News

Nina Simone's Philips catalog, recorded between 1964 and 1967 includes much of her most essential recordings.

Released earlier in the year as a seven LP box set entitled The Philips Years, Verve/UMe just announced that the seven albums— Nina Simone in Concert, Broadway-Blues-Ballads, I Put a Spell on You, Pastel Blues, Let it All Out, Wild Is the Wind and High Priestess of Soul—would be available individually.

The records were cut at Abbey Road from high resolution digital files created directly from the original stereo master tapes.

Not included in the release is a Philips "greatest hits" package that includes the remarkable protest song "Mississippi Goddam" (inspired by the murder of civil rights activist Medgar Evers by the Ku Klux Klan and the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Released as a single, the song, an incendiary cri de coeur that she performed outside Montgomery during the landmark Selma To Montgomery marches, was banned in several Southern US states)— but that's because these seven albums include everything on that compilation. The in-concert album was recorded at Carnegie Hall in March and April of 1964.

Meanwhile if you're unfamiliar with the remarkable Nina Simone please watch the Netflix feature documentary, "What Happened, Miss Simone?" — which recently won the 2016 Emmy for Outstanding Documentary.