Feeling Good | The Song that has been roaming around for decades

The song “ Feeling Good” was composed in 1964 but, even if the most famous version has been usually the one of Nina Simone, not many people know that the song is not her composition, and that hers, is, what we would call nowadays “a cover”.

The origin of this song is from the musical The Roar of the Greasepaint from 1964, and It’s sung by ‘The Negro’, who, despite abuse and racism, manages to fly in the face of authority and win the Game.

The character Negro, sings this beautiful song and leaves the game with ¨dignity¨. Now that we know the origin, seems such a perfect song for Nina Simone’s story.

One year after the musical was released (1965) , She and her arranger Hal Mooney put the album “I put a spell on you” with their own version and arrangement and the song “Feeling good”

The original version from the musical, is a lot slower, a capella, and with a really different flow all together. Check it out here:

Many of the songs of Nina Simone are not her originals, and that’s one of the reasons why she faced many economic problems during her lifetime and faced major losses, with the record labels benefiting from her work but with her not able to generate any money from them.