7.
Nina Simone – ‘Strange Fruit’
There’s a version that was done on British TV on a jazz programme in about ’56 with just a piano and vocal that I heard when I was quite young and I was really amazed by that. You can see it on YouTube these days. I guess I first heard her when I was about 12 or 13, although I’m not sure how that happened. On this version, people say her voice had cracked and she was past her best, but I think it’s fantastic. I’m not a great fan of jazz, though. I don’t mind Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five – something with a bit of guts to it – but I’m not interested in those bebop bastards, probably because of the association of ‘cool’. I don’t like cool stuff, or people like Ella Fitzgerald, who’s a kind of style singer. She has talent, but I’m not very interested in talent. To be as talented as Ella Fitzgerald is very rare thing, and I’m happy that’s the case.
