Laura Nyro
Worker of miracles.
Akey moment in Bronx teenager Laura nyro’s education was hanging out on street corners or in subway stations, singing harmonies with Puerto Rican boys, driven by a need for musical communion and expression.
By all accounts, the child born Laura nigro in 1947 was precocious and demonstrative, with a potent combination of Italian-Catholic and Russian-Jewish DnA, and also music in her genes (father Lou was a gifted trumpeter). She graduated manhattan’s High School of music & Art to forge a sound that bridged late-’50s/early-’60s pop 45 forms and post-Beatles album-cut complexity.
Groomed on jazz standards, doowop, girl groups, motown, the Brill Building, R&B and Broadway, nyro’s reach was broader than her peers, not least in the key influence of nina Simone. She could write top 3 hits too – just not release them under her own name. Between 1968 and 1970, covers of her songs by the 5th
Dimension, Blood, Sweat & tears,
three Dog night, and Barbra Streisand filled nyro’s coffers. this freed her to record increasingly complex material, saturated in dramatic peaks, poetic language, changeable tempos and moods. An almost operatic level of anguish was conveyed by her soulful, occasionally brash three-octave range.
For some, it was too much. And it eventually got too much for nyro too. After a five-year hiatus, she remade herself, setting eco-feminist messages to a calmer blend of jazz fusion and dreamy soul. the sisterhood grieved when nyro died of ovarian cancer, aged just 49. She remains far less feted than, say, Joni mitchell, though the latter admitted to taking cues from nyro; as did Rickie Lee Jones, elton John, todd Rundgren and elvis Costello (and many of kate Bush’s attributes had been nyro’s).
If one’s true impact is measured not by sales but influence, then Laura nyro is a giant, and a genius. Go in deep, and the rewards you discover will match your effort.
“Dramatic peaks, her own poetic language, almost operatic levels of anguish…”