Nina Simone recorded seven albums for the Philips label between 1964 and 1966. It was the period in her career in which her reputation was cemented as a world-class artist, and one in which she gained fame for her contributions to the civil rights movement as well. Despite the fact that she recorded great albums both before and after her years with Philips (most notably with RCA), her Philips period is easily her most enigmatic. Among her Philips recordings are her live label debut and six studio recordings featuring wildly varying instrumentation, arrangements, and contents. The box contains all seven LPs on four CDs, and includes one bonus track.
These two discs reflect, in their way, the incredibly rich, varied lineage of women in the blues. And of course, given the title, we're not talking about singers – though many of these women do sing. With liner notes by Sue Foley, who compiled the set, this collection reaches backward and forward to mirror back to the culture the wild, wooly underside of the blues via its female six-string slingers. There are relative newcomers like Laura Chavez (who plays with Lara Price), Finland's Erja Lyytinen, and Austin's Eve Monses; seasoned veterans like Alice Stuart, Foley, Debbie Davies, Jesse Mae Hemphill, Joann Kelly, Rory Block, Bonnie Raitt with Maria Muldaur, Ellen McIlwaine…
Music was paramount in New Orleans, a town where they liked jazz with their blues. Regular blues musicians like Richard ‘Rabbit’ Brown got on disc when the record companies came to town. In general bluesmen and women came from out of town for their sessions, Texans like Lillian Glinn, Will Day, Oscar Woods and Blind Willie Johnson or Mississippians Bo Carter, the Mississippi Sheiks and Walter Jacobs, or out-of-towners like Little Brother Montgomery. New Orleans also saw the first recordings by fascinating Cajun musicians like Amédé Ardoin, Dewey Segura, Lawrence Walker and Cléoma Falcon, who put down their version of 12-bar blues.