Laura Nyro
Time And Love - The Essential Masters
(Audio Fidelity)
"Picture a Parallel Universe where Bob Dylan is just a songwriter whose
songs only hit the top of the charts when performed by more conventional
singers." This, from memory, is a definition somebody, somewhere,
used when talking to me (whose identity, unfortunately, I really can't
recall) about the Laura Nyro paradox: while a lot of her songs are (were?)
quite well-known, her identity as a musician, instrumentalist, singer and
composer is a lot less defined. And "a name written on some records
where other people do the singing" is a tag that can easily apply
to both Nyro and (first-period) Dylan. It was only when his songs were
performed by artists such as Joan Baez, Peter, Paul and Mary, The Byrds,
and Sonny and Cher that paying audiences really started loving those songs,
such as Blowin' In The Wind, that his peculiar vocal timbre, cadences,
and phrasing made so difficult to
"get" on a mass level.
Let's
also think about Joni Mitchell, whose commercial fortunes could easily
have been quite different: just a writer of hits for the likes of Tom Rush,
George Hamilton IV, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Dave Van Ronk, and Judy Collins.
As
sung by others, Laura Nyro's songs conquered a very respectable slice of
the soundtrack to US life in the latter part of the 60s: let's just recall
The 5th Dimension and their versions of Wedding Bell Blues, Stoned Soul
Picnic, and Sweet Blindness; Three Dog Night and Eli's Coming; Blood, Sweat & Tears
and And When I Die; Barbra Streisand and Stoney End. (Let's not forget
fine, but not very commercial, versions such as the cover of Save The Country
recorded by Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger & The Trinity on their album,
Streetnoise.) Funny thing this, Laura Nyro's highest-charting single was
her cover of the Gerry Goffin and Carole King's minor classic Up On The
Roof.
The
original versions of the highest-charting songs written by Laura Nyro are
not at all more "difficult" than the covers, just a lot more
"intense", with a lot of minor irregularities both in the writing
and the performing - think about her use of rubato and her tempo changes!
- that inevitably make most hit versions of her song sound "flat".
Released
in 1967, her debut album More Than A New Discovery (re-released in 1973
under the title The First Songs) presented an artist who, despite being
only 19 (!), was already able to offer a personal, mature synthesis that
was quite au-courant of all the multiple, diverse stylistic currents which
inhabited the US "popular music" panorama of the time. Released
the following year, Eli And The Thirteenth Confession was even better,
thanks also to Nyro's first-hand involvement in producing and arranging
the album. Then, New York Tendaberry (1969) and Christmas And The Beads
Of Sweat (1970) showed a greater maturity that inevitably went hand-in-hand
with a more "selective"
appeal: the hits stopped here. An album of covers, Gonna Take A Miracle (1971),
followed: here Laura Nyro performed quite a few tracks that had been of great
importance for her artistic growth. It was just the end of a chapter, not
of the whole story.
Originally
released about ten years ago, the "Best Of" titled Time And Love
- The Essential Masters (here's a very important note for all you readers
who are easily distracted - in a hurry: this is a different version, and
NOT the one I'm taking about here, OK?) worked as a kind of Greatest Hits
of some sort, placing under one roof the original versions of her songs
that had charted when covered by those aforementioned names, plus other
original Nyro tunes that shared those traits of being for the most part "light
and communicative", and so potentially bound for wider appeal. I didn't
buy it, for the simple reason that I had all that was available by her,
in both LP and CD formats. I bought the three CDs that were re-released
in 2002, more in the hope of a new re-master that could better what to
my ears sounded wrong in the first CDs than in the hope of finding earth-shattering
revelations when it came to the featured unreleased versions/tracks.
(It's
quite funny to think now about the very concept of "Greatest Hits" or
"Best Of", in an age when anybody can easily download practically
anything "at a very cheap price", our access to an artist's repertory
not being in the least restricted anymore by a "low financial risk option" such
as a "Best Of", whatever it meant.)
