courtesy of Crossover Media
This past Friday Verve offered the first extensive release of a 1982 Nina Simone album better known by reputation than for its content. The title of the album is Fodder on My Wings; and it was recorded in January of 1982, not long after Simone had moved to Paris. Little is known about that title track, including just how the title is worded and phrased. For that matter the Wikipedia account of the album personnel is sadly inaccurate, and it is unclear whether there has even been a thorough documentation of both the selections and the performers.
The recording was first released in 1982 on the Parisian Carrere label. Sunnyside reissued it as a CD in 2015. Now Verve has “mainstreamed” it, relieving it of its reputation for obscurity. The tracks themselves tend towards African influences, although “La peuple en Suisse” amounts to a coy geography lesson about the demographics of Switzerland. Apparently, for all of the population diversity, Simone found it an unloving environment.
Nevertheless, there is a wide variety of emotional dispositions that cut across the album’s thirteen tracks (three more than those on the original LP release). All of the songs were written by Simone, including a total overhaul of Gilbert O’Sullivan’s “Alone Again Naturally,” reworked in reaction to the death of her father. There is an overall unevenness in her takes on the individual tracks, but that was just the way Simone was. There is certainly nothing with the intense impact of “Mississippi Goddam;” and Simone’s French diction leaves much to be desired. Nevertheless, Fodder on My Wings provides a perspective of Simone’s creativity that will not be encountered in any of her more popular tracks.
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