Nina Simone - My Baby Just Cares for Me

Originally just one of the fourteen songs recorded at Nina’s first (and only) Bethlehem session in 1957, this song (written for a musical entitled _Whoopee!_ and previously recorded by Nat King Cole, Lorez Alexandria, Woody Herman and Count Basie) would have simply been another album cut if U.K.-based Jamaican music fans had not first warmed to it likely as a result of its loping ska-like beat (and much to Simone’s ire, demanding she sing it during a 1966 gig at a West Indian club in South London) and turned it into a rare, collector's item. Its relative obscurity was reversed forever when, some twenty years after and almost thirty years from its original recording date, the French perfume company Chanel decided to use it for a highly successful television ad campaign. The result was a Top 5 British hit single for Simone and in spite of her initial reluctance to perform it, the song became an integral part of her repertoire until her passing in 2003. Its references to actresses Lana Turner and Elizabeth Taylor and performer Liberace (and Simone’s later addition of Frank Sinatra who she claimed erroneously had recorded the song before her) added to its innate charm.