Nina Simone: Silk & Soul [MUSIC ON VINYL]

Why you'll love it

Music On Vinyl presses this one on 180g vinyl. Silk & Soul holds her definitive take on Billy Taylor's "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free," and "Go to Hell" earned her a Grammy nomination for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance.

This edition

• 180g vinyl
• Music On Vinyl audiophile edition

About the album

Nina Simone never did pick one lane, and by her thirteenth album she had stopped pretending she might. Silk & Soul came out on RCA Victor in October 1967, and it moves from soul to jazz to pop standards and back with the confidence of someone who could make anything her own.

Sammy Lowe arranged and conducted a top-shelf New York band: Eric Gale and Rudy Stevenson on guitar, Bernard Purdie on drums, Gene Taylor on bass and Ernie Hayes on piano and harpsichord. Her brother Sam Waymon wrote the opener "It Be's That Way Sometime," Burt Bacharach's "The Look of Love" arrives fresh from Casino Royale, and "Turning Point" begins like a child's song about a new friend before asking where prejudice really comes from. "Consummation" is her own love song, set to the melody of "For All We Know."

The record's centrepiece is "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free," which became a civil rights anthem in her hands and has never quite left the air since. Put it on and you'll understand why most cover versions sound like they're politely knocking on her door.

Also at Kops: more Nina Simone on vinyl · browse Vocal Jazz

Tracklist

Listen

On RCA Victor / Music On Vinyl (cat# MOVLP249), a reissue of the 1967 album.