For all we know, Nina's first Colpix album (The Amazing Nina Simone) was released in August 1959 (see also the Nina Simone Database). Considering the fact that the songs were only recorded in mid-July '59 in NYC the LP was really rushed out; the first review of the LP appeared already in the July 20, 1959, issue of Billboard. It might be of interest to report here what it says:
Here is a splendid new artist on her disk debut [a typical Billboard blunder since Nina's first LP was actually Bethlehem BCP # 6028, rel. towards the end of 1958!]. Miss Simone already identified with the jazz field, can sell strongly in pop too with these offerings. Her style has touches of many artists - Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae, Della Reese, even Marian Anderson, who was an influence on Miss Simone in her earlier days. The gal has a fine spiritual-gospel quality and is strongly oriented to folk- blues traditions. Program consists of a few standards, jazz stylings and gospel type numbers. An impressive artist well worth hearing. (p. 23).
Several issues later, Billboard felt compelled to provide some basic information about Nina Simone, under the heading »Thrush Nina Simone Was Piano Teacher« (Aug. 17, 1959, p.20). In October, we find a little notice clarifying Nina's label affiliation (Oct. 5, '59, p. 23) because many, it seems, were in doubt whether she recorded for Bethlehem or Colpix (actually she was with Colpix since April '59), and in the next issue Nina's name was listed - among Frank Sinatra, The Shirelles and Ernest Tubb! - as Today's Top Talent (Oct. 12, '59, p. 9).
Nina Simone, promo photo believed to be taken in 1960.
ad from EBONY, May 1960
By December 1959, Nina had further gained in notoriety. First press items appeared which spoke about Nina's temper during her live per- formances, e.g. the piece in JET (December 3, 1959, p. 44):
The way those San Francisco fans don't love Nina Simone the way they "love" Porgy. During a performance before a huge audience, Nina was booed, heckled and hissed by fans who claimed she talked too much, was indifferent and temperamental. Half of them walked out not wanting "to stay" there any longer, much less "forever.
However, she really made it, publicity-wise, when EBONY published a large article about her (including numerous photos), »Nina Loves Porgy«, in December 1959. Here again reference is made, right in the first lines, to Nina's »moods« but the author also finds something to recommend about her temper:
No female singer since the electric emer- gence of Sarah Vaughan 13 years ago has provoked such a bewildering variety of reactions and opinions as has this wiry, moody girl from Tyron, North Carolina. By creating acute controversy over her merits as a musician, she has injected a stimulat- ing and refreshing new force into the troubled, strife-torn and often murky waters of American jazz. When she sings she either disturbs or delights her hearers. Seemingly indifferent to the furore she has created ...
And voices who found much to praise in Nina's art were not lacking either. In the January 7, 1960, JET issue, the Chicago jazz critic Sidney Lazard is quoted with the words:
Her every song is like the revelation of a beautiful, exciting secret. And those who listen fill up with an undisguised happiness, tempered only by the knowledge that it will all end too soon (p. 24).
(Sidney Lazard was then to write, for the March 1960 issue of the ROGUE magazine, a piece entitled »Nina Simone, Tempestuous Talent«, but I haven't read or seen it yet.)
To return to Nina's first Colpix album! Nadine Cohodas in her biography of Nina Simone, Princess Noire, stresses correctly that the Colpix sessions of July 1959 (resulting in the first LP) were completely different from what (and how) she recorded at Bethlehem: While the Bethlehem sessions were »intimate« (three musicians in a small studio), the Colpix sessions were managed by Hecky Krasnow of »Rudolph-the-Red-Nosed-Reindeer«-fame and Nina »was part of a larger mosaic assembled by others, from song selection to arrangement. ... Krasnow had picked an eclectic mix of songs, ... and [the arranger Bob] Mersey surrounded Nina with violins, muted trumpets, and flutes, a prescripion Colpix hoped would bring crossover sales in the pop market (p. 83).« This, in the case of many other artists, would have proved a recipe for musical disaster, but it did not in the case of Nina Simone. Her presence and musicality saved the day and notwithstanding the lush production Colpix put up around Nina, the results were great. And for once I really agree with what we read on the back cover of her first Colpix LP; in general, those notes are so plainly smooth-written and honey-drafted to lure even the most critical customer in buying the most inaudible crap, but this does not apply in this case:
Nina is ... whatever the words and music she is singing really mean. Nina is a musical experience - an emotional trauma - an intellectual challenge ... Nina is a cauldron into which have been poured all the streams of musical expression and consciousness that shape American musical thought and emotion; classical, jazz, folk, ballad and Negro Church music ... When Nina plays and when Nina sings - the cauldron boils and the audience bubbles over ... Everything Nina does is new and different - how do you prove it - with standard material, all new material or stuff pulled down out of orbit? ... This album is just as good as your ear. Everything than can be said in the musical idiom within the boundaries of the twelve numbers ... is here said ...
