"I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free" | |
---|---|
Single by Nina Simone | |
from the album Silk & Soul | |
Released | 1967 |
Genre | Gospel, jazz |
Length | 3:06 |
Label | RCA |
Songwriter(s) | Billy Taylor |
"I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free" is a jazz piece written by American musician Billy Taylor, originally recorded as an instrumental and later released as a song with lyrics by Dick Dallas. Taylor's original version ("I Wish I Knew") was recorded on November 12, 1963, and released on his Right Here, Right Now! album (Capitol ST-2039) the following year. His 1967 live version, from the album of the same name, was later used as the theme music for the Film... review programme series on BBC Television. [1]
Taylor said: "I wrote this song, perhaps my best-known composition, for my daughter Kim." [2]
The song served as an anthem for the Civil Rights Movement in America in the 1960s. [3] A widely played version was recorded by Nina Simone in 1967 on her Silk & Soul album.
Lighthouse Family covered it as "(I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be) Free/One", a medley with U2's "One". [4]
Other artists who have covered the song include Don Shirley (1968), Junior Mance (1968), Illinois Jacquet (1968), Solomon Burke (1968), Marlena Shaw (1969), Cold Blood (1969), John Denver (1969), Doris (1970), Mary Travers (1971), John Fahey (1976), Jools Holland (1997), The Derek Trucks Band (2006), Levon Helm (2009), John Legend and the Roots (2010), Mavis Staples with Levon Helm (2011, released 2022), Emeli Sandé (2012), and The Blind Boys of Alabama featuring Béla Fleck (2021).
The song was also covered by Andra Day for the 2018 film Acrimony . [5]
An arrangement of the song for soprano, chorus, and orchestra by Margaret Bonds was commissioned by Leontyne Price for her album with the Rust College Choir, but Price did not record Bonds's arrangement. [6]
The 1996 film Ghosts of Mississippi featured two versions of the Taylor composition – one sung by Dionne Farris and the other by Nina Simone. [7]
Region | Certification | Certified units/sales |
---|---|---|
United Kingdom (BPI) [8] Nina Simone version | Silver | 200,000‡ |
‡ Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone. |
The Band was a Canadian-American rock band formed in Toronto, Ontario, in 1957. It consisted of the Canadians Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel and Robbie Robertson and the American Levon Helm. The Band's music combined elements of Americana, folk, rock, jazz and country, which influenced artists including George Harrison, Elton John, the Grateful Dead, Eric Clapton, and Wilco.
Nina Simone was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, composer, arranger, and civil rights activist. Her music spanned styles including classical, folk, gospel, blues, jazz, R&B, and pop. Her piano playing was strongly influenced by baroque and classical music, especially Johann Sebastian Bach, and accompanied expressive, jazz-like singing in her contralto voice.
Billy Taylor was an American jazz pianist, composer, broadcaster and educator. He was the Robert L. Jones Distinguished Professor of Music at East Carolina University in Greenville, and from 1994 was the artistic director for jazz at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
"Feeling Good" is a song written by English composers Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse for the musical The Roar of the Greasepaint – The Smell of the Crowd. It was first performed on stage in 1964 by Cy Grant on the UK tour.
The Very Best of Nina Simone is a compilation album of songs by Nina Simone, released by Sony BMG in 2006, three years after her death in 2003.
Silk & Soul is the thirteenth studio album by American musician Nina Simone released in October 1967 by RCA Victor. It features the cuts "Go to Hell" and a cover of "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free".
Nina Simone at Town Hall is the first live album by Nina Simone, released in December 1959. It was her third album of that year, her second album for Colpix Records, and her first live album. The basis for the record was Simone's performance at the Town Hall, New York, on 12 September 1959. All of the songs performed at the concert are on the album; however, three of the tracks are studio versions cut the following month.
Robert Andre Glasper is an American pianist, record producer, songwriter, and musical arranger. His music embodies numerous musical genres, primarily centered around jazz. Glasper has won five Grammy Awards from 11 nominations.
