The DN Report - February 20,2024
Ann Nesby - Ever Optimistic; Nancy Wilson - Naturally; Nina Simone - Omipresent
Talkin’ about splendiferous Ann; reflecting on Nancy and Nina on their February earthly birthdays (respectively, 87 and 91)…
ANN NESBY. If you blinked during the ‘In Memoriam’ segment of the recent Grammys show, you mighta missed the moment! Suffice to say that she shared the stage with the multi-talented Jon Batiste in tribute to Clarence Avant: quite frankly, it would been fine with me if Jon had given the full spotlight to Ms. Ann for “Optimistic” so we could all have bathed in the full and mighty glory of one of the best singers on the planet. Oh well.
Reference to it however is an excuse (if needed) to go to 1991 and memories that flood back. 33 years on and wherever I am, the moment I hear the opening bars of “Optimistic” by The Sounds Of Blackness, I tear up and wanna dance. Or at least bop my head to the sky and stomp my feet, at the very least ever joyful. Easily in my Top 10 of ALL time.
I recall when my friend and colleague Karen Kennedy made sure I got an advance copy of “The Evolution Of Gospel” by The Sounds, then seeing a ‘live’ performance at the A&M Records lot on LaBrea in L.A., a stone’s throw from where I lived. Very smart on the part of hitmakers Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis to launch Perspective Records and to kick it off with what may have seemed to some an unconventional project. A full choir, some kick-butt music and the resonant sound of an anthem that lifts the spirit. And then…the super-soulful Ms. Ann Nesby taking it to the top. Yes, yes, yes.
Jimmy, Terry and Karen K. were aware that I had started my media coaching service in 1990 working with new and developing artists, initally Geoff McBride (signed to Arista), Motown’s Another Bad Creation and thanks to LA & Babyface, a couple of the first artists with their newly-formed LaFace Records in Atlanta.
Off I went to Minneapolis in the winter (not fun!) to work with Perspective’s selective roster - Mint Condition, Lo-Key? and of course, The Sounds Of Blackness. I did some work with the group’s confident founder Gary Hines and with the then-quietly-shy Ms. Ann Nesby who was experiencing her first taste of mass attention as “Optimistic” hit the charts and the charts and the airwaves.
We bonded after she shared that her major vocal influence was one, Aretha Franklin who had been an integral part of my own soul music journey since 1965 and that I had not only met Aretha in 1968 in person but had done a number of interviews with her over the years since.
More memories: as part of promoting the release of “The Evolution Of Gospel” (released in May 1991), the group visited a number of churches in the L.A. area; it didn’t take much persuading for me to get up, get dressed and spend much of that Sunday with Gary, Ann and the members of The Sounds Of Blackness as they gave praise and sang a few selections from the album.
When The Sounds came to London in August 1991, I made sure I was there too. What a time we had! On the tour bus, riding through the narrow streets of London, stopping at a record shop in Brixton, going to Solar Radio and me, a native of the city, providing some commentary and fielding questions - and as Ann and I have often recalled with great mirth, watching two of the ladies get into a ‘pretend’ squabble on the bus and - maybe just for my shock-and-horror - one snatching off another the wig of another! I kid you not. Later, Ann told me it was all done in fun!
Memories of The Sounds Of Blackness doing their righeously-soulful-and-spiritual thing in front of a British audience at The Hammermsith Odeon and getting numerous standing ovations. “Optmistic,” “The Pressure,” “Testify,” “Your Wish Is My Command,” bringing the house down. Of note: Ann’s musical hero, Aretha, had done the same thing 23 years earlier at the very same venue…
I had become accustomed to being moved, like, really moved by the emotion and passion in gospel music likely from the very first time my mother told me that the voice coming out of the little red radio in the living room when I was around nine or ten years old was that of Mahalia Jackson, singing - as best as I can recall - “Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child.”
Being around so many of the artists whose roots were in the church and in gospel, one of my first goals when I got to New York in 1975 to begin my decades-long work as the US correspondent (later US editor) for Britain’s Blues & Soul had been to attend a church in Harlem.
My dear friend, the late Arthur Freeman (of the quartet Revelation and the famed New York Community Choir) took me up on the request and one unforgettable Sunday, I had my first for-real authentic Black church experience. From that Sunday in ‘75 to The Sounds Of Blackness, ‘91 and beyond, a whole lot has happened in my spiritual life journey including - yes, true, true - being an assistant deacon at a storefront church in the Bed-Sty part of Brooklyn, circa 1978!
