Nina Simone - The Amazing Nina Simone

Nina Simone's second album for Colpix, released in 1959 and recorded at Van Gelder Studio in Hackensack, New Jersey, catches her expanding well beyond the jazz-club repertoire of her debut. Where Little Girl Blue introduced her sound, this record shows her stretching it, moving confidently from big-band swing on "Stompin' at the Savoy" to aching, spare ballads like "Willow Weep for Me" and "Solitaire," often within the same side.

That range traces directly back to Simone's unlikely path into popular music. Classically trained from childhood and later admitted to Juilliard, she'd set her sights on becoming the first Black concert pianist in America before a rejection from the Curtis Institute pushed her toward nightclub work instead, and it was there, playing under the name Nina Simone to hide her performances from her mother, that her singing career actually began. That classical foundation is unmistakable throughout The Amazing Nina Simone, her piano work is precise and formally schooled even as her phrasing bends and stretches with total jazz and blues fluency, a combination almost no one else in popular music had at the time.

Coming a full year before Simone would become one of the defining voices of the civil rights era, this record captures an artist already fully formed technically, still finding her footing commercially but clearly building toward something much bigger. It's an essential document of her early Colpix period and a genuine showcase for one of the most singular musicians of the 20th century.

Pressed to a single vinyl LP, this is a great entry point into Simone's formative years on record.