Four Classic Albums: The Amazing Nina Simone, At Town Hall, Forbidden Fruit, At Newport

"The Amazing Nina Simone"; "Nina Simone at Town Hall"; "Forbidden Fruit" and "Nina Simone At Newport'"

Us folks in music retail are often plagued with the problem of where to categorise an artist. In fact for many music fans, even trying to categorise a musician is actually the problem right there! "Let the music speak for itself", they all cry. If only life were so simple! Imagine you walk into a record shop and everything is listed alphabetically. You would have to wade through a lot of stuff beginning with "s" before you got to Nina Simone. At least with a jazz section you know where you will find John Coltrane or Miles Davis. And so we get nearer to our problem, where do we file Nina Simone? Here is a fine artist whose background is essentially classical, gospel and blues and yet on our selections she is undoubtedly singing in the jazz mode. A bit like Ray Charles, we thought, crosses many genres! So jazz it is. Here we feature four of Nina's earliest albums in a mixture of studio and live recordings. Her style at this early stage was certainly more in the jazz idiom, based on her gospel and blues background before she moved closer to soul and even pop later in her career.