Nina Simone - Wild Is the Wind

Simone's method across these sessions was reduction. The instruction she gave Atkinson—roots and fifths, nothing slick, arco whenever possible—extended to the whole rhythm section. On "Black Is the Color" she wanted only piano and bowed bass, and the result is a performance where silence does as much work as sound. The melody is stated almost conversationally, then the phrases start to bend and hold and the silences between them lengthen.

The folk song becomes a meditation, then a lament, without adding a note. "Wild Is the Wind" uses the same principle over six minutes: she lets the title phrase hang unresolved while the band waits, then moves to the next line when she is ready and not before. The arrangement serves the voice, but the voice is not decorative. It is the engine.

The album was compiled by Philips from material recorded across two years, and the production inconsistency shows. Some tracks feature fuller band arrangements; others are stripped to piano-bass-drums or less. Two tracks have a warmer studio sound and more conventional jazz ballad settings. Two others sound like they were recorded in a smaller room with closer microphones.

The variance is noticeable and affects the album's flow, but it also separates the core performances from the competent ones. When the arrangement is spare, Simone's phrasing becomes the entire event. When the arrangement is fuller, she dominates it anyway but the songs feel more like repertoire than statements.

Her piano playing functions as commentary. On one track the introduction is almost impressionistic, soft chords that set the mood, then she comes in singing and the piano recedes. On another the piano is percussive, rhythmic stabs that mark each character's entrance. The shift from one persona to another—Aunt Sarah, Saffronia, Sweet Thing, Peaches—is signaled by changes in timbre and phrasing.

The song is composition as critique, four women defined by their skin tone and history, and Simone sings each one without softening the edges. The lyric caused enough discomfort that WLIB banned it, which means it did what it was supposed to do. As a piece of writing it is direct, almost journalistic. As a vocal performance it is four different people.

The standards she chose are all about loss and longing, which makes them useful for what Simone does with dynamics. She can take a phrase down to a near-whisper and then open up to full voice within the same line. The effect is not decorative vibrato or melodic embellishment but control used for emotional purpose. Jeff Buckley later covered one track and kept some of that dynamic range; David Bowie covered another and made it colder.

Both versions acknowledge that Simone's interpretation is the reference point. The weakness of the album is that not every track earns its place. Two songs are competent but feel like session remainder, which is what they are. They do not have the intensity of the core performances, and the sequencing does not help.

Because the album was compiled from separate sessions rather than recorded as a planned effort, the flow is uneven. It opens with a warm but conventional ballad that sets a romantic tone immediately contradicted by what follows, which is confrontational. The shift is jarring, and the album never settles into a consistent emotional arc. The middle stretch groups three ballads together and the pacing sags.

The album peaks late. The longest track by a wide margin is sequenced eighth out of eleven, and placing it there makes structural sense—it gives the album a climax before the close. But it also means the listener has to wade through filler to reach it. What follows works as a counterpoint, minimal where the previous track was expansive.

Then a more conventional closer provides resolution, and the final song is tacked on as an afterthought. The closing stretch feels like separate session takes added to fill out the LP. The album's length—just under 38 minutes across eleven tracks—is right for the material. The problem is that four or five of those tracks are essential and the rest are solid but not necessary.

A tighter selection from the same sessions would have made a stronger statement, but that is not how labels compiled albums in 1966. The result is a record where the high points are among her best work and the low points are merely good. For a singer of Simone's intensity, merely good can feel like wasted time.

Wild Is the Wind ranks just below I Put a Spell on You in Nina Simone's catalog because it achieves similar intensity on fewer tracks. I Put a Spell on You is a more consistent album; this one is a compilation that happens to contain several career-defining performances. The gap matters for listeners deciding where to start. If you want the full range of what Simone could do with standards and a rhythm section, I Put a Spell on You is the better entry point.

If you want to hear interpretation as transformation—voice and piano as instruments of complete control—then several tracks here are required listening. The album is for listeners who want to hear a singer dismantle a song and rebuild it while they watch. It is not for anyone looking for background music or for a conventional jazz vocal album where the singer serves the song. Simone makes the songs serve her, and the results are either riveting or exhausting depending on your tolerance for intensity.

The album has aged well because the core performances remain singular. Covers by Buckley and Bowie acknowledge that Simone's versions are definitive, and one song in particular has not been improved upon because it cannot be: the song is autobiography as architecture.

Start with the title track to hear what she does with time and phrasing, then go to another to hear what she does with character and text, then a third to hear what she does with almost nothing. Those three tracks justify the album's reputation. After that, two more are strong examples of her approach to standards. The rest is variable.

If you want more Simone after this, I Put a Spell on You covers similar ground with greater consistency. If you want to hear where her interpretive method led, Nina Simone Sings the Blues and Silk & Soul show her pushing deeper into both jazz and soul repertoire. This album remains essential because the performances at its center demonstrate how completely a voice can possess a song.