Feeling Good — Nina Simone
“Feeling Good” is an often-covered song, but it would be churlish not to recognise Nina Simone’s version as the definitive one.
Even her version was a cover though. “Feeling Good” first appeared in a long-forgotten British stage musical called “The Roar of the Greasepaint — The Smell of the Crowd”…no, I don’t know what that’s about either.
By the time the song came to Nina Simone’s attention it had already been out in the wild for a while.
But, as they say on all the TV talent shows, Nina Simone really made this song her own. (Ironically, since it’s a frequent choice for auditions on those TV talent shows and everybody tries to perform it just like Nina Simone did…)
Hal Mooney arranged and produced Nina Simone’s definitive version of “Feeling Good”. He was a talented and versatile arranger and producer with a repertoire running from Dinah Washington and Sarah Vaughan, through to his time working as the musical director on some of the best-known TV shows of the 1970s, including Colombo, Kojak and The Rockford Files.
The combination of Hal Mooney’s production and arrangement skills and Nina Simone’s defiant attitude and flair for the dramatic made her version of “Feeling Good” the iconic one.
However that’s not to diminish the contribution of the original songwriters in…
