I Loves You, Porgy
Nina Simone
Overcoming Prejudice with Pop Success
Click here to Support Jazz on the Tube
Nina Simone was a musician and activist for civil rights born in the ’30s. As a teenager Simone yearned to be a concert pianist, but music educators would reject her for being black. But fate had it another way, and by the late ’50s her rendition of “I Loves You, Porgy” would become a smash hit. That was off of the album “Little Girl Blue.”
The song is from the George Gershwin opera “Porgy and Bess” – and would be covered by Bill Evans, Whitney Houston, Christina Aguilera and Billie Holiday.
Ella Fitzgerald