Nina Simone was infernally complicated. In her songs, she was deeply American but convincingly European; a jazz singer-pianist, a Brechtian theatrical talk-singer; a funk soul sister and folkie; a prime civil-rights voice, a gifted square peg and a regular lonely woman. In a mostly good sense, she was manipulative: She squeezed audiences with a mysterious intensity, and this three-disc set is rightly heavy on live tracks. (She discusses her relationship to audiences in the excellent accompanying DVD biopic, filmed in 1970.) Her most famous work is her most dramatically high-handed, but her first major box set—spanning early sessions in the late ’50s to the ghastly Rod McKuen song “A Single Woman,” from her final album in 1993—doesn’t ignore her comparatively naive early work, when she was just an excellent club singer. As she gained grandiosity and tragic airs, she lost a few things: pitch accuracy, for sure, but also the ability to surprise.

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