Nina Simone – Save Me
Miss Nina Simone
Listen/Download Nina Simone – Save Me
Greetings all
The end of another week is upon is, and so – as is always the case – is the regular Friday night get together known as the Funky16Corners Radio Show, broadcast on Viva Radio at 9PM. If you cannot join me at the time of broadcast, you can always head into iTunes and subscribe to the show as a podcast, or head over to the archive right here at the blog where you can pick yourself up an MP3 of the show the day after it airs.
The song I bring you today has been sitting on ice for almost two years, from right around the time we last paid tribute to the greatness of the legendary Miss Nina Simone.
If memory serves, I scored both of the 45s in question at around the same time, and didn’t want to post them too close together and ended up hanging onto the second of them (the one you see before you today) for way too long.
As has been addressed here today, the song ‘Save Me’ has a long and interesting history, starting out as ‘Help Me (Get the Feeling)’ by Ray Sharpe, moving on to its best-known incarnation in the version by Aretha Franklin (the first as ‘Save Me’), then on to be recycled as the rhythm track to King Curtis’ ‘Instant Groove’ and then again as ‘Help Me’ by Jamaican singer Owen Gray (all the same rhythm track with none other than Jimi Hendrix on rhythm guitar with the King’s band).
Miss Nina Simone didn’t step into the fray until 1969, but when she did, she came correct.
To say that Nina layed out the definitive version of ‘Save Me’ would not be – as they say – speaking out of school.
The arrangement, whipped together by no less a light than Weldon Irvine (who I suspect is also playing the organ) is tight and funky.
The drums are just heavy enough, the rhythm guitar – which carries the ‘Gloria’-esque riff – has a bright, live sound and Nina is in rare form.
Where Aretha Franklin, a singer of prodigious technical gifts might have aimed right for the stratosphere, Nina Simone, possessed of a deft, artist’s touch, takes her time, working a masterful turn of phrase. Like a great boxer, she bobs and weaves around the lyric, hitting sparingly but when she does, stinging like a gunshot.
This is as real as it gets, and – in one of the great bonus deals of all time – also manages to be danceable.
I hope you dig it as much as I do, and I’ll see you all on Monday.
Keep the faith
Larry
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Themocracy
Hey Larry,
A real quality tune, by an artist that should be even more of a legend that she already is.
Some other great recent posts too, which are cheering my Saturday up no end 🙂
The sun is shining in Glasgow and the tunes are good. What more can I ask for?!
Stu
What a groove! You can almost hear her segue into “G-L-O-R-I-A!”