This about sums it up nicely, I think.
From EBONY, Dec 1959, p 169.
For the record, and for the sake of complete- ness, Mrs Cohodas in Princess Noire got some different information as to the release dates. On p. 91 especially, she states that Nina's Colpix 45'' # 135 was put out in January 1960 and goes on to say that the »record was a teaser for the anticipated release of two full-scale albums, The Amazing Nina Simone ... and Nina Simone at Town Hall«. In fact, three singles were taken from Nina's first Colpix LP (one of those, Colpix # 135, actually also features »The Other Woman« not on the LP), but they were all released in 1959, # 135 in particular in November '59. The LP was already on the market by then for three months. Cohodas then claims that »before Colpix could get the LPs in circulation«, Bethlehem issued another album entitled Nina Simone and Her Friends. As is known, this Bethlehem LP irritated Nina mightily (to put it mildly) because her contract with Bethlehem/King had expired and she had signed for one album only (namely her 1958 Jazz as Played in an Exclusive Side Street Club aka Little Girl Blue). In her autobiography, Nina said that »[m]y first album for Colpix was The Amazing Nina Simone, but before it even came out Bethlehem had released a rival, Nina Simone and Her Friends, which contained the few remaining songs that we had decided not to use on Little Girl Blue« (I Put A Spell On You, p. 65). Now this is consonant with what Nadine Cohodas claims, but the Bethlehem LP referred to (BCP # 6041) was not out before January 1960 (or maybe even February), i.e. at a time when the first two Colpix LPs were already circulating for months. I can't resolve this, obviously, but I still believe that the Colpix LPs were released before Bethlehem came out with their second (abusive) LP in early 1960.
Enough of this, let's listen to Nina Simone instead! Her first tune on her first Colpix LP, recorded in mid-July 1959 ...
Nina Simone: »Blue Prelude« from the Colpix LP # 407 (1959):
... tonight with Margie Evans and Delmar Evans (I put the second name twice because they're not related, really, except musicallywise).
They were simply billed as »Delmar and Margie« on Johnny Otis's 1970 Epic LP Cuttin' Up and they feature on Side 2 with two remarkable duets, one funky and close to the pulse of the beginning '70s, the other a remake of a tune from 1950. And guess what? They outdid themselves with the one and the other. Maybe this was the secret of Johnny Otis, arguably the most important single r&b producer and impresario of all times, that he was able to reassemble his »Johnny Otis Show« in the late '60s (with new personnel) and still hit the nerve of the time after he had been around on the r&b scene since the mid-'40s. No little achievement, indeed.
The first important result of his new Show was the Epic LP which came out in August 1970, just after the Johnny Otis Show had played the Monterey Jazz Festival. Delmar Evans and Margie Evans had been picked up by Otis to be part of his ensemble two years before, and while both can be heard as solo vocalists on various recordings (for Delmar, see also here), the Cuttin' Up LP has the two also duetting. Just some word on Margie Evans: She was born Marjorie Ann Johnson in 1940 and was basically discovered by Otis, as it were. She started singing backing vocals in the late '50s, but was then brought out as a solo voice by Otis; she then recorded from the 1970s through the 1990s and became mainly known among blues aficionados.
The two duets by Margie and Delmar are killer tunes. As said before, one is on the funky side, the other (»Double Crossing Blues«) classic r&b in a modern (and highly satisfying) garb. But both are equally compelling. Let's get to it!
Delmar and Margie: »Don't Stretch This Good Thing Too Far« /»Double Crossing Blues« from the Epic LP # 26524 (1970):
* * *
You may also listen to the original version of »Double Crossing Blues«, first released in 1950 (feat. the Johnny Otis Quintette with The Robins and Little Esther [Phillips] on Savoy # 731):
On the day 45 years ago, The Supremes Live at the Talk of the Town was aired tonight on British TV. The post-Flo Supremes had opened in London's Talk of the Town on January 22, 1968. It was part of a tour through Europe (not their first) which took them to Cannes, Paris, Milan, Hamburg, Amster- dam, Stockholm and, well, London. After their 22 January concert, Diana Ross, Mary Wilson and Cindy Birdsong (not in the photo) were immortalized by a press photographer when Paul McCartney showed up and said hi (... and fittingly the #1 pop song in January 1968 was the Beatles's »Hello Goodbye«!); you can find a larger version of this pic in the February 10 issue of Billboard.