From
a personal point of view I have to admit that in my opinion no Laura Nyro
"Best Of" from the period Time And Love - The Essential Masters
deals with could be reasonably considered as satisfying without the inclusion
of, at the very least, such tracks as Buy And Sell, Lonely Women, Poverty
Train, Gibson Street, and Captain For Dark Mornings. But I have no trouble
admitting that, within those time limits, Time And Love - The Essential Masters
offers a very coherent picture. And let's not forget it's songs that are
by definition part of the highly selective list called "Modern American
Music" we are talking about.
So,
why on earth did I decide to listen to an album that ten years ago I had
regarded as being not in the least interesting? It's simple: For this new
Gold CD edition, Audio Fidelity and Steve Hoffman - the mastering engineer
who did this new re-master - did not use the digital masters of the previous
CD version; instead, they went back to the original analog tapes. Results
are very impressive indeed: the CD sound is now warm and inviting, it totally
lacks the shrill, unpleasant qualities of the previous CDs. Just minimal
"tweaking", with no digital edits or "fixes". To be more
specific, piano parts (both hands) are a lot clearer, vocal counterpoints
easier to get (and enjoy!), wind instruments warmer and more defined, harmonic
progressions easier to perceive.
Since
my old cartridge is still badly in need of being updated, I decided not
to listen to my old Columbia LPs. The comparison, in the course of a quite
frenetic week, was between this new Gold Edition and my 80s Columbia CDs,
the 2002 CD re-releases, and the Rev-Ola CD re-release from not long ago.
The
only track off the album Smile (1976), Sexy Mama is clearer, the relationship
between vocals and wind instruments a lot better than in the previous CD
version, the same being true of the three tracks off Christmas And The
Beads Of Sweat: When I Was A Freeport And You Were The Main Drag, Blackpatch,
and Up On The Roof. I immediately noticed the different emotive response
provoked by the new version of It's Gonna Take A Miracle featured here:
the vocals are clear, with no unmusical-sounding "peaks"; the
strings are like velvet; the electric bass is present but also plausible;
so the song's bridge is now your classic "handkerchief" moment.
The new sound of Save The Country, off New York Tendaberry, is easy to
appreciate: here, the track is back to its natural "pocket symphony" dimension,
thanks to the presence of majestic-sounding vocals and winds (one can really
see the studio space and hear its acoustic fingerprints).
The
majority of the featured tracks comes off the first two albums. In fact,
five tracks are off More Than A New Discovery/The First Songs, four are
off Eli And The Thirteenth Confession. Talking about the latter, we can
say that the featured versions of Sweet Blindness, Eli's Coming, Stoned
Soul Picnic, and Lu offer the same analytical qualities of 2002's CD while
at the same time lacking the unpleasant shrillness that made for extremely
fatiguing-inducing listening sessions - in fact, at the time I had been
quite surprised to notice that I listened more often to the older, 80s,
version! Here there's no reason to fear Eli's Coming's multiple vocals,
or Lu's half-open hi-hat.
Nyro's
first album is well represented by five classic songs: Wedding Bell Blues,
And When I Die, Blowin' Away, Goodbye Joe, and Stoney End. They all sound
superb: (almost) no more nasty distortions of the previous Columbia (I
also remember the LP quite well!). I think that in a few instances - such
as, And When I Die - Hoffman has managed to somewhat "tame" those
left channel trombones that were also quite present in the Rev-Ola CD version.
Paradoxically,
the strongest effect those listening sessions had on me was to make me
long for more Laura Nyro albums (her whole catalogue, in fact) to be re-mastered
with the same loving care. OK, I'll settle for her first five albums. Only
a dream, maybe. Meanwhile, why don't we give Marshall Blonstein (if I correctly
understood, he's the nice man behind Audio Fidelity) a nice surprise? Let's
all buy a copy of this Audio Fidelity Gold CD Time And Love - The Essential
Masters, see if he's be able to release, say... New York Tendaberry?
Beppe Colli
© Beppe Colli 2010
CloudsandClocks.net | Sept. 18, 2010
