The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Nina Simone · voice and piano · Philips · nine tracks, about 36 minutes
Mode
The blues read by a singer-pianist: field holler, classic blues, slow blues and ballad, protest song and revival spiritual
Mythos
The Day of Judgment with no hiding place, built by the spiritual and its arrangement; the tree and the hanged body evoked; the covenant of marriage called up in a work song’s cadence
Phase
Nine tracks; eight of two to five minutes, then one of about ten; the bare opening and the long close in the same stamped pulse
Presentation
Album; the Philips LP of 1965, nine tracks in their original order, about thirty-six minutes
Register
Voice and piano over a small band of guitar, bass and drums; one track for voice, handclaps and drum alone; restraint in the slow tracks and an unrelenting drive at the close
Scale
A woman, her terms for marriage, her poverty and heartbreak; then the American South in one image, and judgment
Governing Proposition
A singer and classically trained pianist takes the blues as it reached a 1960s singer, a field holler, two standards of the 1920s, a run of slow blues and ballads, the anti-lynching song and a revival spiritual, and puts them in an order that makes private trouble public: the record opens on a voice, handclaps and a drum, and closes on a lynched body and then a judgment from which no one can hide.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The record opens on almost nothing. A voice, handclaps and a stamped drum: no piano, no band, about three minutes. A woman sets her terms for marriage over a beat that does not change, and the call does not yield to anything. It is a field holler on a Philips long-playing record of 1965, the blues stripped to the body, and it states at the threshold what the rest of the record will test: that trouble is met here with insistence, the voice holding its ground over a repeated figure.
The song is credited to Andy Stroud, Simone’s husband and manager. The track calls up that covenant in the cadence of a work song, and the bareness is the craft. Nothing could be taken from it, and nothing has been added. It is the plainest track on the record and one of its two necessary ends.
The record is Nina Simone’s, as singer and pianist, with a small band of guitar, bass and drums on most of its tracks. It runs to nine tracks and about thirty-six minutes, and its shape can be read off the running times: eight pieces of about three minutes each, then one of about ten, more than a quarter of the whole. Its weight sits at its end. The opening track is short, but the end will return to it.
Movement II
The second track is the first full blues and the first long piano. The song is Jimmy Cox’s, of the 1920s, carried into memory by Bessie Smith’s record: a song of poverty and of the friends who leave when the money does. Simone sings it as a standard and plays it as a classically trained pianist. Her hands bring counterpoint and rubato foreign to its source, and a classical voice-leading runs under the complaint. The piano rises, and the track is one of the places where the record reaches height below its summit.
This is where the record’s turn from its inheritance is plainest. The inheritance is the blues as it reached a jazz and supper-club singer of the 1960s: the standards of the 1920s and 1930s, sung with a small band for the album market. Simone departs from it at specific points, and this is one: a trained pianist’s counterpoint under an old blues. The others are the bare setting of the opening and the length of the close.
The stake was bounded. A year earlier Nina Simone in Concert (1964) had carried “Mississippi Goddam”, a more open political wager, and much of this record is a strong singer’s way with standards. The record is held to that measure. What it adds to the concert’s wager is not the open statement but the order: a sequence that takes the same singer’s blues from her own trouble to the country’s.
Movement III
Five tracks follow, slow blues and ballads led by the piano, with one lighter swing. “Trouble in Mind”, Richard M. Jones’s blues, is the strongest of them. Its resolve, “won’t be blue always”, is sung with drive, not resignation, and endurance turns there to defiance. Heartbreak and the endurance of it are the middle of the record’s subject, and this track states them most firmly.
Around it the record is level. “End of the Line”, “Chilly Winds Don’t Blow” and “Ain’t No Use” restate the slow-blues mode without turning it, and “Tell Me More and More and Then Some” is the lightest thing on the record, charm in a temper lighter than the rest allows. Two of these could go with small loss, and they could stand in another order. The climb from the body to judgment that the two ends imply is not taken here step by step.
