hypersongs

Laura Nyro

A Bronx-born singer, pianist and songwriter whose songs became hits for the 5th Dimension, Barbra Streisand and Three Dog Night, and whose own albums Eli and the Thirteenth Confession (1968) and New York Tendaberry (1969) are landmarks of late-1960s pop.

The Bronx and Monterey

Laura Nigro was born in the Bronx on October 18, 1947, the daughter of a piano tuner and jazz trumpeter, Louis Nigro, and a bookkeeper, Gilda. She wrote her first songs at eight, attended Manhattan's High School of Music and Art, and took the name Nyro, pronounced NEER-oh, after leaving school; she was a three-octave mezzo-soprano and played piano. In 1966 she recorded "Wedding Bell Blues" and "Stoney End" at Bell Sounds Studios, sold "And When I Die" to Peter, Paul and Mary for $5,000, and was managed first by Artie Mogull and Paul Barry and then by David Geffen, with whom she founded the publisher Tuna Fish Music, sold to CBS in 1969 for $4.5 million.

Her debut, More Than a New Discovery (Verve Folkways, February 1967), reached number 97 in the US. She played a month of nightly shows at the hungry i in San Francisco from January 16, 1967, and the Monterey Pop Festival on June 17, 1967, a set that some accounts call a fiasco and later recordings contradict. Geffen arranged a Columbia deal with Clive Davis, and Nyro voided her earlier contracts because she had signed them as a minor.

Columbia, the songs and the retirement

Eli and the Thirteenth Confession (Columbia, March 3, 1968) was followed by New York Tendaberry (September 24, 1969, number 32, with orchestral arrangements by Jimmie Haskell), two Carnegie Hall concerts in November 1969, Christmas and the Beads of Sweat (November 25, 1970) and Gonna Take a Miracle (November 17, 1971), an album of soul and R&B covers with Labelle, recorded at Sigma Sound in Philadelphia and produced by Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff. She announced her retirement in 1971 at about 24, and later made Smile (1976), the live Season of Lights (1977), Nested (1978), Mother's Spiritual (1984) and, after returning to touring in 1988, Laura: Live at the Bottom Line (1989) and Walk the Dog and Light the Light (1993, co-produced by Gary Katz). Her last concerts, in London, New York and Los Angeles, were in 1994 and 1995.

The 5th Dimension had hits with "Wedding Bell Blues", "Stoned Soul Picnic", "Sweet Blindness", "Blowing Away" and "Save the Country"; Peter, Paul and Mary and Blood, Sweat and Tears took "And When I Die"; Three Dog Night took "Eli's Comin'" to number ten in the US; and Barbra Streisand recorded "Stoney End" and "Time and Love". She died on April 8, 1997, aged 49, shortly after the two-disc Stoned Soul Picnic: The Best of Laura Nyro, which she helped prepare, appeared. A tribute concert followed at the Beacon Theatre on October 27, 1997, she entered the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2010, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on April 14, 2012, when Bette Midler presented and her son accepted. Michele Kort's Soul Picnic: The Music and Passion of Laura Nyro (2002) is the biography.

Albums

Songs

  • Stoned Soul Picnic Eli and the Thirteenth Confession · 1968

    Her song from Eli and the Thirteenth Confession, a number three hit for the 5th Dimension in 1968.

  • Been on a Train Christmas and the Beads of Sweat · 1970

    Track four of Christmas and the Beads of Sweat, used by Alvin Ailey in his solo "Cry".

Sources

  1. Laura Nyro, Wikipedia
  2. Laura Nyro, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
  3. New York Tendaberry, Wikipedia
  4. Gonna Take a Miracle, Wikipedia