Soul Picnic: The Music and Passion of Laura Nyro [Hardcover]

Michele Kort (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 031220941x | ISBN-13: 978-0312209414 | Publication Date: April 3, 2002 | Edition: First Edition

Soul Picnic: The Music and Passion of Laura Nyro is a biography of the pioneering singer-songwriter whose recordings and high-drama performances were both beloved and inspiring in the 1960s and '70s. With her groundbreaking honest and passionate lyrics, her unusual and innovative rhythms and melody, Nyro's influence is still felt by singers and songwriters today.

Beginning with her childhood and teen years in the Bronx, and ending with her untimely death from ovarian cancer in 1997, Soul Picnic details how Nyro was "discovered" as a prodigious eighteen-year-old songwriter, had her songs covered with great success by other singers (most famously, the Fifth Dimension, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Three Dog Night, and Barbra Streisand), and created her own remarkable albums, such as Eli and the Thirteen Confession and New York Tendaberry. It also tells how a young David Geffen, as her agent and then manager, helped boost her career, but how she ultimately rejected both Geffen and the glare of stardom for a quieter rural life. Nyro was a very private person, and Michele Kort has uncovered aspects of her life offstage never previously revealed, including a romance with famed rock musician Jackson Browne and the love affair that led to the birth of her son, Gil. It also fleshes out her long, loving relationship with painter Maria Desiderio.

Kort features Laura Nyro's music, the making of each of her albums, the musical influences that informed her work, and the important legacy she has left behind. She interviewed nearly all of the producers and arrangers Nyro worked with, and many of the musicians who played on her albums. The book also includes a discography of both Nyro's recordings and many covers of her songs by well-known artists.

With passion and style, acclaimed journalist Michele Kort has seamlessly joined thorough research with oral history in this beautifully rendered biography of an important, often-overlooked music icon.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Young women growing up in the tumultuous 1960s found that the music of Bronx-born singer/songwriter Nyro was something they could cling to. Journalist Kort, who obviously felt the same way, here portrays the enigmatic performer in this first account of her life (1947-97), cut tragically short by ovarian cancer. Nyro was just a teen when she began what would become a long recording career, though renditions of her works by others (e.g., the Fifth Dimension, Barbra Streisand) would generally be more successful commercially than any of her own. Kort gathers every date, description, and dialog to draw a complete picture of her subject. For the legion of now middle-aged fans, there is perhaps too much minutiae regarding studio sessions, musical arrangements, chord variations, personnel changes, and industry infighting. Nyro's relationship with eventual power-broker David Geffen (her agent, representative, and friend) is more interesting, though the ending of that tale remains somewhat ambiguous. There is nothing here from Nyro herself, except what is culled from numerous interviews and the shared memories of family, friends, and fellow musicians. Musicologists and students of the history of popular music will wallow in the preponderance of information, especially as it pertains to Nyro's unquestionable influence on the music industry and the growth of women as both performers and composers. Those of us who knew every lyric of every song (and still do) would prefer a more accessible portrait of our goddess. Still, this biography is recommended for academic and public libraries. (Photos not seen.) Bette-Lee Fox, "Library Journal"
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

"Some will feel saved by her music," Kort says, and that accurately indicates her stance on the influential '60s singer-songwriter whose "And When I Die," "Eli's Coming," "Wedding Bell Blues," and "Stoned Soul Picnic," became signature songs for Blood, Sweat and Tears, Three Dog Night, and the Fifth Dimension--acts that appealed to a different, more mainstream audience than Nyro herself did. While providing hits to sparkly rock featherweights (i.e., some of the era's consistent hit makers), Nyro endured management by chameleon supreme David Geffen, which was unsettling for her but makes for good reading. Always enigmatic, she was somewhat secretive near the end of her life, after she received "the worst possible diagnosis: stage 4 ovarian cancer," which she "definitely felt she was going to get," says her brother. Nyro was one of the songwriters whose output gives "Age of Aquarius" rock its lingering cachet, and it is unfortunate that too many middle-of-the-road musicians have made elevator music out of it. Kort's admiring biography begins to give Nyro and her impressive music their due. Mike Tribby
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books; First Edition edition (April 3, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031220941x
• ISBN-13: 978-0312209414
• ASIN: 031220941X
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,035,349 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I Feel Like I know Laura, February 26, 2005

By 

Robert Culbertson (Tenafly, NJ United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Soul Picnic: The Music and Passion of Laura Nyro (Hardcover)

From the first time I heard her on the radio singing "Save The Country", I have been enamored with Laura Nyro. I loved her voice, piano and songs, and thought her work on New York Tendaberry was some of the best and most unique work I had ever heard. I also liked her looks and her demeanor. I liked her so much, I wrote her an affectionate letter via Columbia Records in 1969, but, to my regret, she never answered.

