Thank you for buying this record. What follows is its documentation: the pressing identified, the matrix / runout transcribed by hand from the dead wax, and the condition as assessed before it was listed. It is yours to keep with the record.

— Paul, Vinyl Curator

Nina Simone

Nina Simone Sings The Blues

1977 or later · RCA Victor LSP-3789 · Stereo · Germany · LP · 33 1/3 RPM

Pressing details

Label	RCA Victor
Catalogue number	LSP-3789
Year	1977 or later
Mono / Stereo	Stereo
Country	Germany
Format	LP
Speed	33 1/3 RPM
Genre	Blues/Soul-Jazz
Producer	Danny Davis
Musicians	Nina Simone (vocals, piano), Rudy Stevenson (guitar), Eric Gale (guitar), Bernard Purdie (drums), Bob Bushnell (bass), Ernest Hayes (organ), Buddy Lucas (harmonica, tenor sax)

Matrix / Runout

Side A:  A33 UPRS 4211 S1 320
Side B:  A33 UPRS 4212 S2 320

Condition

Cover: NM
Vinyl: NM

Variant chronology

1967 - US RCA Victor orange "Living Stereo" label stereo original
1967 - US RCA Victor LPM-3789 mono original
1967 - Germany RCA Victor stereo, orange-label pressing
1977 or later - Germany RCA Victor stereo, grey unboxed-logo label, LC/GEMA rights-society code  <- this copy
2003 - Speakers Corner 180g stereo remaster
2013 - Music On Vinyl stereo reissue - No documented sale found for this variant.

This Pressing

Later German stereo repress of LSP-3789, not a 1967 original - grey unboxed-logo label carries an LC/GEMA rights-society code that only existed from 1977 onward.

The Album

Recorded across sessions at RCA's Studio B in New York in late 1966 and early 1967, this album found Nina Simone deep in her most politically engaged period, refusing easy categorisation as either jazz singer or pop vocalist. The program mixes her own compositions with a Bessie Smith-style blues, a Lil Green standard, an aria drawn from Porgy and Bess, and a reworking of the Animals' arrangement of a traditional folk song, welding blues, gospel-inflected soul and her classically trained piano into a single voice. "Backlash Blues," written with her friend the poet Langston Hughes, stands among her most direct civil-rights statements, delivered with the same command she brings to the playful double-entendre of "I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl." A small combo of guitar, bass, drums and organ frames her piano and voice throughout rather than an orchestra, giving the record an intimacy that critics and later biographers have singled out as central to its lasting reputation. It remains one of the most personal and frequently cited albums of her RCA years, prized for showing how completely she inhabited the blues idiom while keeping it entirely her own.

Tracklist

Side 1

1. Do I Move You?
2. Day and Night
3. In the Dark
4. Real Real
5. My Man's Gone Now
6. Backlash Blues

Side 2

1. I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl
2. Buck
3. Since I Fell for You
4. The House of the Rising Sun
5. Blues for Mama

The Label

The side labels are a dark grey/black RCA Victor field with silver unboxed "RCA VICTOR" lettering, a single Nipper-and-gramophone logo, "STEREO DYNAGROOVE" arced along the lower rim, and a boxed "LC 00316" rights-society code beside the catalogue number; no side-duration timing appears between the number and the "SIDE 1/2" text. RCA's German pressings used this basic grey Nipper design through the late 1960s and into the 1970s, but the LC code itself is a European labelling requirement that did not exist before 1977, so it cannot appear on a label actually printed in 1967 no matter how closely the rest of the design matches an earlier German issue. That single mark places this specific copy in a run manufactured in 1977 or later, behind both the 1967 US originals and any genuinely contemporaneous 1967 German pressing in the release history.

Fidelity

This German pressing derives from RCA's Dynagroove-era stereo mastering of the 1967 US tapes rather than a dedicated audiophile cut, and as a later repress it was made from further-generation stampers than the earliest German lacquers. Collectors on the forums rate the small-group arrangement and Simone's vocal as vivid on a good Dynagroove pressing, if era-typically more compressed than a flat transfer. It ranks below a clean 1967 US stereo original and well below the widely praised 2003 audiophile remaster mastered flat from the tapes, but above later mass-market reissues and the CD remasters.

Notes

This is a German-manufactured stereo pressing of RCA LSP-3789 in a grey unboxed-logo Nipper label with no side-timing text, but the boxed "LC 00316" rights-society code on the label is a mark that did not exist before 1977, so the copy cannot date to 1967 as its catalogue number and label design might suggest. The matrix (UPRS-4211/UPRS-4212) matches the German stereo master, but the specific suffix and prefix seen on this copy's runout differ from the other German variant, consistent with a later stamper generation rather than the earliest German lacquers. The pressing therefore ranks as a later German repress, below both the 1967 US stereo original and any genuinely 1967-dated German stereo issue.

Documenting collections

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