Sassafras & Moonshine: The Songs Of Laura Nyro on CD

Sassafras & Moonshine: The Songs Of Laura Nyro

CD (Compact Disc)

Conventional CD, playable with all CD players and computer drives, but also with most SACD or multiplayers.

deliverable within 2-3 weeks (if available from supplier)

Current price: EUR 15.99

Shipping (United States of America): EUR 19.90

Label:: Ace
Item number:: 3024909
UPC/EAN:: 0029667049627
Release date:: 17.9.2012

Der US-amerikanischen Sängerin und Songautorin Laura Nyro wird von Kollegen und Musikkritikern großer Einfluss auf die Popmusik der späten 1960er und der 1970er Jahre zugeschrieben, wobei das breite Publikum sie eher als Songwriterin, die Fachwelt sie eher als Sängerin und Pianistin wahrnahm.

Laura Nyro war eine der ersten Frauen dieses Genres, wenn nicht die erste, die von der Komposition über die Arrangements bis zur Interpretation ihrer Musik alles selbst beherrschte und sich dadurch auch große künstlerische Unabhängigkeit von der damals nahezu allmächtigen Plattenindustrie schaffen konnte. Die Künstlerin wurde bereits posthum mit einem Tributalbum geehrt, und vor allem die Alben aus der Frühphase ihrer Karriere gelten als Klassiker.

Jetzt also ein Sampler, der aus der von Kritikern gefeierten Singer / Songwriter-Serie kommt, und Laura Nyro-Songs von Künstlern wie The 5th Dimension, Supremes, Esther Marrow, Mama Cass, Melba Moore, Staple Singers u. v.a. enthält.
Alle Songs stammen aus ihren ersten vier Alben ‘More Than A New Discovery‘, ‘Eli And The Thirteenth Confession‘, New York Tendaberry‘ und ‘Christmas And The Beads Of Sweat’, die zwischen 1967 und 1970 erschienen.

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Laura Nyro was famous for serving guests tuna fish sandwiches, her culinary repertoire being slim. I returned the favour: because I knew she’d named her publishing company Tuna Fish Music, I brought her a tuna fish sandwich backstage at the Troubadour in1969.

Yes, I was an embarrassingly diehard fan of the singer-songwriter, one of those young college women (along with more than a handful of men) who mooned over her and her music. She was so passionate, so soulful, so womanly. We were girls still; she seemed to have already unlocked secrets of grownup life and love, even though she was only a couple of years older. She had something to teach us and we were eager to learn.

It didn’t matter if we could understand her elusive lyrics; we felt them. Sassafras and moonshine? That felt to me like being high on liquor and a spice-filled sky. Buckles off shingles / off a cockleshell on Norway basin. That felt exotic and old-fashioned, all at once. Laura led us through a sensory wonderland and we followed, enchanted.

And her music: it burned, it soared, it shuffled, it vibrated. She whispered, she belted, she screamed at times. And we adored every measure.

So, it seemed, did many of the musicians of her time. Everyone wanted to record a Laura Nyro song, from Peter, Paul & Mary to the 5th Dimension, from jazz instrumentalists to all the other artists in this collection. Laura’s songs were gold – even if her own recordings never made a big commercial splash.

And scores of other musical artists who didn’t record Laura’s songs were extraordinarily influenced by her. As singer-songwriter Wendy Waldman told me, Laura liberated musicians to employ all their influences in crafting a pop song – just as she had combined jazz, folk, classical, 60s soul, the Beatles, Dylan and Tin Pan Alley. “All of the great songwriters have combined certain elements, maybe three at a time,” said Waldman, “but [Laura] would combine ten of them. It was so ahead of its time that it’s still ahead of its time.”

Those of us who loved her music worshipped her transcendent performances as well as her brilliant recordings. I was lucky enough to see her more than a dozen times, sometimes sitting just steps away from her as she pounded out her syncopated piano rhythms in a small club. She was like a shaman holding court in the early days of her career; in later years she was a wise and welcoming earth mother, enveloping us with her resonant vocals.

On a hot August night this summer, Laura came back to her hometown, New York City, even though she’s been gone from us since her death in 1997. But Lincoln Center brought her back to life by sponsoring an outdoor tribute concert, featuring artists who variously knew, loved and worked with Laura. Her brother Jan Nigro sang ‘And When I Die’ – the precocious composition Laura wrote in her teens – while her son Gil Bianchini performed a rap to ‘Eli’s Comin’’. Felix Cavaliere of the Rascals, who produced one of Laura’s albums, sang the summer-ready ‘Blowin’ Away’, while Nona Hendryx and Sarah Dash – two-thirds of Labelle – performed several songs off their classic Nyro collaboration “Gonna Take A Miracle”. Melissa Manchester introduced ‘Stoned Soul Picnic’ by reminding us that Laura had asked a question no one had heard before: “Can you surry?”

I was a teenage fan again in the muggy New York twilight, a wide smile stuck to my face. How perfect to hear that music in the city that shaped it – the city that Laura showed us to be, as Bette Midler put it when she inducted her into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame this past spring, “an extraordinary place to be young, alive and in love”.

But I was also that grown up woman now; I had even written a biography of Laura Nyro ten years earlier. Nonetheless, when someone’s music touches you so deeply, is engraved forever on your young heart, you can easily return to the age you were when you heard it the first time.

I suggest that New York City hold a Laura Nyro night every summer from now on. I’ll be there, ready to surry on soul. And if I wasn’t a vegetarian, I’d be eating a tuna fish sandwich while the music played.

By Michele Kort

(acerecords. co. uk)