‘Trees of the Ages: Laura Nyro Live in Japan’ and ‘Go Find the Moon: The Audition Tape’ by Laura Nyro Reviews: Hit Woman

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Two new releases from Omnivore Recordings return the spotlight to the singer-songwriter whose gripping, genre-bending music inspired a generation of folk and soul artists.

 

Laura Nyro recording in New York on Oct. 3, 1968

Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Before the album careers of singer-songwriters Joni Mitchell, Carole King and Carly Simon soared in the early 1970s, there was Laura Nyro. A writer of rollicking melodies and imaginative lyrics, Nyro had a resolute voice and freewheeling piano style that combined Brill Building hooks, folk storytelling and the sway and emotionalism of Black gospel.

Nyro’s aptly titled first album, “More Than a New Discovery,” was recorded in 1966 and released in February ’67. The astonishing debut featured 12 originals—five of which would become defining hits for other artists, including the 5th Dimension, Barbra Streisand, Blood, Sweat & Tears, and Peter, Paul and Mary.

Her best-known pop songs were “And When I Die,” “Stoney End,” “Flim Flam Man,” “Wedding Bell Blues,” “Blowin’ Away,” “Sweet Blindness,” “Poverty Train,” “Eli’s Comin’,” “Stoned Soul Picnic” and “Save the Country.” 

Though her first album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999, Nyro never won a Grammy nor has she posthumously received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award for her body of work.

That may soon change. Omnivore Recordings is releasing two new Nyro albums—“Trees of the Ages: Laura Nyro Live in Japan” on July 16 and “Go Find the Moon: The Audition Tape” on Sept. 10. Both shed fresh light on an artist whose earthiness and naturalism paved the way for the female singer-songwriter movement of the 1970s.

Photo: Omnivore

Released only in Japan in 2003, “Trees of the Ages” features 21 tracks from three 1994 performances there. “Go Find the Moon” features the previously unreleased tape of Nyro’s audition for folk producer Milt Okun, with manager Artie Mogull present, in the summer of ’66.

Nyro’s first album failed to chart, and subsequent ones never climbed higher than No. 32 on the Billboard chart. Yet her ethereal voice and abstract wordplay inspired many artists, including Ms. Mitchell, Todd Rundgren, Elton John, Jackson Browne and Rickie Lee Jones.

From the gleeful desperation of “Wedding Bell Blues” and near-hysteria of “Eli’s Comin’” to the undulating “Stoned Soul Picnic” and bounce of “Luckie,” Nyro’s songs were novel, exuberant and personal. So why didn’t most of her original singles chart?

Named for “Laura,” the haunting theme from the 1944 film of the same name, Nyro was born in the Bronx in 1947. She grew up in a multi-ethnic neighborhood she called “kind of dirty, down, slummy.” At home, music was a family passion.

At age 18, Nyro auditioned for Mogull at his Manhattan office. She ran through several of her songs, and Mogull signed her to a management contract.

Next, Mogull took her to Okun’s studio, where Nyro auditioned several original songs before Mogull asked if she knew any songs other than those she had written. 

Photo: Omnivore

Her deflated response on “Go Find the Moon” is heartbreaking. As Mogull told Nyro’s biographer, Michelle Kort, decades later, “Can you imagine me being stupid enough to ask her if she could do Irving Berlin? I was dumbstruck by her talent.”

But there was friction. Nyro’s melancholy persona and quirky, bohemian look didn’t seem marketable in an era of white go-go boots and miniskirts. Mogull still managed to land her an album deal at Verve Folkways, with Okun producing.

Positioned initially as an original folk voice in the Bob Dylan tradition, Nyro was snapped up by manager David Geffen and Columbia’s Clive Davis soon after her appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967.

In his memoir, Mr. Davis noted that her “white-girl R&B performance” didn’t overly impress an audience subsumed by the hippie counterculture. But Messrs. Geffen and Davis were struck by her originality and eccentricity.

Nyro’s first album for Columbia was “Eli and the Thirteenth Confession,” a 1968 masterpiece recorded after she auditioned the songs in near-darkness for Mr. Davis. She even insisted the album have a certain smell, which was achieved with a perfumed lyric folder.

Next came “New York Tendaberry” in 1969, a moodier album but her most commercially successful. “Christmas and the Beads of Sweat” followed in 1970.

Then in 1971, Nyro released “Gonna Take a Miracle,” renditions of soul classics. The concept felt dated at the dawn of the rock era and arguably undermined her momentum. Disheartened, she left the music business for a marriage.

When she returned in ’76, she was divorced and the landscape had changed. Albums by female singer-songwriters including Ms. Mitchell, Ms. King, Ms. Simon, Patti Smith and Joan Armatrading were more in touch with the angst and aspirations of college-age women. 

Nyro’s next four studio albums lacked her earlier magic. Maybe Mr. Davis was right: She was unwilling to compromise to break through. Nyro died in 1997 at age 49 of ovarian cancer.

Nyro’s failure in the late ’60s to top the charts with her songs may simply be that her fervent, imperfect voice and swooping falsetto lacked slickness and were ahead of their time. AM radio was formulaic then and nascent FM favored hard rockers over singer-songwriters.

Today, Nyro’s songs and live performances still sound fresh and urgent. Like Joan Baez and Nina Simone, her voice rings with early feminist courage and artistic independence. Along the way, she inspired pop and rock to reach new levels of intimacy.