her signed by the Bethlehem label, and the first session yielded the Billie Holiday-inspired US Top 20 hit ‘I Loves You Porgy’. Her stage name combined Nina (‘little one’, a nickname from an Hispanic boyfriend) with Simone (borrowed from French actress Simone Signoret). She started moonlighting from her classical studies to make a living as a singer. Not only that, but she ranks alongside James Brown in the music world as a proponent of civil rights, a cause she espoused from early in her career after being rejected by Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute on, she felt, racial grounds.īorn Eunice Waymon in North Carolina in 1933, she showed an early aptitude for both organ and piano which led to her attending New York’s Juilliard School of Music. The remarkable Nina Simone ranks alongside Bessie Smith, Billie Holliday and Ella Fitzgerald as one of the great voices of black music.
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