Yesterday I had a deep yearning to listen to Laura Nyro. One of the first popular singer-songwriters of the rock era, she began recording albums in 1966, before Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon or Carole King. Few singers touch me as deeply or remind me of that period than Nyro, and, like you, I can tell it's her within three chords. Her keyboard phrasing was at once soulful and melancholy, a blend that perfectly mirrored the emotionalism of the times. [Photo above of Laura Nyro from a trade ad for Eli & the Thirteenth Confession]
Nyro's best-known pop songs were And When I Die, Stoney End, Flim Flam Man, Wedding Bell Blues, Blowin’ Away, Sweet Blindness, Poverty Train, Eli’s Comin’, Stoned Soul Picnic and Save the Country. And yet, other artists were the ones who turned those songs into megahits.
In some regards, Nyro's versions were demos, but that's a bit unfair. While she didn't have that extra something to put a song over in the mass market, she was singular, poetic and a distinct voice with conviction that compels you to feel. You have no choice.
Though her first album was posthumously inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999 (Nyro died in 1997), she never won a Grammy nor has she received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award for her body of work. Even more shocking is that no serious documentary has ever been made of her life and music, to explain the artist behind the work or why the music mattered.
One day, I suppose, a leading jazz singer will decide she's had enough of the American songbook and attempt a credible and empathetic Laura Nyro tribute album. A singer shouldn't attempt imitation, but yearning, pain and a sense of bounding freedom, as if running through a field, are required. One can only hope.
At any rate, here are the precious few video clips available of Nyro in concert along with a few of my other favorites:
Here's a solid CBS Sunday Morning segment from 2001...
Here's Nyro on TV's Kraft Music Hall in January 1969...
Here's Nyro performing at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967...
Here's clean audio from a Fillmore East concert in 1970...
Here's a concert in Pittsburgh in June 1994 (the video is bleary so just let the music play in the background)...
And here's my favorite Nyro album—the complete Eli & the Thirteenth Confession (1968)...
Laura Nyro died on April 8, 1997 of ovarian cancer, at age 49.
A 19 CD set, Hear My Song: The Collection 1966-1995 Deluxe, was issued by Madfish last year here.
