Sings The Blues & Nuff Said

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“I hope that we can provide some kind of something…whatever it is that you need tonight,” Nina Simone says on “Sunday in Savannah,” an early number from 1968’s <i>’Nuff Said!</i> The track was recorded live at the Westbury Music Festival on April 7, 1968, three days after the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (the next day, Simone would go to Atlanta to attend his funeral). <i>’Nuff Said!</i> serves as a document of that somber, unplanned tribute concert, with three other tracks—a pair of Bee Gees covers and a medley from <i>Hair</i>—added later, possibly in an attempt to replicate the international success of Simone’s rendition of “To Love Somebody.” Those foil, though, don’t keep the album from documenting the grief, the rage, and the anguish of that horrific moment in the late 1960. If overflowing emotion was already one of Simone’s trademark, <i>’Nuff Said!</i> somehow takes her gift for the evocative to new height, particularly on the sprawling centerpiece “Why? (The King Of Love Is Dead).” The song was composed by Simone’s bassist Gene Taylor in the wake of King’s death, and was originally released at about half its current length. The <i>’Nuff Said!</i> version, though, spans heartbreaking elegy, a bluesy call to action, expansive lament, and extended monologue. It’s a full-scale drama all on its own. .

via Apple Music

The Clerk says

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