FORBIDDEN FRUIT/VINYLE COULEUR

Description

With: Nina Simone (vocals, piano), Al Schackman (guitar), Chris White (bass), Rob Hamilton (drums).
When this live album is released, among her first for the Colpix label, the Village Gate, a club in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York, which opened three years earlier, has already hosted the Stan Getz quartet and the Horace Silver quintet. But the arrival of the singer and pianist, in full ascent after the success of Little Girl Blue in 1959, will be a milestone, and will greatly contribute to establishing her as a leading showwoman: the stunned sadness tinged with nostalgia of He Was Too Good To Me moves us with emotions, while the astonishing interpretation of Bye Bye Blackbird, steeped in classical piano, or this Brown Baby of an almost religious solemnity form a stunning contrast with the gospel verve of the negro spiritual Children Go Where I Send You. Surprising and yet completely coherent, devoid of any artifice, "At The Village Gate" is one of the most emblematic records of Nina Simone's unparalleled talent.