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Classic Album Review And Essay: Laura Nyro - New York Tendaberry (1969)
Laura Nyro was elected to the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame in 2012, and I saw the same wide range of opinions about her as in 1967, from an acknowledgment of her genius to puzzlement by obviously younger writers who had to look her up on Wikipedia. She has a solid legacy now, particularly with female artists who saw that she was a true rock pioneer and a woman artist during a time when even the hipper 60s audience tended to marginalize them.
“Music history” can be problematic because it quickly becomes accounts written by people who weren’t at an event or knew the person being written about. History quickly becomes a compilation or editing of available written sources. That’s why the reputation of a King or whatever can change over time if new sources are uncovered.
For example, many medieval accounts of Kings and events like battles are inaccurate because the writer was, more often than not, what we’d now call a publicist. Historians will sift through the data and amend things like unrealistic feats and numbers, which improve accuracy but introduce bias or agendas. There’s plenty of criticism about the Internet and the amount of false information and propaganda, but historians will welcome the vast body of documentation. People in past eras had the same mind-numbing mass of opinions, half facts, lies, attacks, Mansplaining, and serious and trivial concerns that the Internet has made immortal but rarely documented.
So historians might say this or that King was loved by his subjects, which most of us know is a load of bull (find a U.S. President that was loved by 100% of the people), and that judgment will be based on what are available written accounts.
If The Internet existed in Medieval times, it’d look remarkably similar to how it looks now.
In regards to Laura Nyro, the most common line in the 60s was that she was a gifted singer and songwriter whose songs were performed by major artists such as Barbara Streisand, Fifth Dimension, Blood, Sweat & Tears, and Three Dog Night, but whose rising star was dimmed by a disastrous live performance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival where she was allegedly booed off the stage (later found to be more mythology than fact) It was said that she never quite recovered from that, and her career settled into cult status after recording an album called New York Tenderberry, which was seen as obscure, intensely personal, and appeared to accentuate what critics felt was her biggest weakness, a tendency to over emote (due to her very wide technical range).
Another factor was that her songs became Top 40 Hits and were considered unhip or whatever they called a pop hit back then. The irony of that alleged debacle at Monterrey was that were groups there who were more commercial or “pop.” However, dressing like Hippies and Flower Children helped audiences relate to such far-out sounds.
Laura Nyro’s so-called disaster at Monterrey Pop remained a mystery and took on the shroud of myth. However, over the years, details did come out. The full-length documentary of the concert, which showed her performing, made it clear that it might have been a traumatic experience for a young woman who had written and recorded so many hits by the age of 19 and was more familiar with the New York City music scene.
If one views the documentary, it’s evident that her act was a Cabaret-style musical show that wouldn’t have been out of place in New York or any major city, and she was hardly booed off the stage. One of her deep songs, “Poverty Train,” was lyrically just as hard-hitting as Janis Joplin’s blues rock, but given her early pop success, she was probably already in a bad contract with out-of-touch management who were tone deaf to the changes in the 60s music scene.
Her act at Monterrey wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow in the 70s or to an open-minded audience. Plus, when it comes to America, it doesn’t take much for an audience to start acting like 18th Century Beaver Trappers at a saloon show, even ones where many are wearing love beads and getting together and loving one another.
The Album, New York Tenderberry, is seen as one of her most significant works and a milestone in Women’s music. The lyrics were highly personal, though most women who heard the Album probably saw it as a work that expressed themes understood as feelings that women had and rarely expressed that way in popular music. In other words, it could be called a milestone in feminist music (though not the political kind) and in a direct line from the classic 20s blues of Bessie Smith or another’s whose feminism and Lesbian attitudes were muted by the Industry but were quite openly expressed at the time. Listen to full collections of the old blues by women singers, and it’s out there, plain as day.
The Album did have a single on it, “Time And Love,” which was a hit for Barbara Streisand, and it might have been a concession to the label as it sounds like a cut that would have fit into the earlier “Eli And The Thirteenth Confession” Album. Before this Album, her forte was incredibly catchy soul-pop, with a few extraordinarily dark and tough songs added to each Album, like “Buy And Sell,” depicting a stark look at street life. In hindsight, such early songs telegraphed that an entire album of such music was coming as soon as she had any control over her career.
I’ll discuss some songs and focus on the sonic change in her style. For me, the masterpiece is the title cut, which is lyrically introspective and musically adventurous. It floats along, right on the edge of having no conventional structure, and like a late 60 Miles Davis jazz piece, is keyed to the melody line, which the band follows. It was a pretty advanced arrangement for the time, certainly above the level of most 60s rock. That’s not just fan talk; try to duplicate it on a guitar or piano, and it’d be easy to flounder or lose momentum. The meaning of the lyrics is cryptic, the imagery is highly personal, and the line “And the past is a blue note inside me So I ran away in the morning” is flat-out poetry, haiku-like, and lends itself to different interpretations in the mood and intent.
The song opens with a languid piano, almost pure sound, note by note (technically, one would probably say that it was a modal structure like a late 60s Miles Davis record). Her voice is low, and very rich, and the tone is introspective, not full of pain. It builds to an emotional middle section, then floats back to the original mood. The voice and imagery are such that people would probably see it differently depending on their own experience. In my case, I saw it as a woman singing to herself, if that makes sense, and the images a stream of consciousness where the theme is escaping.
It’s a type of song that John Lennon or Dylan could have done and garnered a lot of praise for, but in 1969, even Joni Mitchell, who was also a lyrical genius, could only gain cult status for that kind of work.
My reference to Miles Davis isn’t a random observation. I’ve read here and there that he was at the sessions, and the title cut does have a feel that suggests that room was left for him to overdub some trumpet. However, after hearing the cut, he said that her vocal said all that needed to be said, which is true. If you follow the song, any extra instrumentation would have sounded intrusive. Miles was a genius who always had good instincts, and knowing when not to play was a hallmark of his style.
Also, in the late 60s, Miles moved into ethereal, modal-style music with “In A Silent Way,” which featured long improvisational jams that, on the surface, sounded “spacy” and otherworldly. It was one of many times he changed the face of jazz. That Album was listened to by quite a few rock artists and certainly Nyro. I’m not assuming she was directly influenced by Miles’ late 60s sound, but New York Tenderberry certainly had parts with the same feel (and she was technically proficient enough to comprehend jazz).
The opening cut, “You Don’t Love Me When I Cry was the kind of song that wouldn’t have been out of place in the 90s with the rise of young female singers and composers, but as simple as the title sounds now, it wasn’t something that was commonly heard in late 60s rock. Back then, it was still love songs and women crying about losing men who had to go ramble and be free as the birds. That was very deep for rock in 1969, and the fact that it’s a common notion now makes the lyric prescient.
The album signaled a change in her artistic direction. The sensibility of New York Tenderberry was jazz, which influenced her later albums. By the time she passed away, her most recent albums were either solo performances in the vein of Tenderberry or jazz-influence pop and rock that would have sounded just fine on a Michael McDonald or Diana Krall album. Her “Live At The Bottom Line” is as good as jazz-rock gets.
If you delve further into her legacy, it’s apparent that she’s one of those artists whose reputation and assessment of her work seem to keep improving. Her persona and music were multi-layered, and time has been very kind to Laura Nyro. When one goes down the list of NYC artists who forged legendary reputations as musical street poets, such as Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Jim Carroll, and others, any such collection would be incomplete without the woman who combined romantic street verse with one of the best voices of her generation—a singer who had the chops to match her ambition and vision.
Laura Nyro not only belongs on any such list but should be placed among the first to successfully put the tough but romantic side of 60s New York City life to music.
Al Handa
2022
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