Nina Simone - Mood Indigo

Nina Simone’s first professional recordings at an unknown location in New York City took place, as noted in her own 1991 autobiography (_I Put A Spell On You_), over a mammoth thirteen-hour session in 1957. The 24-year-old had been signed by Syd Nathan, the owner of King Records (home to James Brown) for his Bethlehem jazz imprint after he heard a demo of songs she had made during a performance at a venue in New Hope, Pennsylvania. According to Simone herself, the boisterous Nathan had insisted on choosing songs for her debut set but relented allowing Nina to delve into the repertoire she had been performing at clubs up and down the Eastern seaboard in the preceding three years since her first Atlantic City gig in 1954.

Recorded—as were the other thirteen tunes cut at the session—with Jimmy Bond on bass and Albert “Tootie” Heath (brother of saxophonist Jimmy and bassist Percy) on drums, Duke Ellington’s “Mood Indigo” (first recorded by the composer in 1930) was a perfect example of Nina’s skill at fusing jazz improvisation with her years of training as a classical musician. Box set producer Richard Seidel chose this track for inclusion since it deftly demonstrates Simone’s keyboard virtuosity as well as the unorthodox manner with which she treated standards of the day. Her love for the legendary musician’s work would later be reflected in her choice to record an entire album in tribute, the 1962 Colpix LP _Nina Simone Sings Ellington._