Nina Simone - Wild Is The Wind (Verve Acoustic Sounds Series 180g Gatefold LP)

Nina Simone - Wild Is The Wind | Vinyl LP - Verve Acoustic Sounds Series, 180g gatefold reissue (Ryan Smith mastering, QRP)

Nina Simone trained as a classical pianist and never really stopped being one, even as she bent jazz, soul, blues, gospel and folk into a music that was entirely her own. Wild Is the Wind gathers recordings she made for Philips in the mid-1960s, and it holds some of her most enduring performances. At its heart is "Four Women", her own composition, a stark portrait of four Black women shaped by American racism that was pointed enough to be banned by some radio stations in 1966. Around it sit the aching title track, later taken up by David Bowie, "Lilac Wine", which Jeff Buckley would revisit decades on, and a spare, haunting "Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair". Simone's voice moves from tenderness to fury, sometimes within a single line, and her piano is always right there with it. Horace Ott's arrangements frame her without ever getting in the way.

Simone became one of the most important and uncompromising artists of the twentieth century, a civil-rights voice as much as a musician, and records like this one are why. This is the Verve Acoustic Sounds edition, the premium reissue line produced with Chad Kassem's Acoustic Sounds: mastered from the original analog tapes by Ryan Smith at Sterling Sound, pressed on 180g vinyl at Quality Record Pressings, and housed in a heavyweight Stoughton gatefold that shows off Burt Goldblatt's photographs of Simone. It is the best this album has looked and sounded on a modern reissue.