Nina Simone with Strings

About Nina Simone with Strings

Nina Simone with Strings is an album by Nina Simone. The album was released without her knowing after she had left Colpix Records, and had already made albums for Philips Records. To make the tracks on the album (a hodgepodge of live and studio recordings left over from previous recording sessions) more commercial, strings were added on some of the tracks, occasionally burying Simone's vocals under a wall of sound. Particularly notable is the version of "I Loves You Porgy", Simone's performance being markedly slower than her earlier account. The added strings are required to play abnormally slowly to match the tempo of Simone's delivery. In the UK, this particular version was used in television commercials in 1997 by the mobile telephone operator Orange. Despite (or perhaps: because of) the post-production efforts the album remains one of Simone's least accomplished works, mainly a collection of different songs in terms of subject, style and quality. On later releases of Simone's Colpix years, some of the tracks on this album were remastered (without the strings) and different takes were released attached to the albums that the songs were intended for more »