Nina Simone: Wild Is the Wind

Wild Is the Wind was written for the 1957 film of the same name by the Hollywood team of composer Dimitri Tiomkin and lyricist Ned Washington, where it was sung by Johnny Mathis. The wonderful Nina Simone first recorded it for a live album in 1959.

This studio version dates from 1966. Bill Janovitz says of it:

On a recording by David Bowie and on Mathis' lush original ... it is a romantic torch song; the narrator is haunted by the possibility – one senses more of a probability – that his lover will not "run away with" him. There is a sense of longing and despair, especially in Bowie's passionate guitar-driven rendering. But there is a glimmer of hope in the narrator's desperate imploring in both interpretations. 

With Simone, though, all hope seems lost; she sounds as mournful as she has on almost any of her recordings – resolved that her lover is gone, yet singing to herself as if he were there. ... Her own sparse piano accompaniment is measured, with resonating and sustaining low notes and grand arpeggios.

The Joy of Six 1503

Marcus Hughes on the many problems the Welsh government must overcome in achieving its laudable aim of removing private profit from the care system. "The anxiety inducing question from those working in the sector is what happens if local authority and not-for-profit provision can’t replace that offered by the private sector in time? Finding places for some young people is already a challenge even with the current options available." 

"Could the bellicose, belligerent and braying Hegseth – with his Crusader tattoos, his disdain for diplomacy, and his evident taste for violent domination – have convinced Trump to start a war to complete the unfinished business of the Crusades?" Julia Carrie Wong reveals the militant Christian theology animating the US attack on Iran

Hannah Sharland reports on fears that the government's transport strategy will not see the improvements for disabled travellers that were promised.

"Standing at 6ft 2in, with an imposing physique and a razor-scarred face, she was a Black, gay multi-instrumentalist who refused to let a racist society or a rapacious industry confine her. Thornton should be ranked alongside the likes of Billie Holiday and Nina Simone, but instead she is little more than a footnote in the histories of Elvis Presley and Janis Joplin as the original voice behind songs they would make famous." Garth Cartwright celebrates Big Mama Thornton.

"For really I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he." A London Inheritance takes us to St Mary's, Putney, where the Putney Debates took place in 1647. 

Simon Hughes (not that one) remembers Channel 4's years of covering test cricket – they gave us Geoffrey Boycott without the tiresome public-school teasing of him by Jonathan Agnew: "Our principle aim was to make cricket coverage more interesting and informative: to tell ‘why’ as well as ‘what’. Part of our motivation came from people who said they often watched cricket on the TV but turned the sound off and listened to the radio commentary. We wanted our content to be so intriguing viewers would turn the sound up."

Nina Simone: Who Knows Where the Time Goes?

I didn't discover that Nina Simone had recorded this Sandy Denny song until recently. It is on her LP* Black Gold,  which was recorded in 1969 at the Philharmonic Hall, New York City.

It's a beautiful performance, and I love the spoken introduction too. Even the play out at the end makes you wish you had been there.

* Is using "LP" desperately old fashioned now? I still often write it and then replace it with "album".

Nina Simone: Sinnerman

What if I know this from television commercials? It is still brilliant
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The website dedicated to the career and memory of Nina Simone tells her story:

Born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina on February 21st, 1933, Nina’s prodigious talent as a musician was evident early on when she started playing piano by ear at the age of three. Her mother, a Methodist minister, and her father, a handyman and preacher himself, couldn’t ignore young Eunice’s God-given gift of music. 

Raised in the church on the straight and narrow, her parents taught her right from wrong, to carry herself with dignity, and to work hard. She played piano – but didn’t sing – in her mother’s church, displaying remarkable talent early in her life. 

Able to play virtually anything by ear, she was soon studying classical music with an Englishwoman named Muriel Mazzanovich, who had moved to the small southern town. It was from these humble roots that Eunice developed a lifelong love of Johann Sebastian Bach, Chopin, Brahms, Beethoven and Schubert. ... 

After graduating valedictorian of her high school class, the community raised money for a scholarship for Eunice to study at Julliard in New York City before applying to the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. 

Her family had already moved to the City Of Brotherly Love, but Eunice’s hopes for a career as a pioneering African American classical pianist were dashed when the school denied her admission. 

To the end, she herself would claim that racism was the reason she did not attend. While her original dream was unfulfilled, Eunice ended up with an incredible worldwide career as Nina Simone – almost by default.