This is what holds the record’s form below its ends. The tracks obey its law by mood more than by method, a slackening rather than a break, and the band and the production show their limits most here: guitar and rhythm section competent and sometimes routine, a recording serviceable for its year. The middle is a collection. It keeps the record’s temper and its single voice, and it prepares, by its levelness, the drop that follows.
Movement IV
The eighth track is Abel Meeropol’s poem and song, published under the name Lewis Allan and carried by Billie Holiday’s record of 1939: lynching in the American South, named in the single image its title gives. Simone sings it with restraint. She does not make the horror beautiful, and the refusal discloses more than a louder reading would. The sublime here is terror, held low.
The image evokes the tree and the hanged body, and with them the cross, and fixes it in an exact Southern particular. The record has carried the blues through marriage, poverty and heartbreak, and here it opens the blues onto what produced it: the racial order of the South and the violence that kept it. Placed after seven tracks of personal trouble, the lynching is not one sorrow among others. It is where the others lead.
The words are not the record’s own, and that holds what it discloses below the highest marks. Meeropol wrote them and Holiday made them a disclosure a generation earlier. What this record owns is the reading and the place: a voice that withholds, and a sequence that sets a lynched body after a woman’s terms for marriage and before a judgment. Simone’s recording was sampled in Kanye West’s “Blood on the Leaves” (2013), in a new setting that was much disputed.
Movement V
The last track is a traditional spiritual, given about ten minutes. The sinner runs to the rock, to the sea, to the Lord, and is refused at each station: the Day of Judgment, with no hiding place. The piano states an ostinato and holds it for minutes without slackening, the tempo does not relent, and the arrangement enacts the flight by never resting. Simone’s solo builds by repetition and displacement. It is the summit of the record and one of the summits of its decade, transport and dread at once.
Then the band drops away to handclaps and the shouted “Power”, and the stamped pulse of the opening returns. The record closes where it opened, in the body, and the drop is timed so that the return of the full band lands as force, and the piano drives to the close. Set last, after “Strange Fruit”, the judgment is a verdict on what came before it, and the record’s personal blues become a reckoning. Put anywhere else, the record would lose its verdict.
Most of the record’s afterlife gathers here. “Sinnerman” was used in The Thomas Crown Affair (1999), sampled in Talib Kweli’s “Get By” (2002), remixed for the dance floor, and is still argued over as spiritual, protest or trance; the documentary What Happened, Miss Simone? (2015) returns to the period. The album whole is heard more narrowly, and its middle does not reopen. Its limits are its middle and the inheritance of its greatest words. What it holds it carries from one woman’s terms to the country’s judgment, in thirty-six minutes, and ends in the body it began with.
Act III · The Twelve
Nine tracks in about thirty-six minutes, and the subtractive test meets resistance at the ends and gives in the middle. “Be My Husband”, voice, handclaps and drum alone, states the record’s terms at the threshold. “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out” is the first full blues and the first long piano. “Strange Fruit” and “Sinnerman” carry the argument, and the ten minutes of the last are compelled by a build that needs time to become a trance. The test bites in tracks 3 to 7: “Tell Me More and More and Then Some” is the lightest thing here, and two of the slow blues restate the mode without turning it. Two could go with small loss.
Score: 7.6 / 10
The disclosure can be stated, and the sequence states it: private trouble is not private. The record begins with a woman setting her own terms for marriage over a stamped beat, passes through poverty and false friends, heartbreak and endurance, and then opens the blues onto what produced it, a lynched body in “Strange Fruit” and a judgment with no hiding place in “Sinnerman”. Sound discloses as much as words: Simone’s restraint in “Strange Fruit”, which refuses to make the horror beautiful, says more than a louder reading would. Held below the gate by ownership: the great disclosures are inherited texts, and the record’s own claim is made by arrangement and order, not stated.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Height is reached twice at the top of the scale and several times below it. “Sinnerman” is the summit, and one of the summits of its decade: the piano ostinato, the tempo that does not relent, the breakdown to handclaps and the shouted “Power”, then the full band returning and the piano driving to the close, transport and dread at once for ten minutes. “Strange Fruit” is the sublime of terror, held low. “Be My Husband” has a stark grandeur made from almost nothing, and “Nobody Knows You” rises in its piano. Against that, the middle of the record is level, and “Tell Me More” is charm. Frequency is moderate; the height is real.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Myth is built in one place and evoked in others. “Sinnerman” builds it: the sinner flees through the created order, to the rock, the sea, the Lord, and is refused at each station, and the Day of Judgment with no hiding place is the song’s structure, which the arrangement enacts by never resting. “Strange Fruit” evokes the tree and the hanged body, an image that carries the cross, and gives it an exact Southern particular. “Be My Husband” calls up the covenant of marriage in a work song’s cadence. Held below the gate: the built myth is the spiritual’s, inherited and arranged rather than made here, and the six tracks before “Strange Fruit” carry particulars without archetypal weight.
