Even that song to my ears, especially knowing the events that preceded it, is a love song. “What I argue about this album is that it's full of love songs, even those songs like ‘Mississippi Goddamn,’ which she was already well known for both - lauded for her courage and also vilified for the same and having produced that song. Just weeks before the Newport event, Simone had performed in Jackson, Mississippi, at a fundraiser for the 1966 March Against Fear, a pro-integration demonstration started by James Meredith, who was shot during his march. Redmond, a Columbia University professor who wrote the album’s liner notes. The title track was originally released in 1965 and was “a perfect companion to the moment of grievance and strategy” around the Civil Rights Movement, says Shana L. The 57-year-old recording had been kept in his private collection, which was among items donated to the U.S. The album comes in honor of what would’ve been Simone’s 90th birthday, and it was discovered after the 2021 death of Newport Jazz Festival Founder George Wein. On the record, you can hear the audience gasp when the High Priestess of Soul begins her famous protest song “Mississippi Goddamn,” and the festival emcee calming the crowd’s fervor by announcing she would return for an encore. “You’ve Got to Learn,” a live recording of Nina Simone’s set at the 1966 Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island, is now widely available.
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