Tag: singer songwriters

Laura Nyro (Music I like)

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This is a live recording from 1978 of “Sweet Blindness” written and recorded by Laura Nyro (1968).
This clip is a lot of fun, the great Frank Sinatra singing with The 5th Dimension on one of his TV specials in 1968. “Sweet Blindness”. Marilyn McCoo and Florence LaRue were pure gold.

The 5th Dimension would cover a total of six Laura Nyro songs and have big hits between 1968 and 1970 as “Wedding Bell Blues” hit #1, “Stoned Soul Picnic” reached #3, “Sweet Blindness” #13, , “Blowing Away” #21 and “Save the Country” #27.

I do recall a high school friend had the 1970 album Stoney End by Barbra Streisand and it would have been around 1976 or so that I read the liner notes (because that’s what one might do in ancient times) and saw her name. Not that the name meant anything to me at the time but I had also seen her name as the songwriter for “Eli’s Coming” on the hit song by Three Dog Night from 1969. Just a point of personal trivia, our now 12 year old Quaker Parrot is named Eli, after the song of course.

It wasn’t until 1994 when I really discovered Laura Nyro. We are coming up on the 30th anniversary of the passing of my father and father-in-law during the same week in February of that year. At the end of the month we were blessed with our second daughter. So during this time there was some introspection going on. A song I had always liked was the Blood, Sweat & Tears version of “And When I Die”.

And when I die and when I’m gone
There’ll be one child born
In this world, carry on, to carry on

Well I could not have found a more appropriate song for the circumstances. Thinking about the lyrics, the words, led me to take a closer look at Laura Nyro and her writing. I was able to find a brief pause in what was otherwise a chaotic time and much more since from her songs. Her voice was full of emotion and her range was very impressive. I was quite sad when I learned of her passing just three years later in April of 1997.

“When I Die” written and recorded by Laura Nyro in 1967.
Blood, Sweat and Tears with “When I Die” (1968). A teenaged Laura had sold the song to Peter, Paul and Mary who were the first to record and release the song in 1966.

Laura was only 17 years old when she wrote “And When I Die” and it was her very first complete song. There was clearly an old soul already full of wisdom to be able to write such a song, at any age. It is the only one of her 43 songs that have been covered that she did not originally record herself. Her first single that she recorded and released at age 18 is “Wedding Bell Blues”, it is on her debut album More Than a New Discovery (1967).

We need to remember how exceptional it was for a young woman to release an album of her own songs. Certainly there is what I would call a latent appreciation out there for Laura. I won’t refer to her as an ‘unknown’ but during her time she did not sell a lot of albums nor did she chart any singles. As noted there were some significant covers of her songs but in truth if you are not the singer of the song, people don’t pay a lot of attention to the songwriter.

Let me give some examples of some of the greatest female singer/songwriters in history. Billie Holiday was 18 when her first single was released but for any song she had written/co-written it would be in her early 30’s for her first album. The trail blazing Carole King released her first single in 1958 at age 17, focused on songwriting her first album was released when she was 28. In the 1960’s Dolly Parton had written singles released by other artists at age 19 and her first album was at age 20. Nina Simone was in her mid twenties for her own songs to appear on her albums, as was Peggy Lee. Joni Mitchell wrote all her own songs and was in her mid 20’s for her first releases. Aretha Franklin was not as prolific a songwriter but did write a couple of her top ten hits such as “Think”(1968), again she was in her twenties. These are all legendary artists but also exceedingly rare.

Later would come names such as Kate Bush, who at age 19 in 1978 was the first female ever in the UK to have a #1 self written song. Then we would have Adel and Taylor Swift for example with self written releases before age 20. I am perhaps belaboring the point but I just want get across the scarcity of such a person as Laura Nyro.

“You Don’t Love Me When I Cry” written and released by Laura Nyro in 1969. If you seek a person who put their heart and soul into a song, one need look no further. With 43 of her songs being covered amounting to hundreds of versions I still feel she is underappreciated.

Here is a song for which I cannot find a cover version, why I have no idea.

‘I am the Blues” Laura Nyro from 1976
“Sweet Dream Fade” was among several songs she had written and recorded (1994/5) while she was in treatment for Ovarian Cancer.

The album Angel in the Dark was released in 2001, four years after her passing. The album also contains some incredible cover versions of songs that were of influence to her such as “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” and “Let It Be Me“. While her early work gets the most attention I think songs like these prove her skills as a singer/songwriter did not fade.

