I (Heart) Nina Simone.

I've been ripping quite a few CD's to my new computer in the past few weeks so I've had the joy of sifting through and organizing many CD's that have been in unorganized stacks and various musical graveyards all over my house and some even to be found in between the cracks of never ending run-on sentences.

In all of this I am currently ripping my Nina Simone library.
It was in my junior year of college that I came in contact with this lady that would forever make an impact on my musical life. I was returning home from visiting my friend James at Northern Michigan University. He was taking a jazz appreciation class at school the same semester that I was at Michigan State. He gave me a Verve classic CD of Nina Simone

Well, the directions were to give the CD to our friend, Josh, back home. Sorry Josh. You never got that CD. Instead I was introduced to this jazz/blues/soul legend.

Now people ask me what she sang as if she had some radio hit at sometime. I couldn't tell them. I rarely hear her music on the radio. So I did a Google search of her at Billboard Top 40 and they say how many she had. One.

"Raised in a family of eight children, she originally harbored hopes of becoming a classical pianist, studying at New York's prestigious Juilliard School of Music -- a rare position for an African-American woman in the 1950s. Needing to support herself while she studied, she generated income by working as an accompanist and giving piano lessons. Auditioning for a job as a pianist in an Atlantic City nightclub, she was told she had the spot if she would sing as well as play. Almost by accident, she began to carve a reputation as a singer of secular material, though her skills at the piano would serve her well throughout her career. In the late '50s, Simone began recording for the small Bethlehem label (a subsidiary of the vastly important early R&B/rock & roll King label).

In 1959, her version of George Gershwin's "I Loves You Porgy" gave her a Top 20 hit -- which would, amazingly, prove to be the only Top 40 entry of her career. http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/bio/index.jsp?pid=3625

What I have noticed the most about Nina Simone's music is the belief that every person's work that she touched she made better. A majority of her recorded work consisted of standards and covers. Every one better than the original from Gershwin to Dylan. Yes, she does Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen better then they do. Strong words? Of course they are. But hey, listen for yourself in Nina's versions of:

Bob Dylan- The Ballad of Hollis Brown

Leonard Cohen- Suzanne


So there. A legend with nearly 40 years of recordings and only 1 Billboard hit.