High Tone Places

There are some cover versions that just indisputably blast the original into oblivion. When Otis Redding heard Aretha Franklin singing Respect, he famously said: “I just lost my song. That girl took it away from me.” I’d like to look at another recording that renders its original, in my view, utterly obsolete. The song is My Baby Just Cares For Me by Gus Kahn and Walter Donaldson. The recording artist is Nina Simone.

Nina Simone was, by Otis’s criteria, one of the most light-fingered figures in popular music. Again and again she makes the songs she essays totally her own. Heard the original of Feeling Good? No? Don’t bother. From her gut-wrenching take on My Man’s Gone Now from Porgy and Bess to her versions of Bob Dylan songs (Just Like A Woman, I Shall Be Released) Nina proves you don’t have to be a songwriter (though she was that too) to bring your own creative stamp to a record.

Not convinced? Here’s the (more or less) original version of My Baby Just Cares For Me, by Eddie Cantor. Yep, he’s in blackface.



Nina recorded her version for her debut album in 1957 – at the end of the session, almost as a throwaway. But perfection has a funny way of creeping up on you unawares, and the result was 3 minutes and 37 seconds of the most immaculate pop music I’ve ever heard. Out goes the rhythm of the original, out goes the melody. In comes a cool swing shuffle and a serenely descending left-hand line that anchors Simone’s version. Her vocal is understated and warm, altering the lyrics to fit the gender reversal. Then comes a brilliant, equally understated piano solo, the work of a Juilliard graduate equally comfortable with Baroque fugues and jazz (that this was before Jacques Loussier or Ward Swingle had made the two seem like natural bedfellows). Then the head returns, and Nina plays around with the melody and lyrics some more (including a mischievous reference to Liberace), building in intensity until the simple piano figure that rounds it all off.

In the Eighties, after laying dormant for a while, the song was used in a Chanel ad, sparking off a revival of interest in Nina (which has grown and grown, perpetuated by those Ain’t Got No – I Got Life Müller ads, and now “Very Best Of Nina Simone” compilations are among the best-selling jazz albums in the UK). The song was re-released as a single in 1987, and Aardman Animations made a video for it – which was the form in which I first encountered the song. Here it is.



It’s a lovely little video, paying close attention to both music and lyrics. The singer’s goofy, bow-tied fella captures what my friend Hugh recently observed: your baby sounds like a really boring bloke. No interests at all? Must be a clingy nightmare. I love the way he walks downstairs at 0:41-0:50, highlighting the distinctive bassline. In other ways it’s misleading – it was years before I realised Nina played piano. But in fact I think my sense of what jazz singing was or should be, and what a jazz club looked like or should look like, were heavily influenced by this song and this video.

I think I realised how important this song was to me in the summer of 2006 when I was travelling solo in Europe. Berlin was the first stop on the trip, and I spent most of my time there wandering around entranced by the city in summer with all its pavement cafés and mocked-up beach bars. On the first or maybe the second evening, I came across a boat moored in the river near the Museumsinsel, an open-air theatre that doubled as a bar, on which you could sit in a deck chair and drink a beer while a DJ played summery tunes. Which I duly did, feeling very self-conscious, just starting to come to grips with the unfamiliarity, the daunting grown-up freedom of it all (I’d only been legally allowed to drink in the UK for two weeks by this point). It was at once terrifying and exhilarating. I drank my beer quickly and crossed back over the river. But as I was on the bridge, My Baby Just Cares For Me came on. And I was transfixed.

So often when we listen to music – our iPods in while we commute or do the ironing – it’s discrete and disconnected from the experience we’re having. Where and when we listen to a song, and what we play it on, doesn’t necessarily affect the way we perceive it. But there, and then, the echo of the music as it reverberated across the water, the warmth of the evening sun that matched the warmth of Nina’s voice, the sense of simple joy in the music that matched how I felt, how I wanted to feel… all these came together to make a completely beautiful moment. It was – and as an un-superstitious atheist I use this word carefully – magic.

My relationship with the song didn’t end there, though. A few months later I joined an a cappella group, The Oxford Gargoyles (see link on the right). I was in the group for two thoroughly enjoyable years (and am rejoining them for the Edinburgh Fringe this summer), an experience which really came to define my time at university. And the Gargoyles’ signature song is… My Baby Just Cares For Me. The Gargoyle arrangement is based on Nina’s version. It’s a simple but excellent arrangement, and a showcase for 8 soloists. It’s also useful for busking because it’s got a nice loud beginning. For all these reasons the Gargoyles sing it more than any other song, and I would estimate I have probably sung it with them over a thousand times. Literally. So the song has a whole other layer of associations as a result. It’s so deeply scorched into my consciousness and muscle memory that I could sing it while doing long multiplication or composing a poem. I don’t have anything like perfect pitch, but for a while I could sing a D from a standing start, because that’s the key My Baby is in (Nina’s version is in A).

Here’s the Gargoyles version, as it was two years ago. (I’m 4th from the left).



Let’s be clear – I’m not making any claims for the above as a rival version of the tune. Nina’s is and will always be the greatest. I’m simply fascinated by the path one song can take through more than eighty years of musical history – and the more modest but (to me) no less fascinating path it has taken through my life.

There we go. This blog is certainly turning out to be centred around songs, and my personal responses to them. Which maybe isn’t a matter of general interest. But then again, all writing about music is a personal response of some sort, isn’t it? Stay tuned.