Nina Simone
Nina Simone and Piano!

*NOTE: On side 1, there is a bubble in the vinyl that plays as 7 light thumps about 1/4" into track 4, "Everyone’s Gone To The Moon." On side 2, there is also a bubble in the vinyl that plays as 10 loud thumps at the end of track 4, "I Get Along Without You Very Well (Except Sometimes)."

This '60s LP has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn't showing signs of coming back.

Having done this for so long, we understand and appreciate that rich, full, solid, Tubey Magical sound is key to the presentation of this primarily vocal music. We rate these qualities higher than others we might be listening for (e.g., bass definition, soundstage, depth, etc.). The music is not so much about the details in the recording, but rather in trying to recreate a solid, palpable, real Nina Simone singing live in your listening room. The better copies have an uncanny way of doing just that.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it -- not often, and certainly not always -- but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.

What The Best Sides Of Nina Simone and Piano! Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear

• The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
• The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1969
• Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
• Natural tonality in the midrange -- with all the instruments having the correct timbre
• Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space

No doubt there's more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.

What We're Listening For On Nina Simone and Piano!

• Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
• Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren't "back there" somewhere, lost in the mix. They're front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would put them.
• The Big Sound comes next -- wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
• Then transient information -- fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
• Tight note-like bass -- which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.
• Next: transparency -- the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
• Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing -- an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.

Engineering

Ray Hall handled the engineering duties for this album and a host of other great albums for RCA, albums we know were brilliantly recorded because we’ve done shootouts for them and heard the best copies sound amazing with our own two ears.

Some of the better titles that come to mind include:

• Louis Armstrong & Duke Ellington – Recording Together For The First Time (1961)
• Ray Brown / Cannonball Adderley – With The All-Star Big Band (1962)
• Paul Desmond – Take Ten (1963)
• Paul Desmond & Gerry Mulligan – Two Of A Mind (1962)
• Stan Getz – Jazz Samba Encore (1963)
• Della Reese – Della (1960)
• Sonny Rollins – The Bridge (1962)
• Sonny Rollins and Coleman Hawkins – Sonny Meets Hawk (1963)

And too many more to list!

Vinyl Condition

Mint Minus Minus and maybe a bit better is about as quiet as any vintage pressing will play, and since only the right vintage pressings have any hope of sounding good on this album, that will most often be the playing condition of the copies we sell. (The copies that are even a bit noisier get listed on the site are seriously reduced prices or traded back in to the local record stores we shop at.)

Those of you looking for quiet vinyl will have to settle for the sound of other pressings and Heavy Vinyl reissues, purchased elsewhere of course as we have no interest in selling records that don't have the vintage analog magic of these wonderful recordings.

If you want to make the trade-off between bad sound and quiet surfaces with whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing might be available, well, that's certainly your prerogative, but we can't imagine losing what's good about this music -- the size, the energy, the presence, the clarity, the weight -- just to hear it with less background noise.

Side One

• Seems I’m Never Tired Lovin’ You
• Nobody’s Fault But Mine
• I Think It’s Going To Rain Today
• Everyone’s Gone To The Moon
• Compensation

Side Two

• Who Am I
• Another Spring
• The Human Touch
• I Get Along Without You Very Well (Except Sometimes)
• The Desperate Ones

AMG Review

Her own best accompanist (especially during the crossover-happy ’60s), Nina Simone sings and plays on this 1969 LP. With strident vocals and a thoughtful piano backing, Simone makes her own a pair of radically different (though similarly fatalistic) compositions, Blind Willie Johnson’s “Nobody’s Fault But Mine” and Randy Newman’s “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today.”

Her version of “Everyone’s Gone to the Moon” leans dangerously close to avant-garde overkill, but she returns with good performances on “Compensation” and “Who Am I?” A great moment comes when a tambourine finally joins her midway through “Another Spring,” and the lone jazz standard (“I Get Along Without You Very Well”) is given a touching performance. In an era when Simone often veered from crossover to experimental, Nina Simone and Piano! is undeniably difficult, but frequently rewarding.