Review: Nina Simone - Forbidden Fruit (1961)

Tracks: 1) Rags And Old Iron; 2) No Good Man; 3) Gin House Blues; 4) I’ll Look Around; 5) I Love To Love; 6) Work Song; 7) Where Can I Go Without You; 8) Just Say I Love Him; 9) Memphis In June; 10) Forbidden Fruit; 11*) Porgy I Is Your Woman Now; 12*) Baubles, Bangles And Beads; 13*) Gimme A Pigfoot; 14*) Ev’rytime We Say Goodbye; 15*) Spring Is Here; 16*) Lonesome Valley; 17*) Golden Earrings; 18*) My Ship; 19*) ’Tain’t Nobody’s Biz-Ness If I Do; 20*) Try A Little Tenderness; 21*) Od Yesh Homa.

REVIEW

Finally, after almost two years of nothing but concert recordings, Colpix puts out Nina’s second studio album recorded for the label — and in doing so, reminds us once again that the studio is really not a natural habitat for Ms. Simone. It’s a decent enough experience, but pretty much everything Nina did in her prime years is decent — her professionalism and good taste always ensure a «quality listen» — and so what we are looking for are signs of outstanding achievements, which are quite scarce on Forbidden Fruit. Recorded with her usual band (the very same that played at Newport), it consists, for the most part, of old standards, with special attention directed to the classic repertoire of Billie Holiday and Bessie Smith; not the best sign, perhaps, given how difficult it is even for Nina to «override» the massively distinctive personalities of those two — and it hardly helps that on many, if not most, of the tracks neither Nina, nor her band members seem like they’re trying hard enough to put a fresh, unusual spin on the arrangements.

One thing that bugs me about Simone’s covers of Billie’s or Bessie’s material is a certain disconnection between all three characters. They represent three different worlds in three different ages, after all, and Nina (who was, coincidentally, born in the very same year when Billie made her first recordings and then made her first recordings in the very same year when Billie passed away!) got to interpret their old-fashioned classics at a time when the world was readying itself for some big changes — which is why songs like ‘No Good Man’ or ‘T’Ain’t Nobody’s Biz-Ness If I Do’, celebrating woman’s voluntary submission to her no-good man as an expression of her inner freedom, feel a bit odd when sung by a freedom fighter like Nina. Of course, we should be cautious about pigeonholing her into today’s liberal stereotypes — her personality was more complex than what we see in simplified algorithmic codes of moral conduct — but still, there is no denying that "I ought to hate him but I still love him so" is a line that sounds perfectly natural when Billie sings it, but takes quite a bit of getting used to when it’s delivered by the likes of Simone.

Even worse, ‘No Good Man’ is definitely not outstanding in any way. It just rolls along like any decent midnight vocal jazz number could be expected to roll along. A little relaxing bass, some nice atmospheric piano runs, Nina’s familiar soothing vocal tone — I can easily imagine just about everybody from Peggy Lee to Julie London landing with the same results. No imaginative reinventions of melody, no turning an old blues song into a Bach fugue or anything like that. The same goes for at least half of the other selections on here: stuff like ‘Where Can I Go Without You’ will always be enjoyable to those who simply love the sound of Nina’s voice, her deep «weeping» vibrato and the quirkiness of her phrasing, but I am personally craving for musical ecstasy, and I don’t find it on tracks like this.

Some of the covers are downright psychological mismatches where you have to work really hard to suspend the proverbial disbelief. ‘Gin House Blues’, for starters, is mistitled — this is a cover not of Bessie Smith’s original ‘Gin House Blues’ from 1926, but rather of her ‘Me And My Gin’ from two years later (this mistake would then be perpetuated for eternity, e.g. the Animals would also record the same song as ‘Gin House Blues’ in 1966, etc.). But this is not nearly as important as the fact that Nina simply does not sound convincing when singing "Stay away from me everybody cos I’m in my sin / If this joint is raided somebody give me my gin". While in her real life she was no stranger to booze, her performance is just too thin and even «whiny» to properly convey the image of somebody who is ready to «fight the army and navy» for her gin — which Bessie, right in the middle of Prohibition, was fully prepared to do, or, at least, this is precisely what she sounds like on the original recording: a fierce, tough mama willing to give her life for her right to be as totally depressed, wasted, and «drowning in sin» as she wants to.

Roughly speaking, Bessie Smith is the kind of character who overwhelms and suppresses you with her sheer physicality and (figuratively) mass, a sort of living embodiment of Mother Earth herself, against which there is no defense or counteraction by definition. Billie Holiday’s weapon is her subtlety and vulnerability: she appeals to everything within you that is human and responsive to the call of empathy. Next to them, Nina Simone is the voice of your conscience, the Attorney General of human decency and morality — her fierceness and toughness comes from the indomitable look in her eyes rather than from the «bigness» of Mama Bessie or the «smallness» of Lady Day. And this is why ‘No Good Man’ shall always belong to Billie and ‘Me And My Gin’ shall always belong to Bessie and these versions, enjoyable as they are in a background-ish kind of way, won’t ever replace them or make me re-evaluate them in a new light.