Now, let's pause for a moment and think what was going on in the heads of the persons on the photo. The Supremes had, just before they departed for Europe, stayed in sunny Mexico to deliver their pathetic contribution to an episode of Ron Ely's Tarzan. The episode in question was called The Convert and was aired in the US on January 12, 1968; you can watch it on YouTube. In that episode, the Supremes appear as three nuns and merrily chant a few churchy tunes, e.g. »Michael Row The Boat Ashore«; their boat capsizes because their singing irritates a touchy hippo (can't blame it) and all three are getting a jungle bath before being valiantly rescued by Tarzan. They then act their lordly way through the dire episode to conclude it with shouts of Hallelujah and a lot of hand-clapping.
Motown's admittedly clever publicity idea to insert the Supremes, whose record sales were slacking in late 1967, in a noted TV series was deemed interesting enough to warrant a fully-fledged coverage of their »Swinging Dramatic TV Acting Debut« in JET (issue of January 18, 1968, p. 60 ff.). The JET piece came with a centerfold pic of the Supremes »cooling off ... after a hot day's work in the jungle« (see it here), and there were also a number of pics showing the nuns from Detroit at work ...
(From JET, January 18, 1968, issue, p. 60)
The unlikely nuns then exchanged their modest attire for sequined dresses, flashy elbow gloves and tippy heels, boarded a plane and eventually run into Paul McCartney, or vice versa. What mood was he in? Well, right on 22 January, the new Apple office had opened in London, ushering in the last phase of the Beatles epic. Spiritually, he may have been preparing for his imminent trip to India where he was to study Transcendental Meditation (from mid-February onwards); eventually, he became bored and returned home, although he later claimed that TM »has helped him personally« (see quote here). Before he boarded his plane, he had taken part in shooting a small part for the Yellow Submarine movie and also recorded »Lady Madonna«.
Motown LP # MS 676 (08/1968)
The Supremes meeting Paul McCartney were thus a truly bizarre match. Let's hope that Paul, who reportedly attended the Talk of the Town concert of the Supremes before meeting them afterwards, was too distracted by the Apple launch and the India follies of his buddies to listen closely to what the Detroit ladies were offering on stage. However, Berry Gordy saw to it that the public was, in August 1968, endowed with a live LP which brought the musical enrichment of the British Isles as enacted by the Supremes into the home of unfortunate record buyers. In any case, the LP is one of the best live recordings to come out of Motown, although the measuring standards are poor. Diana and the Supremes did what they could best: trying to make forget the public by their lively appearance that vocal art was an alien concept to their lead singer. Unfortunately this strategy doesn't work on vinyl.
But London survived the Supremes, I guess. And there is still much talk of the town going on there, after all. The Supremes, first medley from the Motown LP # MS 676 (1968):
Today I went into the music bookstore I visit fairly often (obviously) and left it with a copy of Nadine Cohodas's Princess Noire. The Tumultuous Reign of Nine Simone (New York: Pantheon 2010). For different reasons I couldn't resist buying it, not the least because it was the hardcover edition and they hawked it for around 12 bucks. First thing you notice when taking the book in hand is its dust cover in gold and black (which, however, feels to the touch as if plastic would pretend to be calfskin leather ... very strange, tactily speaking). Once you remove the dust cover you'll be then eyestruck by the aureate splendour of the book cover itself that shines forth from beneath. Now whether Cohodas's book does merit all this gilded extravagancy I cannot yet say but the subject of her book certainly does.
Colpix LP 407 (not the truly original label
which has Colpix in red letters above, but
actually the 2nd label Colpix was using ...
but at least still in gold, compared with the
light blue of the following label versions)
That gold is somehow Nina Simone's colour I have always felt since I got to know her early Colpix LPs which came with a golden label, starting with her first Colpix LP 407 (The Amazing Nine Simone), recorded in July 1959 in New York.
1959 was the year when Nina Simone became a big name in the music business; in retro- spective, it certainly was the year which determined (and made) her later career, even though she herself at the time was still plan- ning to become a classical pianist and merely recorded jazz, folk, gospel and pop items to finance her piano study. »New Year 1959 found me ... with a hit record, a rising reputation, and no idea how to make the money I needed to finish my classical training« she was later to say in her autobiography I Put A Spell On You (p. 63 f.).
Billboard ad, Sept. 28, 1959
But things went better than she thought (and she often thought only the worst to come anyhow), and the unexpected success of her Bethlehem recordings, in particular of her version of »I Loves You Porgy«, opened her many doors. The New York-based Columbia-Colpix took her under contract in April 1959 because King-Bethlehem had signed her only for one album (which had appeared in mid-1958 as Little Girl Blue). What is more, Nina Simone was dissatisfied with how she was treated and promoted by Bethlehem-King's Sid Nathan, and famously she even sold away her rights of the entire album for the sum of $3.000 (something she much regretted later since her first Bethlehem LP also features such popular tunes like »My Baby Just Cares For Me« ...). She was then not unhappy to be signed by Joyce Selznick of Colpix, especially because she was given a longterm deal. And Colpix had, obviously, greater material resources to promote her nationwide and maybe also more enthusiasm since the Colpix label had been founded only recently, in October 1958.