I’ll be sharing more on Substack in coming weeks…
NANCY WILSON. With a nod to my Substack colleague
, thanks for the reminder of Nancy’s February 20th birthday and thus, the many hours I spent with the song stylist supreme which are among my most treasured during my years as a working journalist and writer. Although my very first face-to-face encounter with Nancy took place in June 1976 (when I did a cover story for Blues & Soul), I was aware of her music when, in my earliest years of buying LPs, I purchased her fifteenth album for Capitol Records.“Nancy - Naturally” was in fact, the second of four LPs that she released in 1966! The very idea of four - yes, four - albums in one year would seem outside of any reality by the time we met when “This Mother’s Daughter” (still on Capitol Records, with whom she signed in 1960, staying with the label until 1980) was her lone 1976 LP.
I still remember that my purchase of “Nancy - Naturally” had as much to do with the beautiful album cover (depicted above)!
Elegant, stylish, sophisticated would have been the adjectives to describe the photo and the music contained on the vinyl therein, with then-jazz-and-blues standards such as “Willow Weep For Me,” “Since I Fell For You” and “In The Dark” primarily in a big band setting provided by noted arranger/conductor Billy May.
My burgeoning record collection didn’t have too many ‘jazz’ records as such and years later, I would discover in conversations with Nancy herself that she - like Nina Simone and other notable recording artists of the day - didn’t appreciate the categorization of her as a ‘jazz singer.’ She referred to herself, more correctly, as “a song stylist,” and cetainly just a cursory glance at her vast discography of over sixty albums immediately disavows any notion that she was limited in the scope of material she chose.
I could actually write much about Ms. Nancy, from my own personal choices from her repertoire including her Top 10 R&B 1974 hit version of “You’re As Right As Rain” (originally recorded by The Stylistics) to her sublimely version of “When October Goes,” cut for her 1991 collaboration with Barry Manilow, the Columbia album “With My Lover Beside Me.”
Beyond the music, the lady herself. We bonded, after I interviewed her in 1987 for the LP, “Forbidden Lover,” Her longtime manager, the late John Levy had an office literally around the corner from where I lived in Los Angeles and I would routinely update Nancy’s lengthy bio over the period of ten years. I was thrilled to participate in writing the liner notes for the 1989 album, “A Lady With A Song” and recall vividly the excitement that she had recorded a duet with Anita Baker (who considered Nancy a major inspiration) on the song Anita had co-written, “Fairtytales,” which had all the promise of expanding Nancy’s audience - until, at the 11th hour, Anita decided she didn’t want it to be released! (PS: since Nancy was actually signed to Sony Music in Japan, the masters had already been turned in and it was in fact released on the rare Japanese version of the album - AND yes, I do still have my copy of that CD!).
In honouring her February 20th birthday, I must mention being humbled by being invited to sing on the recording of “Heaven’s Hands” for the “Lady With A Song” LP alongside my good friend Victor Washington and an assembled star cast that included Philip Bailey, Carl Anderson, Teena Marie and Howard Hewett.
Many more memories of Nancy (Rest Heavenly) and I will be sharing more right here on Substack as premium content for sure….
NINA. Four years before and one day after Nancy Wilson sang her first note as a baby in Chillicothe, Ohio on February 20, 1937, Eunice Kathleen Waymon did the same in February 21, 1933, Tryon, North Carolina. I have no idea if Nancy Wilson and Eunice (by 1954, Nina Simone earning a living at the Midtown Bar & Grill in Atlantic City) ever met but I have no doubt that if they did, it would have been a most interesting conversation! That I have reference for knowing both, starting the Nina Simone Appreciation Society in London in 1965, a year before I bought the afore-mentioned “Nancy - Naturally” album, I can conjecture an imagined chat between the two - and maybe if the muse takes over, I’ll create a poem detailing what might have been said!
Howsoever, what I do know is that one common link - other than being born in the same month, one day apart - is the emotion and passion that Nina and Nancy brought to their performances and recordings. I have written literally thousands and thousands of words about Nina Simone over fifty-nine years starting with the newsletters in London for what was then just thirty or so keen and smart music lovers who paid the sum of 2/6d (UK money back in the ‘60s) to join the Appreciation Society!
Nina Simone, now omnipresent globally, iconic beyond anything she might have imagined during her 70 year-incarnation. No words would suffice to express the depth of how grateful I am to have been in some small way a part of spreading the word about the majestic magnitude of a fellow ‘Keeper Of The Flame,’ Nina.
Happy to say that at the end of March, my continued appreciation for ‘The High Priestes’ will be evident with the release of “Blackbird: The Colpix Recordings (1959-1963)” on SoulMusic Records, with wonderful contributions from Aaron Overfield and Nia Hill. More to share soon.
With soul-to-soul appreciation,
David N
hey, David!