She is, of course, playing the piano as well as singing on this recording.

The Animals: Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood

I was in an expensive shoe shop cum coffee shop in Leicester yesterday - well, it was Clarendon Park - when they played this. It sounded good,

Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood was originally recorded, at a much slower tempo, by Nina Simone. Many later covers have been inspired by The Animals' take on it.

This cracking live performance comes from the 1965 New Musical Express poll winners concert. The whole show is on Youtube.

Tim Booth and Angelo Badalamenti: I Believe

One of the more unlikely musical collaborations of the 1990s was that between Tim Booth and Angelo Badalamenti.

Booth from the bad James (via Shrewsbury School and the drama department at Manchester University) was part of the Madchester scene: Badalamenti was a composer best known for his work on David Lynch's films.

A James fansite tells the story of their collaboration:

Prior to 1990. Booth and Badalamenti had never heard of each other. That year, Booth fell in love with Julee Cruise's remarkable album of dream-songs, Floating Into the Night (music by Badalamenti and lyrics by Lynch) and was delighted to be asked, by the producer of Channel 4's Friday Night at the Dome, to choose a musician from anywhere in the world with whom he'd like to collaborate. 

For over a year the two men attempted to meet, with no joy, until a Paul McCartney recording session brought Badalamenti over to London on Concorde (the only way he'll cross the Atlantic). That night, James played at the venue formerly known as the Town & Country Club in London's Kentish Town. 

So this is the kid who's been leaving crazy messages on my answerphone, thought Angelo Badalamenti when they met backstage. 

Wow, he looks like a New York taxi driver, thought Tim Booth.

And adds in some enticing musical trivia:

In the year of Booth's birth, Badalamenti was teaching music and english in a New York school. He moved briefly to Woldingham in Surrey; began to write pop tunes; was told by Joe Meek that he had a glorious singing voice; went back to Brooklyn; penned hits for Melba Moore, Nancy Wilson and Nina Simone; scored dozens of movie soundtracks under the name Andy Badale; and wrote the superlative music for David Lynch's Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart and most famously of all, Twin Peaks.

This performance is from a Jools Holland show, with the rest of James also playing. But on the LP the guitar was played by Bernard Butler from Suede.

Traffic: Feelin' Good

It is simply months since we had any Steve Winwood or Traffic, so let's put that right with this track from Traffic's LP Last Exit. This was, in the words of Wikipedia, "a collection of odds and ends put together by Island Records after the initial breakup of the band".

Feelin' Good was one of two tracks recorded live at a concert performed at Filmore West in San Francisco. There are lots of versions of it around, but there is not another one with organ like this on it.

There is also a live Canadian video of the song from the same era. Unfortunately, it was a time when Canadian TV was still in black and white and did not own any lights.

As I said, Feelin' Good (or Feeling Good) is everywhere these days, but I did not realise where it came from until recently. The famous Nina Simone recording of the song dates from 1965, but it was not some standard. It comes from the Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse  show The Roar of the Greasepaint - The Smell of the Crowd, which opened that year.

This is a surprise if you had Newley and Bricusse down as purveyors of dodgy musicals. Though Newley does have his place in British cultural history. He links the 1940s golden age of British films with the pop culture of the 1960s, and he taught a generation of performers that you did not have to put on an American accent to sing. And he was being lined up for a permanent role in EastEnders when he died in 1999.

Traffic reformed in 1970 to make their best LP John Barleycorn Must Die. While doing so they recorded a live concert for the BBC. And you can find the whole thing on Youtube, with part 1 here.

As John Peel says:

"With all the stories of groups breaking up constantly in the music papers, it's really nice to have one of the all time great ones get together again and it's even nicer to have them on this programme."

Elkie Brooks: Lilac Wine

Like The Man with the Child in his Eyes by Kate Bush, this is a song that reminds me of my sixth-form Saturday job in a second-hand bookshop. Being young and ignorant, I had not heard it before. I now know that it had been made famous by Nina Simone in the sixties and it was recorded more recently by Jeff Buckley. Wikipedia has an article on the song's history.

Elkie Brooks has been around in the sixties and was a member of Vinegar Joe with Robert Palmer in the early seventies, but she did not enjoy much chart success until this era. Lilac Wine made no. 16 in 1978.

She is in full diva mode on this live performance from German TV, but someone should have told the pianist that you don't have to press that hard.