Nina Simone, Adrift on CTI Records
Baltimore is a strange, uneven record that still has more life in it than most albums from 1978.
By the time Nina Simone recorded Baltimore (1978), she was in a complicated place — artistically restless, personally exhausted, and signed to CTI Records, a label better known for slick, polished jazz-pop than for someone with Simone's particular intensity. The result is exactly what you might expect from that mismatch: an album that feels pulled in two directions at once, caught between Simone's raw, uncompromising instincts and a production approach that keeps smoothing things over. CTI did almost nothing to promote it, Simone herself was unhappy with it, and it sank without charting. It was also her only album for the label, which tells you everything.
The title track is the one everyone comes back to, and for good reason. Randy Newman wrote and recorded 'Baltimore' in 1977, a gentle, slightly melancholy portrait of a struggling city. Simone takes it somewhere more personal and more urgent — her piano playing is spare, her voice worn in the best way, and she finds something in the song that Newman's own version doesn't quite reach. It's one of those covers where you forget the original for a while. The rest of the album is more hit-or-miss. Some tracks feel like they were arranged for a different singer entirely, and the production leans toward a kind of late-70s softness that doesn't suit her.
So no, this isn't her best work — that argument belongs to her Philips recordings from the 1960s. But Baltimore is worth your time specifically because of that title track, and because hearing Simone push against material that doesn't quite fit her is interesting in its own right. She's never boring, even when the album around her is.
Who's playing
Gary Kingelectric bass guitar
Will Leeelectric bass guitar
Al Schackmanpiano
David Matthewspiano
Jerry Friedmanelectric guitar
Andy Newmarkdrums
Jimmy Madisonmembranophone
