My Top Twenty: "Black Is The Color Of My True Loves Hair" - Nina Simone

Song: "Black Is The Color Of My True Loves Hair"
Artist: Nina Simone
Album: Nina Simone At Town Hall (also on Wild Is The Wind and Black Gold, remixed on Verve Remixed 2)
Year: 1959
Label: Colpix Records
Players: Nina Simone - vocals, piano; Jack Gold - producer; Bob Blake - producer


Nina Simone is a fabulous artist, who was a favorite of Bridget Fonda's character in Point Of No Return. Her husky vocals, beautiful piano work and classical training helped her create a high-art sound that combined the best of jazz, blues, gospel, folk and classical music. Her take on "I Loves You Porgy" ranks as one of the best versions of that Gershwin-penned classic, in my opinion. She is probably best known to the casual listener for her cover of Screamin' Jay Hawkins' "I Put A Spell on You" or the use of "My Baby Just Cares For Me" in a 1987 Chanel No. 5 commercial. But Nina Simone also wrote her own material, often controversial race-themed songs like "Four Women" "Mississippi Goddam" and "To Be Young, Gifted And Black," later covered by the Queen herself, Aretha Franklin.

"Black Is The Color Of My True Loves Hair" was the first Nina Simone song I ever heard. It was on a Starbucks compilation called Something To Believe In, which featured classic tracks by African-American artists like Erma Franklin, Marvin Gaye and Dionne Warwick and a liner note full of paintings by other black artists. I picked it up at a Salvation Army Thrift Store for a buck or two about five years ago. In my ignorance, I usually skipped over Nina's track, since I'd never heard of it before. Eventually, I let it play and fell in love with the dramatic contrast between the gentle piano and the throaty vocals singing an Appalachian folk song on the version from Wild Is The Wind. It's strange, a song about a Scottish lass can sound so perfect coming out of a black woman's mouth. But that was Nina Simone's gift, she inhabited her songs so brilliantly. To this day, no matter how many variations of "Black Is The Colour Of My True Love's Hair" come around, it will be Nina's that will stay rooted in my heart. "Ooh, I love my lover, how well he knows/I love the ground on where he goes"