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Laura Nyro ( NEER-oh; born Laura Nigro; October 18, 1947 – April 8, 1997) was an American songwriter and singer. She achieved critical acclaim with her own recordings, particularly the albums Eli and the Thirteenth Confession (1968) and New York Tendaberry (1969), and had commercial success with artists such as Barbra Streisand and the 5th Dimension recording her songs. Wider recognition for her artistry was posthumous, while her contemporaries such as Elton John idolized her. She was praised for her emotive three-octave mezzo-soprano voice. Between 1968 and 1970, a number of artists had hits with her songs: the 5th Dimension with "Blowing Away", "Wedding Bell Blues", "Stoned Soul Picnic", "Sweet Blindness", and "Save the Country"; Blood, Sweat & Tears and Peter, Paul and Mary with "And When I Die"; Three Dog Night and Maynard Ferguson with "Eli's Comin'"; and Barbra Streisand with "Stoney End", "Time and Love", and "Hands off the Man (Flim Flam Man)". Nyro's best-selling single was her recording of Carole King's and Gerry Goffin's "Up on the Roof". Nyro was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2010, and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012. Life and career Early life Nyro was born Laura Nigro in the Bronx, the daughter of Louis Nigro, a piano tuner and jazz trumpeter, and Gilda (née Mirsky) Nigro, a bookkeeper. Laura had a younger brother, Jan Nigro, who has become a children's musician. Laura was of Russian Jewish and Polish Jewish descent, with Italian American ancestry from her paternal grandfather. Her father gave her the name "Laura", after hearing the title theme of the 1944 film Laura. Nigro and his family often insisted that their surname be pronounced as NIGH-ro instead of NEE-gro to avoid racial connotations. However, after Laura left high school, she chose her own surname, "Nyro", having it pronounced as NEAR-oh. "I've created my own little world, a world of music, since I was five years old", Nyro told Billboard magazine in 1970, adding that music provided, for her, a means of coping with a difficult childhood: "I was never a bright and happy child." As a child, she taught herself piano, read poetry, and listened to her mother's records by Leontyne Price, Nina Simone, Judy Garland, Billie Holiday, and classical composers such as Debussy and Ravel. She composed her first songs at age eight. With her family, she spent summers in the Catskills, where her father played trumpet at resorts. She credited the Sunday school at the New York Society for Ethical Culture with providing the basis of her education; she also attended Manhattan's High School of Music & Art. Nyro was close to her aunt and uncle, artists Theresa Bernstein and William Meyerowitz, who helped support her education and early career. While attending Joseph Wade Junior High School in the Bronx, Nyro performed an early version of the song Eli's Coming in music class to prove to the teacher that rock and roll "wasn't junk". While in high school, she sang with a group of friends in subway stations and on street corners. She said, "I would go out singing, as a teenager, to a party or out on the street, because there were harmony groups there, and that was one of the joys of my youth." She commented: "I was always interested in the social consciousness of certain songs. My mother and grandfather were progressive thinkers, so I felt at home in the peace movement and the women's movement, and that has influenced my music." Early career Louis Nigro's work brought her into contact with record company executive Artie Mogull and his partner Paul Barry, who auditioned Laura in 1966 and became her first managers. However, Nigro later said he did "not even once" mention Laura to any of his clients." Mogull had negotiated a recording and management contract for her, and Nyro recorded her debut album, More Than a New Discovery, for the Verve Folkways label (later re-named Verve Forecast). Other songs from the album later became hits for The 5th Dimension, Blood, Sweat & Tears, and Barbra Streisand. On July 13, 1966, Nyro recorded "Stoney End" and "Wedding Bell Blues" as well as an early version of "Time and Love", as part of More Than A New Discovery at Bell Sounds Studios, 237 West 54th Street, Manhattan. About a month later, she sold "And When I Die" to Peter, Paul, and Mary for $5,000. On September 17, 1966, Nyro and Verve Folkways released "Wedding Bell Blues"/"Stoney End" as a single. "Wedding Bell Blues" became a minor hit, especially on the west coast. She completed More Than A New Discovery in New York on November 29, 1966; and, starting on January 16, 1967, made her first extended professional appearance at age 19, performing nightly for about a month at the "hungry i" coffeehouse in San Francisco. In February 1967, Verve Folkways released More Than A New Discovery. On March 4, 1967, Nyro appeared on Clay Cole's Diskoteck, Episode 7.23, along with Dion and the Belmonts and others, but the recording of the episode is lost. On March 21, 1967, she appeared on Where the Action Is (episode 3.140) with videos of "Wedding Bell Blues" (partially extant), "Blowin' Away" (lost) and "Goodbye Joe" (lost). On June 17, 1967, Nyro appeared at the Monterey Pop Festival. Although some accounts described her performance as a fiasco that culminated in her being booed off the stage, recordings later made publicly available contradict this version of events. Newsweek reporter Michael Lydon reviewed her performance very negatively, writing that "the evening hit bottom" during Nyro's "melodramatic" set. Soon afterwards, David Geffen approached Mogull about taking over as Nyro's agent. Nyro successfully sued to void her management and recording contracts on the grounds that she had entered into them while still a minor. Geffen became her manager, and the two established a publishing company, Tuna Fish Music, under which the proceeds from her future compositions would be divided equally between them. Geffen also arranged Nyro's new recording contract with Clive Davis at Columbia Records, and purchased the publishing rights to her early compositions. In his memoir Clive: Inside the Record Business, Davis recalled Nyro's audition for him: She had invited him to her New York apartment, turned off every light except that of a television set next to her piano, and played him the material that would become Eli and the Thirteenth Confession. Around this time, she considered becoming lead singer for Blood, Sweat & Tears after the departure of founder Al Kooper, but was dissuaded by Geffen. Blood, Sweat & Tears went on to have a hit with a cover of Nyro's "And When I Die". The new contract allowed Nyro more artistic freedom and control. In 1968, Columbia released Eli and the Thirteenth Confession, her second album, which received high critical praise for the depth and sophistication of its performance and arrangements, which merged pop structure with inspired imagery, rich voca.... Discover the Glenna Maynard popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Glenna Maynard books.