That said, there are still quite a few really nice moments on Forbidden Fruit that all qualify for justified inclusion into the «golden canon» — and, interestingly enough, all of them have to do with Nina’s discovery of the artistic talents of Oscar Brown Jr., formerly known as «the world’s first black newscaster» and only recently having released his first LP of original material, Sin & Soul, on the Columbia label. Two of his compositions from that album make it here — and the third one, ‘Forbidden Fruit’ itself, lending its name to the title of the LP as a whole, would later appear on Brown’s 1962 LP, Between Heaven And Hell. Unlike Bessie or Billie, Oscar Brown would seem to be a true soulmate for Nina — a fighter for the cause, and with genuine musical talent to burn — and so there is hardly anything surprising about the fact that not only is his material superior to everything else on here, but that it is also the only material on here where she is capable of improving upon the original sound.

‘Rags And Old Iron’ opens the album on a great note, so great, in fact, that most of the record feels like a sharp letdown in comparison. Folksy, bluesy, and soul-sy at the same time, this nicely metaphoric lament of a love betrayed was pretty good on Brown’s original album, but Nina’s band adds extra suspense to the tune, and Nina sings directly into the mike instead of retaining Oscar’s «cavernous» sound — putting her hurt right under your nose instead of acting all ghostly and Wuthering Height-ish about it. Her snarly and snarky overtones help immensely, too: the bitterness and contempt just sweep out of the speakers as she compares the remains of her love to "rags and old iron" over and over again. Now this is the kind of song that I’d have a pretty hard time imagining Billie Holiday ever being able to cover properly.

On the other hand, ‘Rags And Old Iron’, with its exploration of a failed relationship, does fit in thematically with most of those oldies. The second Brown cover, ‘Work Song’ — originally released as an instrumental on Nat Adderley’s album of the same name, and later as a vocal number by Brown himself — is strictly a social statement, and I occasionally have fun playing it back-to-back with Sam Cooke’s ‘Chain Gang’, released on the exact same subject around the same time. Naturally, Sam’s sweet and catchy pop song is not at all devoid of empathy to its characters; but Brown’s take on the issue is sung from the first, not third, person perspective, concentrating not on pity and empathy but on the pain — and then along comes Nina, and she concentrates not on the pain, but on the suppressed fury and anger. In 1961, it was still a rarity for a prison-themed song to sound angry on a record — typically, a convict would be expected to feel sorry, or, at best, stay cold and emotionless in such a setting — but Nina does her best to let the feeling of the unjustness of the situation get through to the listener. The opening stop-and-start chords hit you the same way as John D. Loudermilk’s ‘Tobacco Road’ (curiously, also written and recorded about the same time) — creating an atmosphere of desperate protest right away — and the song, short as it is, never looses its grip until the very end. (Nina would later re-record it with a big band arrangement for 1967’s High Priestess Of Soul — a much softer and more compromising version, if you ask me).

Next to the acute bitterness of ‘Rags’ and the fuming fury of ‘Work Song’, the third of Brown’s compositions chosen for the album — the title track, that is — might seem like a silly Sesame Street throwaway; but if so, why would Nina choose it to be the title track? Actually, the song is pretty naughty, taking up a «folk» interpretation of the Original Sin as fornication between the two culprits ("See that apple over yonder if you’ll take a bite / You and Adam both are bound to have some fun tonight") and inviting us all to share in the consumption of the fruit in question. Well, given how many legends there are out there about Nina’s own sexual appetites, you can be sure she sang the song with the utmost glee — and, in fact, given that it is the only number here that sounds relatively «happy», and that it also concludes the record, the moral lesson we are supposed to take home from it is probably quite simple: no matter what sort of stress you are under, no matter how much pain, injustice, and disillusionment you encounter — there is nothing that just a little piece of forbidden fruit can’t really cure. Simplistic, crude, and... efficient.

To round things out, I should probably mention that ‘Just Say I Love Him’ (an English-language, female-perspective version of an old and quite popular Neapolitan song) is often extolled as a highlight here — perhaps because of an extended romantic guitar solo from Al Schackman, because in all other respects it feels just like most of the «generic» sentimental ballads on the album; next to the Brown covers, it is hard for me to treat it as something more than pleasant background music. Then again, it might just be my instinctive mistrust of Neapolitan songs speaking, but I think one can be excused for doubting that Nina Simone on her own is sufficient to expurgate all the legacy sins of Johnny Desmond, Frankie Avalon, Tony Bennett, Dean Martin, and all the other nightingales to leave their imprints on the song.

Also, for technical reasons, there is a special EMI CD edition of the album from 2005 which adds eleven (!) previously unreleased songs recorded during the same sessions — in slightly inferior quality, but worth a listen or two, if only to expand our understanding of Nina’s repertoire at the time. There are two more Bessie Smith covers in there (with the same criticisms that I apply to ‘Gin House Blues’ also applicable), a little Gershwin, a bit of Kurt Weill, a touch of Cole Porter, and even a Jewish dance (‘Od Yesh Homa’), but behind all the diversity there are hardly any individual highlights worth gushing over. That Nina was keeping busy, there is no doubt of that; but the time, apparently, had not yet come for her to keep busy only with the kind of material that God had tailored specifically for her spirit. Yet even despite all the mismatches, one thing you could never say about Forbidden Fruit is that the artist is attempting to do something against her will — and there is even some perverse fascination in watching her trying on all those Bessie Smith numbers for size and failing, because you can clearly see the effort, understand why it fails, and still leave with a hella lot of respect for the artist.

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