Third appointment with Nina Simone: today we talk about "Pastel Blues".

 

Released in 1965 for Philips Records, "Pastel Blues" is a collection of tracks that masterfully blend all of Nina Simone's musical influences, including jazz, blues, soul, spiritual, and classical music. Unlike her previous works, "Pastel Blues" highlights a side of the singer that is at times more intimate and emotional, at times more tormented, and the album cover, in a mix of delicate blue tones, perfectly reflects its musical atmosphere. The first track is "Be My Husband," in which the narrator laments the husband's mistreatment. Considering the abuses Nina Simone suffered from her partner Andrew Stroud, the song sounds today like a clear denunciation. She herself stated in a 1999 interview that her husband, in addition to physically abusing her, tried to exploit her talent to profit as much as possible as her manager. The album continues with a version of the blues standard "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" and "The End of The Line," an unreleased track in which Nina Simone's voice moves melancholically over a wonderful piano arrangement. Another central track of the album is "Strange Fruit." Written as a poem by Abel Meerepol in 1937 and made famous by Billie Holiday, it represents one of the most important songs in American history. The "strange fruit" referred to is none other than the body of a black man hanging from a tree, a symbol of the lynchings that the African American population suffered in the Southern United States. Nina Simone delivers a heartbreaking version of this song, which still sounds today as one of the most powerful protest anthems in music history. The album closes with "Sinnerman," an adaptation arranged by Nina Simone of a traditional song that her mother, a Methodist preacher, sang during her meetings with believers. Nina Simone sings about a sinner's flight during the Last Judgment in a long uptempo track, supported by an offbeat rhythm section, and it probably represents the highest moment of "Pastel Blues," especially for how it highlights the artist's pianistic and compositional skills. The album reached the eighth position in the R&B album chart in 1965 and is today considered the most representative project of Nina Simone's immense talent.

 

To conclude this journey through the milestones of her career, we can only recommend listening to the poignant ballad "The End of The Line".