Score: 8.2 / 10
The inheritance is the blues as it reached a 1960s jazz and supper-club singer: standards of the 1920s and 1930s, sung with a small band for the long-playing market. The departures are real and specific. “Be My Husband” is a field holler for voice and percussion on a Philips LP. “Nobody Knows You” is played by a classically trained pianist, with counterpoint and rubato foreign to its source. “Sinnerman” is given ten minutes, a revival trance at a length the popular LP did not then give a song. The stake was bounded: Nina Simone in Concert (1964) had already carried “Mississippi Goddam”, a more open wager, and much of this record is a strong singer’s way with standards.
Score: 7.8 / 10
The sequence is counted here, once, and at its ends it changes what the record knows. The record knows that the blues is a ladder from the self to history: it opens on the body, voice and handclaps, and closes on judgment, and the order is the argument. Move “Strange Fruit” to the middle and the lynching becomes one sorrow among others; put “Sinnerman” anywhere but last and the record loses its verdict. The bare setting of the first track is the form of its claim, and the length of the last is the form of its trance. Held short by the middle: tracks 3 to 7 could stand in another order, and the climb the ends imply is not taken step by step.
Score: 7.9 / 10
Evidence over sixty-one years, and most of it gathers on two tracks. “Sinnerman” has been reopened again and again: in film, in The Thomas Crown Affair (1999); in sampling, in Talib Kweli’s “Get By” (2002); in remixes for the dance floor; and in a continuing argument over whether it is spiritual, protest or trance. Simone’s “Strange Fruit” was sampled in Kanye West’s “Blood on the Leaves” (2013), in a new and much disputed setting, and the documentary What Happened, Miss Simone? (2015) returns to the period. The album whole has been returned to less, heard as Simone’s blues album and the home of “Sinnerman”. The formal depth is high in its last track and modest elsewhere.
Score: 8.0 / 10
The field is jazz, soul and blues albums of the mid 1960s. The force is real and bounded: the record shows that one singer-pianist could carry the field holler, the classic blues, the anti-lynching song and the revival spiritual in a single sequence, and that a spiritual could run ten minutes as a trance on a popular LP. That widened what a Black woman’s blues album could hold, without reorganising the album form. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: “Sinnerman”, among the most used recordings of its decade in film, sampling and dance remixes; Simone’s “Strange Fruit” through sampling; and, as a model for later albums, a reach that runs through her whole body of work. Reach that belongs to one track is credited to the album at a discount.
Score: 8.0 / 10
Survival over sixty-one years is weighed on form, presence and fabric. The form is whole: the recording survives as issued and has been reissued. Presence is real and uneven. “Sinnerman” is continuously and widely present; the album heard whole is present more narrowly, chiefly to Simone’s listeners, and the popularity of one track is presence, not proof of the album’s permanence. The fabric is sound: a small acoustic group, voice and piano, carries little date, and the fidelity is of its year without being fixed to a fashion. The narrower presence of the whole holds it below Let It Bleed at 8.8 and A Love Supreme, of the same year, at 8.9.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Command of the recorded medium is load-bearing at its best. Simone’s piano in “Sinnerman” is the architecture: an ostinato held for minutes without slackening, a solo that builds by repetition and displacement, the drop to handclaps timed so that the return lands as force. In “Nobody Knows You” the piano carries a classical voice-leading under a blues. Her voice is exact in grain and placement, never more so than in “Strange Fruit”, where restraint is the craft, and “Be My Husband” is mastery by subtraction. The costs fall on the band and the production: guitar and rhythm section competent and sometimes routine, a recording serviceable rather than distinguished for 1965. Load-bearing in four places, sound elsewhere.
