Monday, May 27th, 1968, London
No sooner has ‘Lady Soul’ Aretha Franklin left the UK for the first time after amazing performances at The Hammersmith Odeon and Finsbury Park Astoria in London than I am thrilled to greet ‘The High Priestess Of Soul,’ Nina Simone for whom I am still running her first UK Appreciation Society/fan club. Years later, I muse that it is in fact Nina who first mentions Aretha’s name to me at the airport when I greet her in June 1965, urging me to check out Aretha’s music. Such is the synchronicity of destiny…
Nina has been enjoying considerable acclaim in Europe beyond that first visit in the summer of 1965 and by May 1968, she’s been back to Britain on a couple of occasions, most notably for her first full UK tour in the spring of 1967. Nina has been building an audience and literally a week or so after Aretha’s departure from London, Nina has arrived on Tuesday, May 21st for a week of television appearances including one on the popular “Simon Dee Show,” a guest appearance on the BBC-2 show hosted by Esther and Abi Ofarim and the crowning glory of the eight-day promotional trip, a full one-hour special for London Weekend Television for a series they’ve created called ‘The Sound Of Soul.’ Artists in other episodes will be Thelma Houston, Doris Troy and Roberta Flack – and Nina’s is the very one in this acclaimed show.
I’m busy working at the record shop, Soul City so everyday work doesn’t allow much time to spend with Nina until Monday, May 27th when fans and friends alike get to see Nina in her full musical glory, accompanied by a quartet of brother Sam Waymon on organ, Buck Clark on drums, Gene Taylor and Henry Young on guitar. I go with Robert Blackmore, the third partner in Soul City to the taping at Wembley Studios, the scene for the popular weekly ‘Ready Steady Go!’ show which I first visit in 1965 to see Nina during her then-first television appearance.
It’s a one-hour taping and I don’t recall whether I got to spend much time with Nina before or afterwards. Thankfully, the set list for the show has been preserved thanks to modern technology: Nina kicks off with “(You’ll) Go To Hell” (from her 1967 RCA LP, Silk & Soul, before segueing into her famed medley of “Ain’t Got No/I Got Life,” two songs from the popular musical of the day, Hair (which will later that year give Nina a UK #2 pop charted hit) which is included in the LP Nuff Said! as is a live version of “Backlash Blues” (also first heard on Nina’s RCA debut album, Nina Simone Sings The Blues). After a short intermission and change of clothes, Nina and the quartet return and she starts into “I Put A Spell On You,” a UK chart hit for her in August 1965 and on close examination, you can see myself and Robert Blackmore in the audience! Nina completes the set with “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” which she notes, “was a hit for The Animals,” the British pop/rock group who did a cover version, while Nina’s stunning original got little attention initially on either side of the Atlantic. The segment concludes with “Why? (The King Of Love Is Dead),” co-written with Gene Taylor literally within days of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and performed for the first time at The Westbury Music Fair in upstate New York where Nuff Said! was recorded.
The final ‘Sound Of Soul’ TV special didn’t air until September 1968 (hence the date on the video) but before she does pay a royal visit to our Soul City record shop while she’s in London and meets the irrepressible Dave Godin… more to follow…
PS: You can see Robert Blackmore and I stage left as Nina begins this powerful rendition of “I Put A Spell On You”…
