Laura Nyro's Nomination For The Rock 'N Roll Hall Of Fame And Museum

Dear Rock N Roll Hall of Fame:

Born in New York on October 18, 1947, Laura Nyro was brought up on city life and summers spent in the lush greenery of the Northeast. She began playing music very early, and enjoyed a wide range of influences through her high school years at Manhattans Music and Art. Laura listened to the late 50s and 60s girl groups, Nina Simone, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Curtis Mayfield and The Impressions, Mary Wells, Dusty Springfield, and the early Burt Bacharach-Hal David songs of Dionne Warwick, among many others. Laura read poetry and at home her mother played records by Leontyne Price and impressionist classical composers such as Ravel, Debussy and Persicetti.

Throughout high school Laura also listened to the protest music of Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, early Bob Dylan the Beatles and others. Laura always "adored" the music of Van Morrison. I was always interested in the social consciousness of certain songs. My mother and grandfather were progressive thinkers, so I felt at home in the peace movement and the women's movement, and that has influenced my music.

Laura made her first extended professional appearance at age 18, singing at the legendary Hungry i coffeehouse in San Francisco Sound. The following year (1966) saw the release of her debut album More Than A New Discovery on the Verve/Folkways label. Its still interesting to note that her Verve label-mates then included The Blues Project, Tim Hardin, Richie Havens, Janis Ian, and Dave Von Ronk; other seminal New York peers included Tim Buckley and Kenny Rankin.

Laura joined Columbia Records in 1968 and released Eli And The Thirteenth Confession, the work of an original and brilliant young talent, (as Jon Landau wrote in Rolling Stone). The summer of 1969 brought New York Tendaberry followed by Christmas And the Beads of Sweat at the end of 1970. These three albums represent a litany of songwriting craft to this day. One year later came Gonna Take A Miracle, Lauras impressionistic cover album of the soul songs of her youth. In 1973, her Verve debut album was acquired and reissued by Columbia as The First Songs.

When I was working on this anthology, and listening back to that music, Laura says of these early recordings, I thought Oh my God - what a madcap energy. I dont know if I can deal with this. (laughs) But its funny because soon I started to get into it and it was very energizing. And a lot of fun. I cried when I heard New York Tendaberry.

Following Gonna Take A Miracle, Laura recorded Smile in 1976. She then embarked on a four-month tour with a full band, which resulted in Season Of Lights, a live album (1977). Her next album, Nested, in 1978, continued Lauras explorations of sound and color. Of the shows that followed the release of Nested she recalls, That tour was special, because I was pregnant at the time and I sang up until a few weeks before I had the baby. Id sing new originals and just drift into the old Curtis Mayfield and The Impressions songs.

Eight months pregnant, Laura Nyro played The Bottom Line in four sold-out performances, wrote Tom Windbrandt in The Soho News. The show was almost understated in its simplicity. Ms. Nyro wore a red strapless dress and performed without any back-up musicians at all. What the performance lacked in texture, it made up for in intimacy. It was almost like having Laura in ones own living room. The baby figured into the between-song-patter: Were both really happy to be here, she announced.

In 1984 Laura released Mothers Spiritual, a major work of 14 original songs. The lyrics were presented at the Chicago Peace Museum. In 1988, at age 40 and in fine voice, Laura took her music on the road again, playing concerts around the country, which resulted in her second live recording - Laura-Live At The Bottom Line, (released on Cypress/A & M, 1989). I quit smoking and it made my instrument richer and more stable, she said at the time. I have this new band, she added, referring to the group led by guitarist Jimmy Vivino. And we have a lot of vitality. The album drew upon a combination of Lauras classic compositions and eight original new songs featuring Roll of the Ocean, and the Japanese Restaurant Song. The tour was dedicated to the Animal Rights Movement.

In 1993 Walk The Dog And Light The Light arrived with the studio version of Broken Rainbow, considered one of Lauras most important songs of social protest. It was written for the film of the same name, which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary of 1985. Broken Rainbow is about the unjust relocation of the Navajo people.
A working musician, Laura has spent much time during her twenties, thirties and forties on the road, singing in clubs and concert halls throughout America and abroad, including her return to Japan in 1994. The Japanese tour was the ultimate fun. I brought my harmony group, and we sang three nights in Tokyo, then took the train to Kyoto. It was very romantic. The language barrier didnt matter. The music was a universal soul connection.

As of this writing in late 1996, a tribute album covering Lauras songs is being produced. The musicians involved in this project include: Suzanne Vega, Pheobe Snow, Sweet Honey in the Rock and many more. Laura is currently writing and is working on a new studio recording and a third live recording - a small taste of which is previewed at the end of this anthology.

Through the years Lauras albums have reflected various musical explorations from simple, down-home singing, to wild orchestrations resembling abstract art. Robert Hilburn of The Los Angeles Times, wrote about Laura, Her contributions have paved the way for the rise of the urban female singer-songwriter.

And Jon Pareles amplified this in The New York Times: If not for Laura Nyro the music of Rickie Lee Jones, Joni Mitchell, and Teena Marie might have been very different. When she released her first album in 1966, Nyro was a nineteen-year old who linked high flown poetry to the ecstatic emotions of soul music, and her singing mixed the pure tones of a soprano with the throbs and swoops of gospel and jazz.

The music she made, noted Concerts East magazine, was a building block for an important group of contemporary artists, particularly in the way they cross- bred jazz, R&B, and pop, while poetically exploring the range of their emotions.

Her voice has been described as a blues soprano, a rich, charcoal-smudged alto, a soul singer who soars - she can make you feel it deep down. Daily Variety wrote, Nyro still has an astonishing voice, a kind of melting, pure-toned soprano, loaded with feeling, that seems drawn in equal measure from some private inner cathedral, and the doo-wop streets of her youth.

Please reconsider Laura Nyro as worthy nominee to The Rock N Roll Hall of Fame And Museum.

Special Thanks To The Laura Nyro Home Page For The Bio Information Taken from Laura's Anthology .