Nina Simone - Little Girl Blue (1958) 

She was a marvellous pianist. It was claimed that she was destined for a classical path, which her playing often demonstrates. Certainly, she credited Bach with her devotion to music.

How about a little love for the equally exceptional man who wrote those words for her to sing, long after he died of a what they called pneumonia, but it was really a broken heart? And his songwriting partner, who was at times rather a nasty individual, but as Noel Coward put it, somewhat enviously, "The man pees melody." I bet she had some. Behind every song ever written worth singing, there's a story. Then a story behind the story. Probably a story behind that. This is the saddest rendition I've heard to date (and there have been many). Therefore, the truest.

So gorgeous!!!! More volume than the version she did at the Montreaux Festival album in the 1970's. None like her!!!!!!!!

Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra also did covers of this song that I THINK we’re featured on both of their earlier albums? Lol but this song was written and performed in the mid thirties by Gloria insert last name here. She sung it on Broadway. I love the carpenters cover of this song the most. (I am a very huge fan so maybe there is a bias) Burt Bacharach was producing BANGERS back then! 😅 *hot take* I feel like he was the Pharrell/Timbaland of the late 60s and 70’s ❤

@@omi_god This is a great singer recognizing a great melody and lyric. Neither of which she was capable of creating herself. A great vocalist, a fine classically trained pianist, and a decent arranger. Not a composer or lyricist of any note whatsoever. It's the same lyric. Same exact lyric, a few minor tweaks, which of course most singers do with songs they interpret. Nothing new to her. Most of Hart's best lyrics were written for women to sing, or else for a duet. He understood the woman's POV very well, being gay, and of course, much smaller than most of the men he slept with. And that's why he wrote this lyic for a girl raised in the circus. Named Mickey. I have a bio of Hart, looked it up. That's a girl. Singing about herself. Not a boy singing about her. Doris Day sang it in the reworked movie version, and it's been a popular woman's song pretty much ever since. Simone isn't responsible for that. I agree the choice of opening music works, but it's mainly just her showing off her piano chops, and isn't in any way essential for the words and music to be moving and insightful. I'd give her version a slight edge on its emotional power, but the song was a beloved standard well before she got to it. A great rendition--it became one of her theme songs. But she left out the opening verse, which she pretty much always did when she interpreted Rodgers & Hart. The verse that relates to the circus. Carol Sloane used it, and her version rival's Simone's. Less emotionally intense, more insightful, ruminative. Simone tended to channel Hart's loneliness and desire for love into her renditions of his lyrics--she felt the same way herself, even though men were throwing themselves at her, as never happened with Hart. A lot of Simone's power came from her deeply dysfunctional personality, which let to a lot of sadness, loneliness. She failed as a wife, as a mother, as a friend. Many other great artists could say the same. Hart never married. But every friend he ever had mourned for him. He was at least as great a genius as her. Sorry you missed it. Your loss. Not Simone's, because she totally got it. She, unlike you, knew great lyrics when she heard them.

@@omi_god I really admire both Simone and Hart. I think they were kindred spirits, in a way. You demeaned him to elevate her, for some reason I could not possibly understand. But you were wrong. Up there on your high horse, it somehow never occurred to you that sometimes Mickey is a girl's name. You stand correct. And your high horse has unhorsed you. There you lie. On the ground. Looking dumb. :)

@@omi_god Oh, so you didn't type this? //it's hard to understand why anyone would even bother with Hart's words after hearing this. The original words are sung TO "Little Girl Blue" as a sort of instruction -// So you said he wrote lousy words that she somehow made great by playing a snatch of an old English Christmas carol based on a 13th century melody. (You know she didn't compose that, right?) You also said that he wrote it as a lecture from some man to a woman, when in fact he wrote them to be sung by the woman to herself. You were wrong. About everything. You did not have the good grace to admit it. And to say Hart's own words belong to someone else--and that you don't even see why she bothered to use them--if that's not demeaning to one of the greatest song lyricists who ever lived--what is? You didn't make any anti-gay or anti-dwarf cracks, but you know what? I bet you didn't even know or care who Lorenz Hart was, or what pain he might have experienced in his life. You just thought of him as a privileged white male. And that somehow Nina Simone had to get all the credit for the song, simply because she interpeted it beautifully--as others had before her, and since. You hated that I credited anyone but her--and I sure as hell credited her for the power of her interpretation. But you identify with her--being a talentless person yourself--and disliked any inference that she didn't deserve 100% of the credit. The fault, dear omi_god, is in your starfucking. And now I am done with you. Type something stupid. So I can laugh at it.

@@christopherlyons5900 You sound crazy.

@@omi_god I understood you perfectly. And you don't lie very well at all. Or read very well.

?? What did Hoover have to do with Cardi B?

@@Musicienne-DAB1995 Obviously not her directly, but the point is FBI and CIA have a lot to do with what kind of music and musicians are promoted and what are suppressed, much more than you think.