Liner notes by James Gavin
By the time this album was released in 1964, Nina Simone's musical focus was changing as quickly as the times. In her prior nine LPs she had evolved a style that treated everything from standards to gritty blues as moody, jazz-informed arias. She appear ed cool, but below the surface those songs seemed to evoke in her something bitter and unsettling.
As the civil rights struggle weighed upon Simone more and more heavily, the mahogany voice heard on her early albums began to show a few cracks, and her shows grew visibly harsher and angrier. Protest songs started to dominate her repertoire, as they would for the rest of the decade.
Most of broadway*blues*ballads is an attempt to take Simone beyond her cult status by presenting her as a mainstream pop singer. It gathers a half-dozen pop-soul singles, a trio of show tunes, and even the traditional art song.
The Last Rose of Summer. (Contrary to the album's title, no real blues are included.) This set reflects the piecemeal quality of most of her Philips LPs, which sounded like periodic releases of whatever material had accumulated in the vau lts. But no Nina Simone is without interest, and this one bears the High Priestess of Soul's customary attitude and authority.
The most celebrated track is Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood, written by Bennie Benjamin, Sol Marcus, and Gloria Caldwell. An anguished plea for sympathy at a time of harsh action, the song is an obvious echo of the civil rights movement. The volatile singer found more than a touch of autobiography in its words. "Don't you know no one alive can always be an angel?/When everything goes wrong you see some bad." Although the song became a Simone trademark, it failed to hit the charts until the Animals covered it in 1965. Simone went on to record other pop tunes by Benjamin and Marcus, including Don't Take All Night, I Am Blessed, Of This I'm Sure, Our Love (Will See Us Through), How Can I?, and A Monster . All of them feature the same thin, fluttering strings, plodding beat, and strident female choir used gratingly on "Misunderstood". But Simone manages to cut through the sentimentality and give them some bite.
Only "Don't Take All Night" breaks away from the ordinary, as Simone turns it into a playful, sexy reprimand.
The Broadway section is far more rewarding. The standout is Night Song from Golden Boy, a Charles Strouse-Lee Adams musical from 1964 that starred Sammy Davis, Jr. An urban lullaby about a summer night on the city streets, it tells of feeling along in a big, bustling city, wondering how to fit it. The bridge-- "Where do you go when you feel your brain is on fire/When you don't even know what it is you desire?" seems to strike a chord in Simone, who burst through her pensive mood with a moment of spine-tingling passion.
Cole Porter's The Laziest Gal in Town, which Marlene Dietrich introduced in Hitchcock's 1950 film Stage Fright, finds Simone in an unusually lighthearted mood; no lascivious Porter nuance escapes her. Something Wonde rful, that ludicrous tale of female martyrdom from The King and I, gains a measure of dignity in her hands, as does Nobody, which is loosely classified as one of the album's blues. In fact it is a turn-of-the-century hard-luck story, an early example of race consciousness replete with double entendre, made famous in vaudeville by comic Bert Williams. Simone first sang it as a piano bar performer in the Fifties, and this version recalls the more introspective style of those early days.
But the album's high point is See-Line Woman, a throbbing tale about a top-dollar whore with a touch of mermaid in her. The number is still a showstopper in her concerts. With a background of flute, percussion, hand clapping, and an inc antation of "see-line" from her band, she steps away from the piano and struts the stage, growling, moaning, and commanding the audience to chant along. More than any other track on the CD, this piece of vintage Simone bears out the words of La ngston Hughes, who wrote the original liner notes. "She has a flair, but no air. She has class but does not wear it on her shoulders. Only chips. She is unique. You either like her or you don't. If you don't, you won't. If you do-- wheee-ouuu- eu! You do!"
Whatever the song, there is no mistaking the voice or the temperment. broadway*blues*ballads proves that a singer who usually meant business could also sing for the fun of it-- and still siphon the truth out of every phrase.
James Gavin
June 1993
James Gavin is the author of Intimate Nights: The Golden Age of New York Cabaret (Limelight Editions).
Comments to Mauro Boscarol