Only little more than two months passed after signing the contract with Colpix, and Nina Simone found herself in a New York studio to lay down the 14 tracks in July '59, twelve of which were then released on her first Colpix LP The Amazing Nina Simone. Half of them were also released, in the course of '59, on three Colpix singles. One of those 45's, Colpix # 124, had the very felicitous combination of the uptempo gospel song »Children Go Where I Send You« with the old 1932 jazz standard »Willow Weep For Me« (the latter also recorded before by Billie Holiday and Dinah Washington). The first song, with its wonderful climax towards the end, highlights Nina's piano playing (and few songs on the first Colpix LP actually do), while the second strongly puts her vocal art in evidence. There is much else to say about her first Colpix album, but I cannot do it tonight and it has to wait for another occasion sometime soon. So let's leave it, for today, at the two songs mentioned. And I guess there will be few persons around who do not share the view that with Nina Simone, all is gold that glitters:
Nina Simone: »Children Go Where I Send You« / »Willow Weep For Me« from the Colpix LP # CP 407 (1959):
Martha Bass (mother of the late Fontella) was picked by Chess/Checker to have her first LP out in early 1967 ... notwithstanding the obvious (and by this time proven) talent of Mrs Bass the fact that she got released on Checker was probably helped by the recent success her daughter had on the same label. But this needn't detract from the merits of Martha, because sometimes it needs just such coincidental and second-hand support in order to give people their due. Martha was to record three LPs for Chess/Checker in the late 1960s and on her first album, I'm So Grateful (Checker LP # 10022), we find a number of songs testifying to Martha's powerhouse voice. For a start, let's hear her overwhelmingly beautiful and heart-rending ballad »Mother's Plea« (recorded at Chicago's Ter Mar Studios, March 30th, 1966): Martha Bass: »Mother's Plea« from the Checker LP # 10022 (1967):
(click to enlarge)
As is known, Martha Bass stayed for a little while with the Clara Ward Singers back in 1950 and she actually appears on less than a handful of Savoy recordings as member of the C.W. Singers. Afterwards she toured the churches of the South as a renowned house-wrecker. Her record contract at Chess/Checker then brought her reasonable fame even beyond the gospel circuit (and her name may have turned up occasionally before thanks to the success of her daughter Fontella). And indeed, the connection between mother and daughter was always a strong one, and they retur- ned to recording and performing together from the late 60's into the 1990s (including the 1993 CD Promises; for another recording of mother and daughter from the mid-1990s - incidentally the title song of Martha's first Checker LP - see here). Fontella even claimed that she was playing piano and singing background vocals on all of her mother's Chess/Checker recordings (a claim not fully substantiated, however).
Nobody less than Chess's Gene Barge (who was responsible for much of the Checker output in the 1960s; see also below!) wrote the notes on the back cover of Martha's LP - and while he did not miss to connect Martha to her then better-known daughter he also stressed, slightly enigmatically and in my view a bit out of propos, that both »sing in different categories« and thus »no problems confront them professionally.« You can read the whole bit here:
From the back cover of Checker LP # 10022
A number of songs on this album were recorded in March 1966 (including the above »Mother's Plea«), another bunch only several months later in October '66, including the traditional (?) »Everybody Will Be Happy (Over There)« and Roman Holmes's 1944 »What Manner Of Man Is This?«
Martha Bass (and uncredited choir): »What Manner Of Man Is This« / »Everybody Will Be Happy« from the Checker LP # 10022:
* * *
Additional info:
(1) There is a re-release of this LP on CD, as recent as September 2011, on Cherry Red Records. I haven't seen it so far but the company website mentions that the CD comes with specifically written sleevenotes. These may well offer more details about Martha Bass's Checker recordings, so check there.
(2) You can listen to a 2009 telephone interview with Gene Barge, coming from the pages of Chicago's Vocalo89.5 network:
Click here for a direct link to the interview page.
I am interested in the music, not in the relative rarity of discs. I also listen with great pleasure to Aretha Franklin, because she has the voice of the century. Music is no Faith and therefore has no heretics.
* * *
No music downloads on this site. All mp3s (with very few exceptions where noted) are ripped from original vinyl discs. If something on this blog is objectionable to anyone or should, for valid reasons, be re- moved from the net please let me know; it will be removed. And to reiterate: This is a non-profit blog.
