Norah Jones, Meet Laura Nyro. Hello, Norah Nyro!
I have listened to Laura Nyro's 'Gonna Take A Miracle' for years and years. I can't remember when or where I got it - or even why - but I have long enjoyed its strange, soulful sound, Nyro's soaring lead vocals on top of Labelle's textured backing, her unusual, brassy arrangements of classic R 'n' B. It's not exactly an easy record to listen to, demanding in the way most of my favorite albums are. Not a record to put on in the background while you talk with friends or read by the fire. Not a record many of my friends - or even my wife - really enjoys listening to with me. But one full of life and originality for me at least to this day. As Barney Hoskyns wrote, "Laura is one of those artists who takes you over - one of the greatest poets pop has produced." Laura Nyro's songs are undeniable, her voice, an acquired taste reviled by some and revered by others like singer/songwriter Rickie Lee Jones who has admired it as 'pure emotion.'
Last year, after years and years of listening to 'Gonna Take A Miracle,' I picked up my second Nyro album, a beautiful vintage vinyl copy of 'Eli and the 13th Confession,' one of the albums in Laura Nyro's classic trilogy that also includes 'New York Tendaberry' and 'Christmas and the Beads of Sweat.' In these groundbreaking, prescient albums of the late 60s and early 70s, Nyro charts a new course for female, singer songwriters, out of step with its time, ahead of her time. True innovators are often misunderstood until the world catches up with them. Laura Nyro never quite got to enjoy the world's recognition of her genius and she died too young to witness her musical offspring. As Nyro fan Rickie Lee Jones has observed, "Too bad everyone waits until people are dead. She could have used that glory."
Nyro rose to top of (my) mind recently when I read Barney Hoskyn's appreciative profile in the January issue of UNCUT magazine. In his concise, but well crafted prose, Hoskyns outlines her rise and fall. A gifted and prolific songwriter, Laura Nyro wrote such timeless songs as 'Wedding Bell Blues,' 'Stoney End,' ' Eli's Coming,' and 'And When I Die,' among others. She recorded with Columbia a series of well-done to over-produced albums of songs that bridged the Brill Building song craft of Ellie Greenwich and Carole King and the 1970s Singer Songwriters.
However, Nyro's career was to be studded with ups and downs. On the strength of her first album and a powerful collection of songs, an inexperienced Nyro was invited to play Monterey Pop in 1967. In contrast to the raw emotion of fellow Monterey Pop artists like Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, just emerging, Nyro seemed out of step, too East Coast slick, too produced, too traditional. Her poetry, her charm, her sincerity, all was lost on Monterey's stoned-out audience and they booed her off stage.
This disaster, for which she was miscast, would dog her for the rest of her too short life.
It was the first big gig of her career, and not the right one. Not only wasn't she ready for the 'big' stage so soon, it was the wrong stage to boot. Monterey Pop did not want what Hoskyns describes as a 'glorious hyper-pop hodge-podge of Broadway theatricality, holy rollong gospel, and streetcorner soul.'
But you may, now.
Over the years, Nyro's influence has been great. Her intuitive mix of genres anticipates many popular contemporary artists who freely borrow from many influences and mix and a match to create a heterogenous sound. No Norah Jones without Laura Nyro.
I like Norah Jones and I like Laura Nyro.
I came across your excellent piece on Laura Nyro's influence on the contemporary female singer-songwriter, and want thank you. If Monterey Pop hadn't been such an awful experience for her, perhaps we'd have more of a visual record of Nyro, i.e. videos, etc. It's a shame she was so poorly advised regarding that gig. I'd like to mention a contemporary of Nyro's, somewhat obscure, but a cult icon for years nevertheless-- Lotti Golden, now gaining popularity online. Both were so fabulously "New York" infusing that jazz infused intellectual sensibility into their music unlike any other artists at the time. Golden's "Motor-Cycle" is worth a listen.
Reply to this
I saw the footage of Monterey Pop. She was NOT booed off stage.
Reply to this
Archival footage of Monterey has shown beyond a doubt that Laura Nyro's recall of her own performance and the audience reaction was a little faulty. There were no "boos." The only thing close was one person saying "beautiful." She did look a little nervous but did a good job with the song, "Poverty Train," which was not the kind of song that was ever going to get an audience wildly cheering..
Reply to this