Nina Simone
You’ve Got to Learn
VERVE
1966 was a transitional year for Nina Simone. Coming off of the previous year’s aptly titled Pastel Blues and on the cusp of 1967’s consciousness-raising High Priestess of Soul, the guttural, graceful vocalist-pianist released three softer albums that year—With Strings, Wild Is the Wind, and Let It All Out—after having created a hardcore profile for the Philips label of addressing racial inequality and social justice in songs such as “Four Women,” “To Be Young, Gifted and Black,” and “Mississippi Goddam.”
By the time she got to the 1966 Newport Jazz Festival, Simone was armed for bear. And though the short, sharp live gig she performed in Rhode Island’s gentle burg was never formally released until this year, its whispered-about magic and majesty has forever been legendary. This was Simone’s coming-out party—holding up the following act due to the festival audience’s awe at what they’d just heard, Simone’s Newport rendition of “Mississippi Goddam” was immolating, impassioned, jazzy-rootsy blues at its most fired-up in the combustible locus of the Civil Rights Movement.
When it comes to romance, Simone—the singer and the pianist—takes on the twin towers of love and sensuality with royal yet raw-boned heft (a loneliest-ever iteration of “I Loves You Porgy,” a chilling “Music for Lovers”). The lessons of “You’ve Got to Learn” (heard here in what is promised as its only-known live recording) and “Blues for Mama” are tender but cynical and hard-won as Simone verbally snaps each and every syllable and musical phrase like a twig, croon-talking and intimately soulful.
As for the deconstructed take on her protest anthem “Mississippi Goddam,” Simone transfers its already-curt energy into an oddly angular but embraceable brand of swing-blues while pulling in the rage of the recent Watts riots to its catalog of crimes against Black America. Though her vocals are scuffed and weary, every angry word of Simone’s cuts like a machete.
Though short but not-at-all-sweet (the entire album is under 35 minutes), Nina Simone takes no prisoners and makes every second of You’ve Got to Learn count.
