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ROIO of the Week [Recordings
of Indeterminate Origin]
A
Single Woman
No one dared more.
With a full gospel choir from the Bethany Baptist Church roaring behind
her, Nina Simone is singing My Sweet Lord in front of American GIs when
she breaks into a poem Today Is A Killer where she insinuates, bit by
bit, line by line until suddenly we are at the end. Then she abruptly
concludes that "you Lord, are the killer". You can buy that 1971 show
on the album Emergency Ward. But this 1977 concert we are sharing today,
also deserves to be heard. This rare concert by Nina Simone is offered
to celebrate International Women's Day, March 8.
Click on the panels to download artwork
Nina
Simone
At Drury
Lane 1977 [no label 1CD]
Live
at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, England, December 1977.
"I attended a
Nina Simone concert at the Drury Lane Theatre in London in December, 1977.
Nina played and sang to an ecstatic, packed house. It was clearly evident
why her concerts have always been regarded by critics and audiences as
an 'experience'.
"A month later,
I went to Brussels to produce this Nina Simone recording."
- Producer, musician,
record label owner Creed Taylor writing in his liner notes to the original
album, Baltimore, by Nina Simone. Released March 15, 1978.
Nina Simone was fresh
off the boat in London in 1977. Disappointed with the civil rights movement
in America, the temperamental singer had left to live in self-imposed
exile in Europe where she remained till her death in Carry-le-Rouet, France
in April, 2003.
Simone was not any
interpreter of songs but breathed life into them making them autobiographies
of her own experience. She was a fierce feminist, a champion for black
pride and politically incorrect before the term was invented. There is
at least one four-letter expletive in this concert and a comment on gays,
unheard of coming from a woman performer at the time. This show at Drury
Lane is like a summary of who Simone was - performer, artist, lover, feminist,
militant and friend.
She opens this concert
with the traditional gospel Balm In Gilead, a song about healing and her
own search for renewal in a foreign land.
There is a balm
in Gilead to make the wounded whole,
there
is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul...
Sometimes
I get discouraged to think my work's in vain
But
then the Holy Spirit revives my soul again
The audience are
ecstatic when she launches into a scathing attack on the Hall And Oates'
pop song Rich Girl, transforming it into class struggle ["It's so easy
to hurt others when you can't feel pain... ain't it?"] with the punchline
"You're a rich girl and you know you've gone too far". Her voice shrieks
our outrage, something totally missing in the original context of the
pop song.
There is also a song
about prejudice in Turning Point about a young white girl's innocent question
to invite her black classmate home. Suddenly it becomes a race issue,
"that terrible disease that's in the world today". Brecht-Weill's Pirate
Jenny about slaves and slavers turns prejudice over to see the other side
- the African-American's anger. The slave is waiting for the Black Ship
to dock and take her away. While The Other Woman is read from a feminist
point of view - why should women fight over a man?
The final three songs
offer a light on Simone's personal quest that people must change first
before systems, bureaucracies and governments can. In spite of all the
gnashing and growling and pounding on the piano, Simone closes the show
on a positive note for hope and healing.
Her rejoinder to
all the obstacles in life is this, a list of positives:
I got my tongue,
I got my chin
I
got my neck, I got my tits
I got
my heart, I got my soul
I got
my back, I got my sex
We can still punch
our fists in the air.
There were none of
her popular songs performed this evening - no To Love Somebody, Young,
Gifted and Black or Mississippi Goddam. Simone has never played an oldies
show despite her reputation as a late-night lounge singer. Her on-stage
banter, her love for improvising the lyrics and her emotional performance
all made her so genuine as a person.
This Capital radio
show was broadcast on November 10, 1978. It is probably the show that
Creed Taylor saw before he recorded Simone's Baltimore album. Of that
album, Simone had this to say, "The material was not my personal choice,
and I had no say whatsoever in the selection of songs. It was all done
before I could make any decisions." No one dared as much as she did. -
Professor Red 
Note: Thanks to wonderboy
for sharing the lossless tracks on the Dime site and to TitoPuente for
the artwork.
Click on the highlighted tracks to download the MP3s (these are high quality,
stereo MP3s - sample rate of 192 kibit/s). As far as we can ascertain,
these tracks have never been officially released.
Nina Simone accompanies
herself on piano. Several of the songs here [Balm In Gilead, Rich Girl,
Everything Must Change and That's All I Want From You] are from her 1978
album, Baltimore [CTI], released March 15, 1978.
Click
on the link to order Nina Simone albums.
For more... email mybigo@bigozine.com
with the message, "Put me on your mailing list."
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March
7, 2007
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