What rock music are you listening to? Non-Jazz, Non-Classical.

[BFrank]

6 minutes ago, felser said:

Incredible writer and singer.

Absolutely! I haven't listened to her in a long time, but I heard this tune by Terry Callier this morning and she immediately came to mind.

 

Edited January 4, 2020 by BFrank

[felser]

2 hours ago, BFrank said:

Absolutely! I haven't listened to her in a long time, but I heard this tune by Terry Callier this morning and she immediately came to mind.

 

Callier's another of my favorites, especially "Dancing Girl" from 'What Color is Love'.  Great Charles Stepney arrangements on his three early 70's Cadet albums.  The cut you have noted is also great.

 

[BFrank]

24 minutes ago, felser said:

Callier's another of my favorites, especially "Dancing Girl" from 'What Color is Love'.  Great Charles Stepney arrangements on his three early 70's Cadet albums.  The cut you have noted is also great.

 

That IS an interesting tune! I've found Callier to be a real enigma. He does stuff like this, but also has that folk/jazz side, and Ordinary Joe is totally different from both.

[soulpope]

4 hours ago, BFrank said:

👍!

[jlhoots]

Odetta Hartman: Old Rockhounds Never Die

[EKE BBB]

[felser]

1 hour ago, EKE BBB said:

Fun stuff, but missing all the bonus cuts on the individual reissues.

[HutchFan]

[Brad]

[soulpope]

5 hours ago, HutchFan said:

👍Excellent👍 ....

[porcy62]

[Matthew]

Eli and the Thirteenth Confession: Laura Nryo. A great gap in my musical listening... I've never listened to a Nryo album in my life, but hearing so many people here praise her, I finally listened to Eli, and it's wonderful! What a great voice. I'm going have to listen to the rest of her albums.

[ghost of miles]

The 2-CD version released in 2011:

[BFrank]

5 hours ago, Matthew said:

Eli and the Thirteenth Confession: Laura Nryo. A great gap in my musical listening... I've never listened to a Nryo album in my life, but hearing so many people here praise her, I finally listened to Eli, and it's wonderful! What a great voice. I'm going have to listen to the rest of her albums.

I haven't heard all her albums, either. But I'm sure they're worth a listen.

[sgcim]

Growing up, my two sisters and I had a kind of peripheral relation to Laura Nyro's extended family. Her cousins went to the same schools we went to, and my sister was friends with one of them. Their father owned a candy store in our neighborhood, and my sister was accused of 'borrowing' some candy from the store without paying for it in JHS!  My sisters loved her music, and went to all of her concerts in NYC.

Then I played on a record with Nyro's bass player, Sunshine. My older sister and her husband were selling their house in VT, and Laura Nyro came over to look at it. Then they moved to MA, and Nyro's manager rented a room in their new house. I did some gigs with Michael Amanti, and the pianist/MD was the producer of Nyro's first album. I hung with him, and he told me stories about LN, until he got sick of me asking questions about her, and had to excuse himself! He said she wrote all her great songs for her first two LPs, and never wrote anything as good afterwards. He made a ton of money off those two albums.

I played in a band with Aaron Sachs, a well-known sax/clarinet player, and it turned out that he lived in the apt next door to the Nyro family in The Bronx, and his son (who wrote the song "I Love Rock & Roll, Put Another Nickel In the Juke Box...) was close friends with LN. AS was good friends with Nyro's father who was a trumpet player. 

 

[Brad]

My girlfriend in freshman year was a big fan and we listened to her a lot. Unfortunately, that relationship didn’t end well and I haven’t listened to her much since then. I saw she died in 97, which I didn’t know. The cause was ovarian cancer and she was only 50. What a shame. A lot late but RIP. 

[felser]

1 hour ago, BFrank said:

I haven't heard all her albums, either. But I'm sure they're worth a listen.

Yes, each and every one of them, especially the first batch through 1971.  This is a really good, economical starting point.  Has her most important work on it.

28 minutes ago, sgcim said:

He said she wrote all her great songs for her first two LPs, and never wrote anything as good afterwards.

In a commercial sense, that is true.  Her music on "New York Tendaberry" and "Christmas and the Beads of Sweat" is, to me, even more rewarding than the first two albums, but the song forms are much more personal and unorthodox.  Her first album has "And When I Die", "Wedding Bell Blues", "Stoney End", and "Blowin' Away".  The second album (Eli and the 13th Confession) has "Eli's Comin" , "Sweet Blindness" and "Stoned Soul Picnic".  And her versions of almost every one (exception is "Stoned Soul Picnic") of them is even better than the excellent hit versions we are familiar with by the Fifth Dimension, Barbra Streisand, Three Dog Night, Blood Sweat and Tears.

[soulpope]

[Brad]

One of my favorites, from when it first came out.

[soulpope]

8 hours ago, Brad said:

One of my favorites, from when it first came out.

Hilarious cover art  ....

[Brad]

5 hours ago, soulpope said:

Hilarious cover art  ....

That was part of the appeal. 

[soulpope]

[soulpope]

Earlier .... :

[Brad]

40 minutes ago, soulpope said:

Earlier .... :

Nice!

[sgcim]

On 1/5/2020 at 3:50 PM, felser said:

Yes, each and every one of them, especially the first batch through 1971.  This is a really good, economical starting point.  Has her most important work on it.

In a commercial sense, that is true.  Her music on "New York Tendaberry" and "Christmas and the Beads of Sweat" is, to me, even more rewarding than the first two albums, but the song forms are much more personal and unorthodox.  Her first album has "And When I Die", "Wedding Bell Blues", "Stoney End", and "Blowin' Away".  The second album (Eli and the 13th Confession) has "Eli's Comin" , "Sweet Blindness" and "Stoned Soul Picnic".  And her versions of almost every one (exception is "Stoned Soul Picnic") of them is even better than the excellent hit versions we are familiar with by the Fifth Dimension, Barbra Streisand, Three Dog Night, Blood Sweat and Tears.

I don't know if you read her biography, but the producer of her first album (HB) describes the train wreck that resulted when they let LN play the piano with the studio musicians on the first try at recording it. She would rush the tempos, then all of a sudden slow down, then stop, etc... It was literally impossible for the best studio musicians in NY to follow her.

It was a complete disaster, and she wound up breaking into tears trying to get through any of the songs. HB decided the only way they were going to be able to record the album was if she didn't play piano and just sang, so they hired a studio pianist to come in and play for her, and she just sang her songs, She was extremely upset during the whole experience.

She was still in HS when she recorded it, so she didn't have much experience playing with other musicians.She didn't get a good reaction when she performed at the Monterey Pop Festival on her own, so she probably needed the help of a more experienced musician until she got a little older.

As far as the subject of comparing her versions of her songs to other performers' versions, I've learned to never bring that up with Laura Nyro fanatics. One time my brother-in-law's sister had an argument over that with her husband, and I didn't think their marriage was going to survive their differences on the subject. I will say that Streisand's version of "Stony End" nauseates me, and that David Clayton Thomas' (BS&T) versions of "AWID" and "He's a Runner" are great, as are The Fifth Dimension's versions of "SSP and "WBB, but I can't listen to anything by Three Dog Night.