Score: 8.6 / 10
One law governs most of the record: trouble met with insistence, the voice holding its ground over a repeated figure. The two most distant elements obey it. “Be My Husband” is voice, handclaps and drum for three minutes; “Sinnerman” is the full band for ten, a trance. Both are built on a stamped, unrelenting pulse and a call that does not yield, and the handclaps of the first return in the breakdown of the last, so the record closes where it opened, in the body. The range runs from field holler through classic blues and ballad to protest and spiritual, and that range is credit. The strain is in the middle: “Tell Me More” is lighter than the law allows. No break; a slackening.
Score: 8.0 / 10
Judged on what the record holds, with no discount for the album form. Consciousness, in grief, resolve and defiance. Marriage and its terms, in “Be My Husband”. Poverty and the fickleness of friends, in “Nobody Knows You”. History and the state, in the lynching of “Strange Fruit”, the racial order of the American South named in one image. The sacred, in the judgment of “Sinnerman”. Community, in the handclaps and the call. One voice and the sequence hold them together, carrying the self out into history and judgment. What holds the axis lowest of the twelve: labour is present only in a work song’s cadence, and the family beyond the couple and the natural order beyond its images are absent.
Score: 7.5 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.1 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Sublime, The Imperishable and The Made, each at 8.6, all three carried by the record’s two ends. The ten-minute height of Sinnerman and the low terror of Strange Fruit; a recording whole for sixty-one years, its last track continuously present and its acoustic fabric carrying little date; and a piano and voice that are load-bearing in Sinnerman, Nobody Knows You, Strange Fruit and Be My Husband.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 7.5: consciousness, marriage, poverty, the state and its history, the sacred and community held in one voice and one sequence, with labour only in a work song’s cadence and the family beyond the couple and the natural order absent. Then The Inevitable at 7.6, a middle from which two tracks could go with small loss; and The Swerve at 7.8, departures real and specific at the two ends, on a record that followed a bolder concert wager.
The Necessity Cap clears at 7.6, by a tenth, against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 7.9, The Made at 8.6 and The Inner Law at 8.0, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on four axes: The Imperishable at 8.6 clears the bar of 8.5 by a tenth, but The Unconcealment at 8.2, The Archetypal Deep at 8.2, Pressure on Tradition at 8.0 and The Swerve at 7.8 fall short of it. The Universal Minimum is met: no axis but The Encompassed falls below 7.6, against 7.5, and The Inevitable clears it by a tenth; The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.5. Four of the five summit conditions are met. The summit is withheld by the Epochal Gate, and by the aggregate, 8.1, which stands in the band of Tier IV and below the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · Pastel Blues, the LP as released by Philips in 1965, nine tracks in their original order, about thirty-six minutes; judged from knowledge of the recording and its reception; no recording was in hand, and the running times are approximate. The sequence: Be My Husband; Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out; End of the Line; Trouble in Mind; Tell Me More and More and Then Some; Chilly Winds Don’t Blow; Ain’t No Use; Strange Fruit; Sinnerman. Later editions with added tracks are not judged, and no single track is the unit; the singer’s career bears on reach and presence only, discounted to the record. Nina Simone sings and plays piano; the band is guitar, bass and drums. Songs are cited by title, and nothing is quoted but four words of Trouble in Mind and the single word shouted in Sinnerman. Facts that could not be verified, among them the month of release, the producer, the place of recording, the names of the players, the point of the side break, the writers of End of the Line, Chilly Winds Don’t Blow and Ain’t No Use, the authorship of Tell Me More and More and Then Some, the sources behind Be My Husband, where Simone learned Sinnerman, and some later uses of Sinnerman in film and remix, are not given.