Laura Nyro

Early life Nyro was born Laura Nigro (pronounced as ) in the Bronx, New York City, the daughter of Louis Nigro, a piano tuner and jazz trumpeter, and Gilda (née Mirsky) Nigro, a bookkeeper. Laura had a younger brother, Jan Nigro, who has become a children's musician. Laura was of Russian Jewish and Polish Jewish descent, with Italian-American ancestry from her paternal grandfather. Her father gave her the name "Laura", after hearing the title theme of the 1944 film Laura. After Laura left high school, she chose her own surname, "Nyro", having it pronounced as . As a child, she taught herself piano, read poetry, and listened to her mother's records by Leontyne Price, Nina Simone, Judy Garland, Billie Holiday, and classical composers such as Debussy and Ravel. She composed her first songs at age eight. With her family, she spent summers in the Catskills, where her father played trumpet at resorts. She credited the Sunday school at the New York Society for Ethical Culture with providing the basis of her education; she also attended Manhattan's High School of Music & Art. While in high school, she sang with a group of friends in subway stations and on street corners. She said, "I would go out singing, as a teenager, to a party or out on the street, because there were harmony groups there, and that was one of the joys of my youth." She commented: "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." recordings later made publicly available contradict this version of events. (pictured 1973) became Nyro's manager and arranged a contract with Columbia Records. Soon afterwards, David Geffen approached Mogull about taking over as Nyro's agent. Nyro successfully sued to void her management and recording contracts on the grounds that she had entered into them while still a minor. Geffen became her manager, and the two established a publishing company, Tuna Fish Music, under which the proceeds from her future compositions would be divided equally between them. Geffen also arranged Nyro's new recording contract with Clive Davis at Columbia Records, and purchased the publishing rights to her early compositions. In his memoir Clive: Inside the Record Business, Davis recalled Nyro's audition for him: She had invited him to her New York apartment, turned off every light except that of a television set next to her piano, and played him the material that would become Eli and the Thirteenth Confession. Around this time, she considered becoming lead singer for Blood, Sweat & Tears after the departure of founder Al Kooper, but was dissuaded by Geffen. Blood, Sweat & Tears went on to have a hit with a cover of Nyro's "And When I Die". The new contract allowed Nyro more artistic freedom and control. In 1968, Columbia released Eli and the Thirteenth Confession, her second album, which received high critical praise for the depth and sophistication of its performance and arrangements, which merged pop structure with inspired imagery, rich vocals, and avant-garde jazz; it is widely considered one of her best works. It was followed in 1969 by New York Tendaberry, another highly acclaimed work that cemented Nyro's artistic credibility. "Time and Love" and "Save the Country" emerged as two of her most well-regarded and popular songs in the hands of other artists. During the weekend after Thanksgiving in November 1969, she gave two concerts at Carnegie Hall. Her own recordings sold mostly to a faithful cadre of followers. This prompted Clive Davis, in his memoir, to note that her recordings, as solid as they were, came to resemble demonstrations for other performers. In 1969, Verve reissued Nyro's debut album as The First Songs. The same year Geffen and Nyro sold Tuna Fish Music to CBS for $4.5 million. Under the terms of his partnership with Nyro, Geffen received half of the proceeds of the sale, making them both millionaires. Nyro's fourth album, Christmas and the Beads of Sweat, was released at the end of 1970. It contained "Upstairs By a Chinese Lamp" and "When I Was a Freeport and You Were the Main Drag" and featured Duane Allman and other Muscle Shoals musicians. The following year's Gonna Take a Miracle was a collection of Nyro's favorite "teenage heartbeat songs", recorded with vocal group Labelle (Patti LaBelle, Nona Hendryx, and Sarah Dash) and the production team of Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff. With the exception of her attribution of "Désiree" (originally "Deserie" by the Charts), it was Nyro's sole album of wholly non-original material, featuring such songs as "Jimmy Mack", "Nowhere to Run" and "Spanish Harlem". During 1971, Geffen worked to establish his own recording label, Asylum Records, in part because of the trouble he had trying to secure a recording contract for another of his clients, Jackson Browne, with whom Nyro was in a relationship at the time. Geffen invited Nyro to join the new label and announced that she would be Asylum's first singer; however, shortly before the signing was due to take place, Geffen learned that Nyro had re-signed with Columbia instead, without telling him. When interviewed about the matter for a 2012 PBS documentary on his life, Geffen, who had considered Nyro his best friend, described her rejection as the biggest betrayal of his life up to that point, and said he "cried for days" afterwards. By the end of 1971, Nyro was married to carpenter David Bianchini. She was reportedly uncomfortable with attempts to market her as a celebrity and she announced her retirement from the music business at the age of 24. In 1973, her Verve debut album was reissued as The First Songs by Columbia Records. Later career By 1976, her marriage had ended and she released an album of new material, Smile. She then embarked on a four-month tour with a full band, which resulted in the 1977 live album Season of Lights. After the 1978 album Nested, recorded when she was pregnant with her only child, she again took a break from recording, this time until 1984's ''Mother's Spiritual. She began touring with a band in 1988, her first concert appearances in 10 years. The tour was dedicated to the animal rights movement. The shows led to her 1989 release, Laura: Live at the Bottom Line'', which included six new compositions. Her final album of predominantly original material, Walk the Dog and Light the Light (1993), her last album for Columbia, was co-produced by Gary Katz, best known for his work with Steely Dan. The release sparked reappraisal of her place in popular music, and new commercial offers began appearing. She turned down lucrative film-composing offers, although she contributed a rare protest song to the Academy Award-winning documentary Broken Rainbow, about the unjust relocation of the Navajo people. Nyro performed increasingly in the 1980s and 1990s with female musicians, including her friend Nydia "Liberty" Mata, a drummer, and several others from the lesbian-feminist women's music subculture, such as members of the band Isis. She appeared at such venues as the 1989 Michigan Womyn's Music Festival and the 1989 Newport Folk Festival, of which a CD containing portions of her performance was released. On July 4, 1991, she opened for Bob Dylan at the Tanglewood Music Center in Lenox, Massachusetts. Among her last performances were at Union Chapel, Islington, London, England in November 1994; The New York Bottom Line Christmas Eve Show in 1994; and at McCabe's in Los Angeles February 11 and 12, 1995. The Tonight Show and the Late Show with David Letterman pursued Nyro for television appearances, but she turned them down, citing her discomfort with appearing on television. (She made only a handful of early TV appearances, and one fleeting moment on VH-1 performing the title song from Broken Rainbow on Earth Day in 1990.) According to producer Gary Katz, she also turned down an invitation to be the musical guest on the 1993 season opener of Saturday Night Live. She never released an official video, although there was talk of filming some of The Bottom Line appearances in the 1990s. ==Personal life==