Laura Nyro, Obscure Pop Icon

By Maura Starkey

When singer/songwriter Laura Nyro died April 8 at the age of 49, the general response, from the world–musically inclined and otherwise–was, “Who's she?” The loss of this remarkable 60s Soul Diva is a fitting time to explore the question of “why didn't anybody know?”

Even at the peak of her career, Nyro was well-known for being little-known. At the height of her career in the late 60s, Nyro was the most popular female performer after Janis Joplin. Though trained in opera, and a singer since she learned to make noise, she enjoyed her most commercial success as a writer for other singers. Her songs became classics for groups like Blood Sweat & Tears; Peter, Paul & Mary; the Fifth Dimension, and Three Dog Night. Others were recorded by artists ranging from Frank Sinatra to Aretha Franklin.

For a couple of weeks in 1969, when Nyro was 22, three of the songs in the Top Ten were her compositions. These included “Wedding Bell Blues,” (“Bill, I love you so, I always will...”) by the Fifth Dimension; “And When I Die,” (“I'm not scared of dying, and I don't really care...”) by Blood, Sweat & Tears; and “Eli's Coming,” (“Eli's coming, hide your heart girl”) by Three Dog Night.

Later, the Fifth Dimension also had a hit with “Stone Soul Picnic,” (“Surrey down to a Stone Soul picnic...”) and Barbara Streisand had a huge hit with “Stoney End,” (“Going down to Stoney End, I never wanted to go…”) For a moment in pop music history it looked like the sure path to a hit was to sing Nyro's songs. And then she disappeared.

Born in the Bronx, of Italian and Jewish heritage, Nyro was a musical prodigy. She grew up listening to the music of her father, a piano tuner and jazz trumpeter, and the classical music her mother favored. She remembered writing her first song at the age of seven. She took piano lessons for a short while but was largely self-taught. She began performing in the NYC subway system singing with a Puerto Rican a cappella group while still in high school. Though she attended the High School of Music and Art, (the same alma mater of this correspondent) she later said she couldn't recall anything she learned there. What she remembered about high school was frequent visits to the Dean's office, where she would go to announce periodic leaves of absence when she felt she “couldn't go on.” It was a pattern that was to be repeated throughout her life.

She later said that after high school she expected to become “a babysitter,” but it wasn't long before she had, at age 18, her first single, “Wedding Bell Blues.” The single was followed by the album, More Than a New Discovery, on Verve, which included the singles “Wedding Bell Blues,” “And When I Die” and “Stoney End.” It launched her career at age 19. Shortly after the release of More Than a New Discovery, Nyro was booed off the stage at the Monterey Festival in 1967. It was a traumatic experience which led to the first of many long reclusive periods which were to mark her entire career. She had an intense dislike of the business side of music and her exposure to it at a very young age must have compounded her desire to hide.

Nyro’s musical style was as idiosyncratic as her persona. The structure of her music was heavily influenced by the jazz music she grew up with, but it also combined folk, gospel, soul and rock to create a truly original sound.

Nyro sang and produced an album with Patti Labelle (of “Voulez-vous Coucher avec Moi” fame) in a style that became known as “blue-eyed soul.” While performing with Labelle, legend has it that she would have to hide behind curtains before Harlem audiences unreceptive to a white woman with a flair for singing “black music.”

Nyro is credited with pioneering the confessional genre among the female singers who followed her, a style some astute musician/music critics/UFO cult commentators (e.g. Nick Balaban) thoughtfully categorize as “girlie.” Although Nyro produced 12 albums before she died, including a 2-volume “Best Of...” released in February of this year, none of her records ever sold more than 400,000 copies, and her music remains largely a cult phenomenon. It bothered Nyro that other people had huge hits “smoothing out” her songs, and she was stingy with her praise of them. “I enjoy it when people pick up my songs,” Nyro told an interviewer in 1976, “But to be honest, there's nothing I can say about their versions.” Nyro occasionally sang songs by other composers, and had a near hit single with her rendition of Goffin-King's “Up on the Roof,” recorded in 1970.

Nyro's take on death is eloquently summed up in her song, “And When I Die.” She didn't go naturally, but it's safe to say that when she died, another child was born in the world to carry on, and to her loyal following, that's some small comfort.