![]() ![]() About a month later, she sold " And When I Die" to Peter, Paul, and Mary for $5,000. On July 13, 1966, Nyro recorded " Stoney End" and " Wedding Bell Blues" as well as an early version of "Time and Love", as part of More Than A New Discovery at Bell Sounds Studios, 237 West 54th Street, Manhattan. Other songs from the album later became hits for The 5th Dimension, Blood, Sweat & Tears, and Barbra Streisand. Mogull had negotiated a recording and management contract for her, and Nyro recorded her debut album, More Than a New Discovery, for the Verve Folkways label (later re-named Verve Forecast). However, Nigro later said he did "not even once" mention Laura to any of his clients, adding "they would have laughed at me if I did." Louis Nigro's work brought her into contact with record company executive Artie Mogull and his partner Paul Barry, who auditioned Laura in 1966 and became her first managers. 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." Early career Nyro in a promotional ad for " Wedding Bell Blues" in 1966 ![]() 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. While in high school, she sang with a group of friends in subway stations and on street corners. Nyro was close to her aunt and uncle, artists Theresa Bernstein and William Meyerowitz, who helped support her education and early career. ![]() 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. With her family, she spent summers in the Catskills, where her father played trumpet at resorts. She composed her first songs at age eight. "I've created my own little world, a world of music, since I was five years old", Nyro told Billboard magazine in 1970, adding that music provided, for her, a means of coping with a difficult childhood: "I was never a bright and happy child." 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. However, after Laura left high school, she chose her own surname, "Nyro", having it pronounced as NEAR-oh. Nigro and his family often insisted that their surname be pronounced as NIGH-ro instead of NEE-gro to avoid racial connotations. Her father gave her the name "Laura", after hearing the title theme of the 1944 film Laura. Laura was of Russian Jewish and Polish Jewish descent, with Italian American ancestry from her paternal grandfather. Laura had a younger brother, Jan Nigro, who has become a children's musician. Nyro was born Laura Nigro in the Bronx, the daughter of Louis Nigro, a piano tuner and jazz trumpeter, and Gilda (née Mirsky) Nigro, a bookkeeper. Life and career Early life The Bronx, where Nyro was born Nyro was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2010, and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012. Nyro's best-selling single was her recording of Carole King's and Gerry Goffin's " Up on the Roof". īetween 19, a number of artists had hits with her songs: The 5th Dimension with " Blowing Away", " Wedding Bell Blues", " Stoned Soul Picnic", " Sweet Blindness", and " Save the Country" Blood, Sweat & Tears and Peter, Paul and Mary with " And When I Die" Three Dog Night and Maynard Ferguson with " Eli's Comin'" and Barbra Streisand with " Stoney End", "Time and Love", and "Hands off the Man (Flim Flam Man)". She was praised for her strong emotive vocal style and 3- octave mezzo-soprano vocal range. Wider recognition for her artistry was posthumous, while her contemporaries such as Elton John idolized her. She achieved critical acclaim with her own recordings, particularly the albums Eli and the Thirteenth Confession (1968) and New York Tendaberry (1969), and had commercial success with artists such as Barbra Streisand and the 5th Dimension recording her songs. Laura Nyro ( / ˈ n ɪər oʊ/ NEER-oh born Laura Nigro October 18, 1947 – April 8, 1997) was an American songwriter and singer. ![]()
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