Simone's extensive catalogue is liberally sprinkled with highlights, but one mid-career LP is noteworthy for the distance it travels on the smell of an oily rag.
Nina Simone Sings The Blues (1967) strips back the heavy orchestration of earlier works, matching the singer/pianist with a lithe and lean six-piece band that ably supports her foray into the fertile roots genre.
Simone immediately presents two starkly different aspects of her notoriously prickly personality. Opener Do I Move You? is a slinky, assured declaration of self-worth, an imperious original track from the woman who once fired a gun at a recording exec she had accused of ripping her off.
By contrast, the next track - Day And Night - is a fawning pop ditty. Written by guitarist Rudy Stevenson, the song urges women to do anything it takes to hold on to their men.
An early sign of Simone's then undiagnosed bipolar disorder, perhaps? But whatever the reason for the track's inclusion, it remains an odd choice by comparison to the signature cuts that pepper the remainder of the set.
In The Dark bristles with sexual electricity; My Man's Gone Now is a gut-wrenching, definitive interpretation of the Gershwin standard from Porgy and Bess; Backlash Blues is a sassy, overt threat to racist white America; and I Want A Little Sugar In My Bowl is a steamy, euphemism-packed cry for attention of the carnal kind.
Later, The House Of The Rising Sun, which Simone first recorded in 1962, is reprised as gospel-style belter, and the album closes with the strutting Blues For Mama.
Simone's deep, tremulous voice stokes each track with slow-burning coals mined from the deepest recesses of her mysterious soul. It's blues, Jim, but not as we know it.