Michele Kort, in her outstanding biography of Laura, has made me feel like I did get a chance to meet her, afterall. Her writing pulled me in from the first page, and I felt like I was right along side of Laura as I relived her ascendancy to musical greatness. Ms. Kort informs the reader of many interesting facts, such as Ms. Nyro having been named by her musician father after the song from the classic movie, Laura, and that she had lots of training in voice but had fairly limited piano training.

Ms. Kort takes us through all Laura's albums, what was going on in her life when they were being conceived, developed and recorded, who produced and engineered them, who the other musicians and vocalists were, and the various negotiations Laura engaged in with the record companies to get the result she wanted. I found this information of great interest and I would not have minded at all if the book had been another three hundred pages.

Most gratifying was that Michele Kort has written a quite detailed book which gives the reader a very good sense of Laura and some of her idiosyncrasies, but she always treats her with the greatest respect. Over and over, through the many people who knew Laura and are quoted, one realizes that Laura was a genuinely sweet, kind person who was steadfastly more interested in the integrity of her music than any commercial success that others may have urged her toward.

I fully recommend this book to anyone, particularly to those who are Laura Nyro fans. After reading it, I feel even more sad that she passed on so early, but I at least feel like I got to know her a bit. While she never answered my letter those many years ago, I feel like I finally got to meet her and know her, and I'm even more enamored with her than before.

37 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Enigmatic and Beautiful Life Revealed, April 16, 2002

By 

Jay C. Sabol (Salem, OH USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Soul Picnic: The Music and Passion of Laura Nyro (Hardcover)

This is an engrossing and extremely well written account of the life of mysterious and mythic singer/songwriter Laura Nyro. Baby Boomers who came of age in the latter Sixties and early Seventies will love this wonderfully balanced account of Nyro's tragically short life. The author, not by artificial construction, but by simply telling the story by way of the many authoritative and definitive sources available to her, captures the excitement that Nyro's stunning music created. Younger readers, who are comfortable with their favorite female singer/songwriters of today, will also benefit tremendously by reading this biography. Nyro paved the way for the female singer/songwriter and it was not an easy path to walk. Readers will also be intrigued by the latter part of Nyro's life which, to some, is shrouded in mystery. Without giving anything away to spoil the fun, one is deeply impressed by just how true Nyro was to herself, how uncompromising she was when it came to her music. Despite the fact that Nyro died tragically of cancer at the age of only forty nine, this biography reveals a life of the deepest integrity and beauty. Anyone who reads this book will never forget it.

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The "Secret Key", June 16, 2003

By 

R. Arnold (California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Soul Picnic: The Music and Passion of Laura Nyro (Hardcover)

Reading this book finally gave me that special "secret key" into a world no one was privy to until now. Laura Nyro's mysterious persona was always very compelling. She was someone you never could get too much of, because there never was much we were allowed to know. So, those of us who fell in love with her amazing music always were forced to read into the lyrics, to wonder, to get lost in a trance while listening as we saw visions of New York streets and imagined the people in her songs. I was 17 years old the first time I escaped into Laura's music, and that was decades ago. My reaction as I listened to each song, was that I was literally stunned. It was that melding of jazz, gospel, Broadway and how every note she played on the piano was purposeful and significant. How her voice captured all the raw emotion of real life. She was the pioneer, a woman whose creative abilities were, in my opinion, up until that time, unsurpassed by anyone, male or female. That's why the book is such a treasure. It unlocks so many of the mysteries that many of us had resigned ourselves to. Unlike the other reviewer, I relished the details of the recording sessions and everything else. At the risk of sounding snobbish, I suppose you have to be the following to truly appreciate what is offered here: 1) an absolute die-hard Laura Nyro follower and fan from the 70s, and 2) probably a songwriter and musician yourself in order to understand what it takes to create the kind of work she created. (I am both).
I suppose to sum it up it just felt really great to finally have the real Laura, unshrouded and revealed to us. The great thing is that--it was so refreshing to know that she really was just a regular girl, not someone who particularly wanted that dark aura, just someone who had a real life and didn't go for the showbiz thing very much. And, even better: someone very wonderful in her personal life as far as her generosity and kindness--and full of laughter and loving friendships. I took away the details of a woman who had an unparalleled musical gift, many friends, and a generally nice life. After all these years, and with her death, it is nice to know that she could have just been one of us. I guess you might say this book gave me some "closure". And, I felt happier as a result of reading AND re-reading it, for its endearing, real-life stories about this lovely human being.