Nina Simone - Little Girl Blue (1958)

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Nina Simone (born Eunice Kathleen Waymon; February 21, 1933 – April 21, 2003) was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger, and civil rights activist who worked in a broad range of musical styles including classical, jazz, blues, folk, R&B, gospel, and pop.
Born in North Carolina, the sixth child of a preacher, Simone aspired to be a concert pianist. With the help of the few supporters in her hometown of Tryon, North Carolina, she enrolled in the Juilliard School of Music in New York.
Waymon then applied for a scholarship to study at the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where she was denied despite a well-received audition. Simone became fully convinced this rejection had been entirely due to her race, a statement that has been a matter of controversy. Years later, two days before her death, the Curtis Institute of Music bestowed an honorary degree on Simone.
To make a living, Eunice Waymon changed her name to "Nina Simone". The change related to her need to disguise herself from family members, having chosen to play "the devil's music" or "cocktail piano" at a nightclub in Atlantic City. She was told in the nightclub that she would have to sing to her own accompaniment, and this effectively launched her career as a jazz vocalist.
Simone recorded more than forty albums, mostly between 1958, when she made her debut with Little Girl Blue, and 1974, and had a hit in the United States in 1958 with "I Loves You, Porgy".
Simone's musical style fused gospel and pop with classical music, in particular Johann Sebastian Bach, and accompanied expressive, jazz-like singing in her contralto voice.
To fund her private lessons, Simone performed at the Midtown Bar & Grill on Pacific Avenue in Atlantic City, whose owner insisted that she sing as well as play the piano, which increased her weekly income to $90 a week. In 1954, she adopted the stage name "Nina Simone". "Nina" (from niña, meaning "little girl" in Spanish), and "Simone" was taken from the French actress Simone Signoret, whom she had seen in the movie Casque d'Or. Knowing her mother would not approve of playing the "Devil's Music", she used her new stage name to remain undetected. Simone's mixture of jazz, blues, and classical music in her performances at the bar earned her a small but loyal fan base.
In 1958, she befriended and married Don Ross, a beatnik who worked as a fairground barker, but quickly regretted their marriage. Playing in small clubs in the same year, she recorded George Gershwin's "I Loves You, Porgy" (from Porgy and Bess), which she learned from a Billie Holiday album and performed as a favor to a friend. It became her only Billboard top 20 success in the United States, and her debut album Little Girl Blue soon followed on Bethlehem Records. Simone lost more than $1 million in royalties (notably for the 1980s re-release of My Baby Just Cares for Me) and never benefited financially from the album's sales because she had sold her rights outright for $3,000.
After the success of Little Girl Blue, Simone signed a contract with Colpix Records and recorded a multitude of studio and live albums. Colpix relinquished all creative control to her, including the choice of material that would be recorded, in exchange for her signing the contract with them. After the release of her live album Nina Simone at Town Hall, Simone became a favorite performer in Greenwich Village. By this time, Simone performed pop music only to make money to continue her classical music studies and was indifferent about having a recording contract. She kept this attitude toward the record industry for most of her career.
Simone married a New York police detective, Andrew Stroud, in 1961. He later became her manager and the father of her daughter Lisa, but he abused Simone psychologically and physically.

[jokie]

Discovered this song while studying abroad to Edinburgh. We were in an Airbnb with a record player and a record of Nina Simone. Suffice to say this song has been ingrained in one of my favorite memories of watching out the window on a rainy day of Scotland :))

[maryk]

Nina Simone 1 of my most favorite musicians in the world.

[patrickstocks]

Sit there and count your fingers
What can you do?
Old girl you’re through
Sit there, count your little fingers
Unhappy little girl blue

Sit there and count the raindrops
Falling on you
It’s time you knew
All you can ever count on
Are the raindrops
That fall on little girl blue

Won’t you just sit there
Count the little raindrops
Falling on you
‘Cause it’s time you knew
All you can ever count on
Are the raindrops
That fall on little girl blue

No use old girl 👧
You might as well surrender
‘Cause your hopes are getting slender and slender
Why won’t somebody send a tender blue boy 👦
To cheer up little girl blue

[Gaseoushead]

This work of art really demonstrates to the listener what mastery of the art she possessed.

[spmoran]

This song tell me that some people will not have a Happy Christmas . The tune hits me like a arrow to my heart.
What a exceptional musician Nina Simone was .

[bettygordon]

She makes you live this song!! and weep!

[ishwarjethnani]

Listening to this...I am lost....lost....away from this world....
What a voice..great

[marianeazevedo]

Puxa vida...que canção linda! Adicionada às minhas preferidas da vida ❤️‍🩹

[Musicienne-DAB]

Nina Simone was a marvellous pianist. And I know it has been said ad nauseam, but I so appreciate voices untouched by pitch correction and Autotune.

[johnadlesic]

For the Aztec Princess, though she may not know: her tender little blue boy is here.

[oliverpaszkowski]

found this whilr lisyening to 91.1 wrty, had to look od up asap

[spmoran]

It's my song . The guy I loved cheated . I loved him . But he has to go . And I will be Little girl blue.

[daryljackson]

It was composed by Richard Rodgers of Rodgers and Hammerstein. I like Janis Joplins version too.

[MerouaneCommyLlob.]

Edgar Hoover made sure that we have Cardi B instead of Nina. They won we lost.

[christopherlyons]

Damn.

She doesn't sing the whole lyric. It's a very unconventional take. And it's devastating. See, Larry Hart wrote most eloquently about the pain that comes from disappointment in love. From feeling rejected, outcast, alone. Depressed, acting out, and given to behavior that often ticks other people off, because no matter how hard you try, nothing turns out the way you wanted. Moments of sheer exhilaration, followed by emotional collapse. (Hart wasn't diagnosed as bipolar, but good bet he might have been, if he'd lived a bit longer--people just called him a drunk).

Who would understand better? Oh sure, she was loved as a singer. An entertainer. It was just as hard for her to find love as it was for a gay dwarf in a time when coming out wasn't an option, and he would have had problems even if that wasn't true.

One outcast reaching down deep to understand another. The songs live on because so many of us can sense the pain behind them. And so many of us have felt the same way. The songs have been adopted by so many people of so many backgrounds, and all of them have something to say with them. It's always the same down deep--"Is there somebody out there who can love me for who I am?"