At The Village Gate

Label: Colpix, 1962
Recording session: The Village Gate – New York City – 1961
Catalog number: CP 421 / SCP 421

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In this, Nina’s fifth album on Colpix, there is a natural and inevitable chemistry working…the elements are Nina herself at a lower Manhattan café called The Village Gate. Nina calls it her “home club” and, certainly, as this album testifies, she wears it as comfortably as old clothing.

Along with the expert and familiar trio composed of guitarist Al Shackman, drummer Bobby Hamilton, and bassist Christ White, Nina fashions an amazingly versatile, always exciting performance. She ranges with ease from Broadway (“Just In Time” from Bells Are Ringing) to folk music (the famous and haunting “House of the Rising Sun”) to a standard “Bye Bye Blackbird”) which receives as unique and definitive a treatment as this old 1920s song has ever had.

All in all, AT THE VILLAGE GATE is a fresh new triumph for the girl who has been aptly tabbed “One of the great singing talents of our time…”