Personnel: Nina Simone (vocals, piano).

Audio Mixer: Todd Whitelock.

Audio Remasterer: Mark Wilder.

Liner Note Author: David Nathan.

Jazz singer and pianist Nina Simone was such a prodigious talent that even a four-disc box set might seem too small a canvas to fully sketch her genius, but TO BE FREE: THE NINA SIMONE STORY is nonetheless an ideal introduction. The three CDs contain 51 tracks covering Simone's career from 1953 to 1993, from her beginnings as a classically trained supper club artiste through her period of political awakening into her later, idiosyncratic blend of jazz, blues, pop, and rock. The fourth disc is a DVD containing a documentary film with live concert footage that was completed in 1970 but never released until this set. The set also contains eight previously unreleased songs and a book with essays and track-by-track commentary.

Mojo (Publisher) (p.122) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "Over the course of 3CDs, we bear witness to a singer who had no equal. Simone carved phrases with that smoky tenor, a natural instrument so regal that her whisper packed more power than the caterwauling of lessers who compensate with overkill."

Blender (Magazine) (p.81) - 3 stars out of 5 -- "She squeezed audiences with a mysterious intensity, and this three-disc set is rightly heavy on the live tracks."

Paste (magazine) (p.66) - "TO BE FREE: THE NINA SIMONE STORY stirringly captures Simone's journey from a reluctant cabaret performer to one of the most powerful voices of the Civil Rights era."