Released (1996)
21 tracks, 70 minutes
Spotify playlist
It’s hard to really call this compilation a ‘greatest hits’ disc, if even just for the fact that it doesn’t contain some of her greatest hits. Its lack of ‘Feeling Good’, ‘Sinnerman’, ‘Mississippi Goddam’, ‘To Be Young, Gifted and Black’, and the original studio versions of ‘I Ain’t Got No (I Got Life)’ and ‘I Loves You Porgy’ basically disqualify it from such a label. Which just goes to show the profundity of Nina Simone’s performing and composing genius that this collection of not-even-greatest hits is so deeply soul-touching on many different levels.
Released is quite a focussed compilation, with 16 out of the 21 tracks being taken from three album between 1967 and 1968, Nina Simone Sings the Blues, Silk & Soul and ’Nuff Said!, and it works as proof to just how fruitful that period of Simone’s career was. As well as passing through a number of different styles in these tracks – primarily blues, soul and showtunes with elements of gospel, jazz and folk too – they also show the width of her emotional range. Just in the space of these 21 tracks in this collection, Simone comes across as feisty, funny, deadly angry, bitter, soft, seductive, bereft, joyful, pensive and heavily political. She takes you across the spectrum of human emotion and every one of them is delivered in an entirely sincere manner.
For me, there’s none that captures this more than the song ‘Why (The King of Love is Dead)’. It’s a lament for Martin Luther King, powerful, despairing and agonised yet celebratory of this great man. This recording was made live, during a performance at Westbury Music Fair on 7th April 1968 – just three days after Dr King was assassinated. The song was written by bassist Gene Taylor and then taught to the band in just one day, and it’s one of the rawest, saddest songs I know. Truly heart-wrenching. It’s such a simple piece too, a slow, gospel blues with all the instruments just quietly doing their thing, no flashiness, but it is so intense. Whenever I hear it, I have to stop – this is not background music – and it makes me teary every single time without fail. I can only imagine how it must have felt to be there on the day. I am sure that the audience must have been in floods. Although Simone would play it at future shows, the group never gave it a studio recording, because it simply didn’t need one. This performance was its perfect rendition, and must surely be close to a perfect song.
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Can we also just take a small moment to acknowledge what a mean piano player Nina Simone was?! People focus on her voice, and rightfully so, but what she created with her fingers contained as much mastery as her vocal cords. She was classically-trained but was just as comfortable playing dirty, barrelhouse blues or righteous gospel too, and each in such an effortless manner to make it seem completely natural, as if the music was radiating from her, and manifesting in the vibration of the piano strings. The one that stood out particularly in this listen through was ‘Nobody’s Fault But Mine’, her rendition of Blind Willie Johnson’s holy blues. It’s just Simone on voice and piano, and those keys are so forthright. This is the blues, and she ain’t here to mess around. Her fingers introduce the subtlest little ornaments to the piano’s accompaniment and her classical background seems to inform the shape it takes, but at the same time it is 100% blues. Listening to this particular recording, I am sure it must have been a huge influence on Diamanda Galás; her playing has exactly the same darkly beautiful but no-nonsense feel.
Even though Released is a compilation album, I listen to it like I read a favourite book: maybe I’ll dip in occasionally, picking out the best bits and feeling their various feels, but listening to it all the way through provides its own joy, and I find something else to fall in love with on every go around. What an amazing musician Nina Simone was. And this isn’t even her greatest hits…
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