'Nuff Said! is an album by jazz singer/pianist/songwriter Nina Simone. It was recorded—excluding tracks 1, 8, and 11—at Westbury Music Fair, April 7, 1968, three days after the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. The whole program that night was dedicated to his memory. The album featured one of Simone's biggest hits in Europe, "Ain't Got No, I Got Life".
Remixed and Reimagined is the first album in the Legacy Remixed series released by Sony BMG. This is a collection of songs by Nina Simone, remixed by several Electronica artists. All original songs come from her albums released by RCA records. It was released in 2006 on Legacy/RCA/SBMG Records.
"Ain't Got No, I Got Life" is a 1968 single by American singer-songwriter Nina Simone, from her album 'Nuff Said. It is a medley of two songs, "Ain't Got No" and "I Got Life", from the musical Hair, with lyrics by James Rado and Gerome Ragni and music by Galt MacDermot. The combination of the two songs was rewritten by Simone to suit her purpose.
Benjamin M. Tucker was an American jazz bassist who appeared on hundreds of recordings. Tucker played on albums by Art Pepper, Billy Taylor, Quincy Jones, Grant Green, Dexter Gordon, Hank Crawford, Junior Mance, and Herbie Mann.
"(I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be) Free/One" is a song by British musical duo Lighthouse Family, released as their first single from their third album, Whatever Gets You Through the Day (2001). The song was originally written by Billy Taylor, with lyrics by Dick Dallas. Best known for its 1967 version by Nina Simone, and as the instrumental theme to the BBC Film... TV show, this version was produced by Kevin Bacon and Jonathan Quarmby.
Ledisi Anibade Young, better known simply as Ledisi, is an American singer-songwriter, music producer, author, and actress. Her name means "to bring forth" or "to come here" in Yoruba.
"Four Women" is a song written by jazz singer, composer, pianist and arranger Nina Simone, released on the 1966 album Wild Is the Wind. It tells the story of four African American women. Each of the four characters represents an African-American stereotype in society. Thulani Davis of The Village Voice called the song "an instantly accessible analysis of the damning legacy of slavery, that made iconographic the real women we knew and would become."
"My Man's Gone Now" is an aria composed by George Gershwin, with lyrics by DuBose Heyward, written for the opera Porgy and Bess (1935).
Electric Dirt is the final studio album from American musician Levon Helm, released in 2009. It is the follow-up to his Grammy-winning 2007 album Dirt Farmer. In Uncut's list of the 150 best albums between 2000 through 2009, Electric Dirt was listed 80th. It won the first ever Grammy Award for Best Americana Album, an inaugural category in 2010. The track "Growin' Trade", cowritten with Larry Campbell, was Helm's first cowritten song since his debut solo album, Levon Helm & the RCO All-Stars.
Studio Rio Presents: The Brazil Connection is an album of well-known songs arranged for samba and bossa nova. The recording was published in digital formats, on vinyl record, and as a compact disc in 2014 by Legacy Recordings. Song versions were arranged and performed by Studio Rio, a band of Brazilian musicians specializing in the bossa nova and samba genres. Notable members include Roberto Menescal and Marcos Valle.
I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free is a live album by American jazz pianist Billy Taylor, which was originally released on the Tower label in 1968.
The Nina and Me Tour was the seventh concert tour by American singer Ledisi. After the release of Ledisi's tenth album Ledisi Sings Nina (2021), the tour was revived as the Ledisi Sings Nina Tour in July 2021. The Ledisi Sings Nina Tour also coincided with The Wild Card Tour (2021). A concert special, Ledisi Live: A Tribute to Nina Simone, aired on PBS on November 28, 2020, featuring the performance recorded at Myron's Jazz Cabaret in the Smith Center for the Performing Arts in Las Vegas, Nevada on February 1, 2020.