Second
Time Around
Nina
Simone
Anthology (BMG/RCA/Heritage)
Nina Simone's voice was so rich, powerful, and evocative that it seemed to enter the world from another universe – it was simply extraordinary, as if deep in her heart she carried the ache, the anguish, and the wisdom of the age. But if truth was amplified coming from her lips, it was the world Simone lived in that placed her in a class by herself: she lived in an era when telling the truth could be a capital offense for black Americans. So while Simone recorded jazz, pop, R&B, blues, and standards – and Anthology, a 31-song collection, is a great place to start and sample or to hold onto as a solid cross-section of her work – what lingered in the public imagination was the song "Mississippi Goddamn," which she wrote, not merely because she was outspoken and defiant or because her voices quavers with barely controlled emotion, but because her performance was so utterly convincing.
Simone, like many artists of her generation, was influenced by militant activists such as Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X – but immersing herself in the politics of the day didn't reduce the impact of her work, or its staying power. Anthology has too many standouts to mention, but there's one moment when you get as close as possible to the time she lived in: when she moves from "Trouble in Mind" to "Mississippi Goddamn" and delivers as powerful a one-two punch as can be. She rides the blues of the first song to a bottomless place, where feelings can overwhelm you, and take you under so you'll never surface. And on the second, over her pumping, almost strident piano, she sings an elegant, angry manifesto, "a show tune from a show that hasn't been written ... Hound dogs on my trial / School children sitting in jail / Black cats cross my path / I think every day's going to be my last." She's walking on the edge of sanity and safety, forced by the world around her to flirt with the darkness below: "I don't belong here / I don't belong there / I've even stopped believing in prayer...." She follows that with "Bet you thought I was kidding, didn't you," and all I can say is no, not once. (J.H. Tompkins)
