Nina Simone: Video And Audio Exclusives! -

Nina Simone: Video And Audio Exclusives!

12:30 PM GMT 31/10/2008

TO BE FREE: The Nina Simone Story is the most comprehensive collection of the elegant, ecstatic and obdurate singer’s ouput, for multiple labels between 1957 and 1993. Three CDs deliver all the classics plus 24 live and eight previously unreleased performances, while a fourth disc, a DVD, offers evidence of her astonishing physical charisma. Today, MOJO can boast an exclusive taster of two unreleased audio and two unreleased video tracks.

Don’t You Pay Them No Mind (previously unreleased video)

Percussion/Drums/Clapping/Dancing (previously unreleased video)

No Opportunity Necessary, No Experience Needed (live at New York’s Philharmonic Hall, October 1969)

Tanywey (newly discovered, from the 1971 Here Comes The Sun LP sessions)

A peerless interpreter of song and a unique pianist, Simone scored her first record deal at age 24, with Syd Nathan’s jazz label Bethlehem, whereupon her palette expanded from classic jazz interpretations (the famed My Baby Just Cares For Me is from her 1957 debut) to embrace traditional American balladry, the poetry of Langston Hughes, and the reflective rock of Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Randy Newman. Later she would look to Hair and African music to reflect her themes of civil rights and black pride, best expressed in 1965’s fierce Four Women and 1969’s celebratory To Be Young, Gifted And Black.

The Sony BMG archives are the source for all eight previously unreleased tracks, all from Simone’s recordings for the Colpix and RCA labels, spanning 1963-73: When Malindy Sings/Swing Low Sweet Chariot (live at the Newport Jazz Festival, 1963); Ain’t Got No-I Got Life (alternate version of her cover hit of the Hair song, from the 1968 Nuff Said! sessions); Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne and Richie Havens’ No Opportunity Necessary, No Experience Needed (both live at New York’s Philharmonic Hall, October 1969); Tanywey (a newly discovered original, from the 1971 Here Comes The Sun LP sessions); Gilbert Becaud’s (via the Everly Brothers) Let It Be Me (live at the Fort Dix military base, 1971); and Nina (a free-form jam) and Olatunji’s Zungo (both live at New York’s Philharmonic Hall, July 1973).

Out now, To Be Free... comes complete with previously unseen photography from Simone‘s family archives, photos from the personal collection of Nina Simone historian Sylvia Hampton, plus track-by-track annotations written by David Nathan. And it looks a bit like this...