Nina Simone – Let It Be Me (Live at Vine St.) 1987

MP3@320CBR

Recorded live at the Vine St. Bar & Grill, Hollywood, California

Nina Simone vocals, piano Arthur Adams guitar, electric bass Cornell McFadden drums

01 My Baby Just Cares For Me

02 Sugar In My Bowl

03 Fodder On My Wings

04 Be My Husband

05 Just Like A Woman

06 Balm In Gilead

07 Stars

08 If You Pray Right

09 If You Knew Let It Be Me

10 Four Women

11 Mississippi Goddam

12 Baltimore

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Nina Simone’s live performances have a power and an intimacy all their own, and those qualities stand out in this 1987 recording from Vine Street. It’s a stunning form of cabaret singing, dramatic without melodrama, and with roots that reach to Billie Holiday’s surprising success with “Strange Fruit.” Simone can add profundity to a usually carefree song like “My Baby Just Cares for Me,” and the range of the performance broadens with the startling “Be My Husband,” a simple pattern reduced to the naked force of a field holler, and the stark hymn “Balm in Gilead.” Carefully chosen songs from Randy Newman, Bob Dylan, and Janis Ian achieve new dimensions in Simone’s treatments. Her own deeply felt “Four Women” and “Mississippi Goddam” are potent and enduring protests. There’s some effectively spare accompaniment from guitar, bass, and drums, but Simone’s piano is the essential instrumental voice, from slow barrelhouse to Bach.
- Stuart Broomer