Laura Nyro.com

Guy Clark (Music I like)

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“L.A. Freeway” written and recorded by Guy Clark (1975)

I recall hearing this song on the radio, likely around 1979/80. It was the Guy Clark version of a song he wrote that was originally done by another artist I like, Jerry Jeff Walker, who you may know as the author of “Mr. Bojangles” (1967). Clark was one of those shared discoveries that I often had with my friends, this time with (still) my best buddy Steve. We were starting to realize we liked Country Music. As much as we enjoyed Johnny Cash and Hank Williams, Clark drew us to Texas Country/Folk music. His song “Fools for Each Other” was getting a bit of airplay in 1979 and that may have sparked “L.A. Freeway” to get back on the radio. After that Steve and I were buying his albums.

Through Guy Clark we found as I mentioned above Jerry Jeff Walker, but also an appreciation for the likes of Willie Nelson, Townes Van Zandt, Joe Ely, Kris Kristofferson and we already knew of Waylon Jennings through his other connections, namely with Johnny Cash. Part of our group of pals got spurred on by my still great pal David, and we were very seriously into Lyle Lovett and soon buying all of his albums. When Steve Earle came out with Guitar Town in 1986, well we were seriously in love with Texas at this point. A few of my fellow blogging friends have mentioned several of these names lately as well. Hey Dave from A Sound Day actually lives in Texas!

So for this series I needed to pick one artist from the Lone Star State and why not “dance with the one that brung ya” as the saying goes. There’s a depth and sincerity to Clark’s lyrics that really draws me in. Guy Charles Clark (November 6, 1941 – May 17, 2016) was born in in Monahans, Texas, but grew up in Rockport. I’m just going to list a few of my favorites and let the music do the talking. I want to list about 25 songs but I will restrain myself.

“Old Time Feeling”
“Randall Knife”
“Like a Coat from the Cold”
“Let Him Roll” you just have to listen to the whole story in this song.
“Fools For Each Other”

Bobby Darin

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It was in October of 1959 that “Mack the Knife” by Bobby Darin hit #1 on the Hot 100

Bobby Darin was born Walden Robert Cassotto on May 14, 1936 in the East Harlem part of New York City. He took to music at a young age and as a teen he was playing a number of instruments. His career would begin at the Brill Building in New York. After starting as a writer of demo songs and working with Don Kirshner and Connie Francis, when he started recording those demo songs, someone figured out this guy could sing.

Darin released some singles in 1956 and ’57 but it was not until he co-wrote and recorded “Splish Splash” in 1958 that things started to change for the better. The song came about when Darin was talking to DJ Murray the K (Murray Kaufman) who apparently said “I bet you can’t write a song that starts with “Splish, Splash, I was takin’ a bath” as suggested by his mother Jean Kaufman. Darin gave them both a part of the song credits and publishing rights as Jean Murray. Hence the Darin-Murray as seen on the record in the clip below.

The song reached #3 on the precursor chart to the Billboard Hot 100 that premiered just after on August 4,1958. The song also #2 hit on the R&B chart and #18 in the UK. Canada’s CHUM Radio in Toronto had the song at #3 for two weeks in July.

The songs to follow that year were “Early in the Morning” hit #24 and “Queen of the Hop” hit #9. In 1959 “Plain Jane” #24, “Dream Lover” #2 and as noted above his cover of “Mack the Knife” reached #1 on October 5 and stayed there for six straight weeks and then returned for another three, it would be his only #1 hit song.

In 1960 it was “Beyond the Sea” reaching #6 followed by 32 songs that entered the top 100 list up until 1973. Five of those songs reached the Top Five.

Darin would die on December 20, 1973 following heart surgery, he was just 37 years old. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.

In his short but very prolific career he recorded at least 56 original songs and covered 286. The most popularly covered songs that he wrote are “Dream Lover” with 135 versions, “Things” with 74 versions and “Splish Splash” with 73 versions. In total he wrote or co-wrote at least 46 songs, including “This Little Girl’s Gone Rockin'” by Ruth Brown. He worked with singer songwriter Tim Hardin who would record Darin’s “Simple Song of Freedom”. In 1966 they would both record the Hardin penned song “If I Were a Carpenter”, Darin’s came out first and reached #8.

Jim Croce

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Bad, Bad Leroy Brown

While I have been talking about Songs of Summer, Jim Croce’s “Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown” just happened to on the top of the Billboard chart for 1973. This prompted me to fast track a profile of someone that has been on my list for some time. I was planning a post, quite literally at the end of the summer. It’s hard to believe we are coming up on 50 years since he was lost to his family and his fans.

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