First Album Review: ‘Little Girl Blue’ by Nina Simone

My review of her debut album from 1959

NOTE: While not officially released with the title, this album is often referred to as ‘Jazz As Played in an Exclusive Side Street Club,’ due to the inclusion of the phrase on the album’s front cover.

In one of my recent articles, I asked people for musical recommendations. One of the replies I received was from my friend Yana Bostongirl, who suggested that I try the music of Nina Simone.

Although I’ve known her name for most of my life, I was very unfamiliar with Nina Simone’s music and struggled to name any of her songs at the time she was recommended to me.

I decided to listen to her debut album, Little Girl Blue. After playing it a couple of times, I instantly felt regret for not having discovered the music of Nina Simone much sooner than I did.

The album was released in early 1959 on Bethlehem Records. It featured Nina Simone on vocals and piano, Jimmy Bond on double bass, and Albert “Tootie” Heath on drums. Most of the songs on the album were songs that were already very well-known from having been recorded by other artists, or from having been featured in famous musicals.

After the album was released, Nina Simone was very unhappy with how Bethlehem Records had promoted it. She decided to leave the label, but before doing so, she sold her rights to the album to Bethlehem Records for a mere $3,000. Given the financial success that the album achieved over the years, it’s estimated that Nina Simone lost out on over a million dollars in royalty profits from the deal she made.

It’s a shame that things worked out that way. It’s a wonderful album and it would have been nice if she had made more money from it than she did. Listening to it now, I almost find it hard to believe that Little Girl Blue was Nina Simone’s first album. Her piano playing and singing on it were so good that she sounded like she had already recorded several albums by that point.

Here are my top five favorite songs from the album:

This song was originally written for a short-lived Broadway musical by Rodgers & Hart in 1935 called Jumbo. It was about a struggling circus — and it even featured an elephant onstage. You wouldn’t (or at least I didn’t) know the above from listening to Nina Simone’s great interpretation of the song. I most definitely didn’t envision elephants in my mind when I first heard her performance of it!

One of the things I love about Nina Simone’s “Little Girl Blue” is how she incorporated the traditional Christmas song “Good King Wenceslas” into the piano medley. It works perfectly with the rest of the song.

This upbeat-sounding song may be my favorite on the album. I especially love the piano solo that starts 50 seconds into it. It’s close to a minute and a half long and it’s fantastic.

“You’ll Never Walk Alone” was a popular song from the 1945 musical Carousel. However, unlike that well-known version that featured vocals, Nina Simone performed it as an instrumental.

Although I’ve never seen Carousel, I was previously familiar with “You’ll Never Walk Alone” from two very different sources: 1.) Pink Floyd featured snippets of a crowd singing it on their song “Fearless” from their album Meddle, and 2.) Comedian Jerry Lewis regularly sang the song at the end of his annual Labor Day Weekend Telethons for The Muscular Dystrophy Association.

While I think those were both great, Nina Simone’s “You’ll Never Walk Alone” has quickly become my favorite version of the song. The instrumental was done perfectly and it’s quite beautiful.

“I Loves You, Porgy” was originally written for the 1935 musical Porgy and Bess. Nina Simone’s version of the song from Little Girl Blue was released as a single and was very successful, reaching the Top 20 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart. Though Nina Simone had many other hit songs throughout her career, “I Loves You, Porgy” was her highest-selling single.

I may have heard it at one time or another before my recent first listen of this album, but I’m not 100% sure of that. I actually first fell in love with “I Loves You, Porgy” when I heard Brian Wilson do it on his Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin album in 2010. Even though I’m still crazy about that one, I now prefer Nina’s version of the song.

INTERMISSION! Here’s Brian Wilson’s great version of it, if you’d like to check it out:

END OF INTERMISSION! We now return to our regularly scheduled review of Nina Simone’s album:

“Central Park Blues,” the closing song on the album, is a wonderful instrumental written by Nina Simone. She and her two bandmates sound spectacular on it. The song was named “Central Park Blues” because the photos featured on the album’s cover were taken in Central Park in New York City.

Here’s the entire Little Girl Blue album on Spotify:

There are no songs on Little Girl Blue that I dislike, but if I had to choose a ‘least favorite’ from it, I’d probably go with “Don’t Smoke In Bed” — even though that’s wonderful advice.

All in all, I think Little Girl Blue is a wonderful album. Out of 5 possible stars, I give it…drumroll, please…4 and 1/2 stars!

Little Girl Blue is #64 of a ‘100 New-To-Me’ Albums in 2022' challenge I’ve been participating in. Here’s my Master List of those albums:

Other album reviews by me:

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