Time and Love | A Dedication To Laura Nyro
Friday 31 | Written By Jessica Pispisa
Chances are you have never heard of Laura Nyro by name, but you may have heard her music on a film or a tv show, like in My Girl where Anna Chlumsky’s character is sweetly singing “Wedding Bell Blues” to a framed picture of the teacher she is crushing on. You may have even heard a soulful cover of “Stoned Soul Picnic” sung by The 5th Dimension in a supermarket that was tuned into an oldie radio station, and still have no idea of the woman behind the melancholic tunes - or even if there was one.
Laura Nyro was born on 18 October 1947 in The Bronx borough of New York City. Her father was a jazz trumpet player and her mother a bookkeeper, and her musical talent was unlocked when she began to teach herself piano and write songs. Her childhood was an unhappy one, but she did find her happiness while singing doo wop cover songs with her friends on street corners, subways and parties around her neighbourhood, before she auditioned for her first manager
She went on to write, compose and record her music, and began to establish herself as a soulful, raven-haired singer-songwriter who sang about unrequited love (You Don’t Love Me When I Cry), death (And When I Die), politics (Christmas in My Soul) and doing right for the upcoming generation (Save The Country). She was bisexual, and wrote love songs to women (Emmie), but had to declare they were for womanhood in general at the time when asked.
Her raw, vulnerable delivery of her songs ranged from cooing to howling - as if she had to get these words out of her system with an urgency that mirrored all the various civil unrests in the US at the time. Eli and the 13th Confession and NewYork Tendaberry – released back-to-back- stand out as classic pieces of a woman laying bare what istromenting her mind and soul and offering company at the same time. Gonna Take a Miracle -one of her final releases before her hiatus- is another essential recording that features pre-Lady Marmalade Labelle providing accompany and backing vocals that gives the listener an imaginary glimpse of what her busking and street performances used to be like.
Listening to one of her albumsreally does feel like you are sitting outside on a step street on a humid summer afternoon listeningto your friend warn you about incoming heartbreakers (“Eli’s Comin’”) and how we should bedrinking her daddy’s moonshine (“Sweet Blindness”)
She didn’t fully embrace the spotlight that was to find her. She was painfully shy and found performing in public an ordeal; only one television appearance exists that we know of. She made an appearance at the legendary Monterey Pop Festival, where critics snapped at everything from her song choices to her appearance.
Although she has no trouble attracting audiences –indeed, her fanbase was small but dedicated- the constant criticisms inevitably pushed Nyro to become a recluse after a couple of albums. The fault for it might just be a combination of poor timing and the personal reluctance to comply by the rules of what was expected from a woman at the time. This was the dawn of the women singer-songwriters who were taking their rightful place in front of the stage such as her contemporaries Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Roberta Flack, Carole King, Nina Simone, Judee SIll and others. She got married, had a baby boy, and moved to Connecticut.
After her divorce in the mid to late 70s, she met her lifelong partner and decided to come back and make more music. She went independent and performed in front of a loving audience a handful of times in countries such as the UK and Japan. Sadly, she died on the 8th of April 1997 at only 49 years old by ovarian cancer (a disease that also killed her mother at the same age, and two years later also tragically, her partner).Today, there seems to be a concerted effort –or amends made- to not let her name fall away into the deep corner of music history again. In 2010 she was posthumously inducted into The Songwriters Hall of Fame, following in 2012 into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
. In 2021, a box set called American Dreamer was released, containing reissues of her albums and rarities never heard before. And finally, a documentary is also currently in development. It’s been heart-warming seeing her name mentioned along-side the fellow artists she has influenced such as Kate Bush, Jenny Lewis and Fiona Apple. Nyro never topped the charts with her own music, but the fact that others (such as Barbra Streisand and The 5th Dimension) did find tremendous success is not a common phenomenon. Nyro allowed herself to dwell into her melancholy and heartaches, and articulated her emotions in a universal way that others could make their own and make most of us come back to her music again and again, like an old friend. The next generations of listeners will have an easier gateway to her music.
On the anniversary of her untimely passing, it’s worth tenderly remembering Laura Nyro, the soulful-songbird who truly did it her own way.
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