Composer/producer Charlie Calello knew he was in the presence of something special when he began working on the landmark Eli and the Thirteenth Confession album with Laura Nyro early in 1968.
“I first heard it in the studio; she played me the entire record…and I was dumbfounded,” Calello, who co-produced the album with Nyro, tells Billboard. “I’d never heard anything like it and still haven’t heard anything as good. There was never a record that was actually written by a composer who displayed her emotions and her feelings the way she did.”
Nyro’s musical legacy, complex and underappreciated, is being celebrated with the recent release of Hear My Song: The Collection 1966-1995, a limited-edition box set from Britain’s Madfish Records. It includes Nyro’s 10 studio albums, along with six live albums (two previously unreleased), the 1966 demo tape that landed her first recording contract at the age of 18 and a Live & Rarities disc including more demos, alternative versions, outtakes and live tracks. The collection also comes with a coffee-table sized book of liner notes by Vivien Goldman, a foreword by Elton John and remembrances from Calello, Jackson Browne, Clive Davis, Lou Adler, John Sebastian and others.
The Bronx-born Nyro possessed a three-octave voice and was best known for songs such as “Wedding Bell Blues,” “Stoned Soul Picnic,” “And When I Die” and “Stoney End” — which were turned into hits when covered by the Fifth Dimension, Blood, Sweat & Tears and Barbra Streisand. In addition to music Nyro was an avid feminist and animal rights activist. She passed away April 8, 1997 from ovarian cancer at the age of 49 (her mother died of the same disease, at the same age 22 years earlier) and was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame (2010) and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (2012).
In his foreword, John calls Nyro “one of my all time idols. She wrote songs that had no kind of fixed compass point, they had different sections, codas and various tempo changes. They remain as unique and absolutely spellbinding to this day as when I first heard them in the ‘60s…. She was a giant of a songwriter who sadly didn’t have the legacy and recognition she deserved during the years she was with us.”
Calello, who also co-produced Nyro’s 1976 album Smile, echoes John’s praise about Nyro’s fusion of pop, jazz, R&B and gospel. “The whole thing did not glue together from a pop standpoint,” he explains, “but yet when you collectively put it together, it was its own thing. It had all of those elements — it had the R&B, it had that jazz, all of it — and it also had the honesty she looked for. And also she would rein it in when things seemed to be getting out of control. It was really an amazing experience seeing her arrive at those conclusions.”
For Nyro’s son Gil Bianchini, Hear My Song is a welcome chronicle of his mother’s artistry. “I think it’s a great reminder of a real talent,” says Bianchini, a rapper who records under the moniker Gil-T. He’s also an associate producer of an upcoming documentary that’s in production with director Lisa D’Apolito (Love, Gilda), with no release date yet. “For people who sit down and really listen to the music…it’s not just a melody or a hook or whatever. I just think it’s a great collection of something that’s real and positive, but also something that’s reality-based and can really inspire. It’s a beautiful thing.”
The Hear My Song box set was produced by James Batsford, pulling together catalogs primarily from Sony Music and Concord/Craft, as well as from the Nyro Estate. It’s an outgrowth from a 2020 vinyl box set of Nyro’s Columbia Records recordings, and Batsford says that the CD package “gave us more room to be expansive and tell her story. It wasn’t a completest mentality; it’s more, ‘What are the touchstones of her career, and how can we bring it in an interesting way and include the best possible material out there?’ It’s not just, ‘What can we get our hands on?’ but ‘What’s the best we can get our hands on?’ and bring them together in one place.”
And when it comes to Nyro, Batsford adds, there’s quite a bit that can be considered best-possible.
“I’ve gotten deeper and deeper into her over the years from working on these records, and it astounds me how my favorite record changes from month to month,” he says. “She’s just such a great (artist). Your taste evolves with listening to her records. She’s just timeless.”
Producer Calello says he’s particularly happy Hear My Music includes a wealth of live material, including a pair of previously unreleased concerts from San Francisco in 1994, while Nyro was touring to promote her final album, 1993’s Walk The Dog & Light The Light. “You see the growth of her as a performer,” he says. “When I made Eli she didn’t want to tour; she was really afraid of the audience. But by the ‘80s she had gotten to the point where she loved performing and there was an energy. You could hear the growth and joy, and the performances are simply amazing.”
The 2013 release Live at Carnegie Hall: The Classic 1976 Radio Broadcast was not included, however, due to rights issues.
Batsford, meanwhile, says there’s more coming from the Nyro vaults. He’s planning a vinyl reissue of 2001’s posthumous Angel in the Dark during April on his own New Land Records. Looking ahead, Batsford promises that “there are some bits and pieces I can’t talk about yet. I’m aware of some rarities that exist that I’d love to help to bring to the public at some point. There is still stuff out there that wasn’t possible this time around but are things that will excite people down the line.”
