Laura Nyro, and a contest

May 4, 2011 • 5:18 am

UPDATE: Maurits van der Ween has provided what I consider the first correct answer. Maurits, email me with your address for your prize.

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When I have Weltschmerz, as I did last night, I bail on working and listen to music instead. Often I’ll trawl through YouTube, looking for songs that I once liked but haven’t heard for a while.

When I was in college, one of my favorite singer-songwriters was Laura Nyro, who I’m sure is completely unknown to the younger generation—and maybe to many oldsters as well.  Nyro, born in 1947 to Russian Jewish parents, was a prodigiously talented singer/songwriter, nearly all of whose songs were hits not for herself but for other singers.  These include “Wedding Bell Blues,” “Stoned Soul Picnic,” “Blowin’ Away,” and “Sweet Blindness” (all hits for the Fifth Dimension), “Stoney End” (a hit for Barbra Streisand), “Eli’s Coming” (Three Dog Night), and perhaps her most famous song, “And When I Die,” which was a huge hit for Blood, Sweat & Tears.  Nyro wrote that song when she was only 17 years old; many of her other hits were written before she was twenty-one.

I think her own performances (the best are on the albums First Songs and Eli and the Thirteenth Confession) are far better than the covers by others.  Here’s her singing “And When I Die,” recorded when she was twenty.  Imagine someone writing this at seventeen!

If you like these, here are links to “Wedding Bell Blues” and “Blowin’ Away” (a poorly made but live video of both performances is here).

Nyro died of ovarian cancer when she was just fifty, and has faded into totally undeserved obscurity.

Perhaps I’ll continue with great female singer/songwriters tomorrow; I have several in mind.

But—here’s a music contest.  I’m going to ask a question that won me an original poster for the 1969 Woodstock Music Festival (signed by Grace Slick, Carlos Santana, and other performers) when I asked it on a radio “Stump the DJ” contest. It stumped him.  Any reader who answers it correctly (and I reserve rights to determine whether an answer is “correct”) wins an autographed paperback of WEIT:

Name three rock songs that contain the names of American college and universities, and give the performer(s) and the line containing the name of the college/university.   The line must refer explicitly to an identifiable college or university, not simply to the name of a town where one is located.

First correct answer wins.

65 thoughts on “Laura Nyro, and a contest”

  3. She was amazing. Sort of like Carol King and Neil Diamond, working her way through the musical landscape of the 60’s and 70’s, writing songs for their own careers and others. Major hits.

    Amazing the collaboration of artists then and how much they produced for us Boomers to enjoy and now reflect on.

  4. 1. Steely Dan, “Deacon Blues”
    “They call Alabama the Crimson Tide”

    2. Michael Smith, “Demon Lover”
    “She married a man from Cornell”

    3. John Denver, “Berkeley Woman”
    “I saw a Berkeley woman sitting in a rocking chair.”

    I guess you could argue whether the last two are really “rock” songs.

        1. You mean you’ve never been to Cornell, Illinois? Or Cornell, Wisconsin?

          yeah, me neither

    1. Sven, My Old School refers to a college (Bard?), but doesn’t *say* it outright.

      1. Oh, no. William and Mary won’t do…And I ain’t never going back to my old school. Pretty cut ‘n dried

        2. Oops. My bad, should have continued reading the lyrics past the beginning!

  6. 1. Jefferson Starship, “Rose Goes to Yale”

    “Go find Rose and ask her about Yale”

    2. Tom Lehrer, “The Elements”

    “These are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard”

    Uh, and one of Jeffrey’s. The Steely Dan.

    Mind you, #2 almost certainly doesn’t count, being a 19th century patter song in essence.

  9. Darn, I see someone already got 3.
    I was going to suggest

    1. Steely Dan – Deacon Blues
    (already mentioned)
    2. Mamas and Papas – Creeque Alley
    “Cass was a sophomore, planned to go to Swarthmore”
    3. Randy Newman – Rednecks
    “College men from LSU, went in dumb, come out dumb too”

      1. I’ll add two more from my time up at school and subsequently since:

        ‘UMass’ by the Pixies
        “Oh baby, University of Massachusetts, please”
        &
        ‘Kiss me I’m Shit-faced’ by the Dropkick Murphys
        “I’m an ex football star
        with degrees from both Harvard and Yale”

        Obviously, the second song is much more recent, lol.

    2. I had to go to YouTube to listen to Randy Newman do “Rednecks”…

      Probably won’t be getting a lot of air play these days. Too much lyrical honesty.

    3. Man, these contests suck for those of us on the west coast. Someone had the answer before I was even awake to read the website…

    1. That was the only one that I thought of, too. But Young never mentions Kent State, if my memory serves.

  11. Tom Lehrer ‘Fight Fiercely, Harvard’
    Quote: ‘Fight fiercely, Harvard’

      1. Oh … so you’re implying I can’t read? and … well … you seem to be right in this case (embarrased emoticon)

  12. 1) Jefferson Starship, ‘Rose Goes to Yale’: Go and find rose and ask her ’bout Yale

    2) Steely Dan, ‘Deacon Blues’: They call Alabama the Crimson Tide, call me Deacon blues

    3) Mamas and Papas, ‘Creeque Ally’: When Cass was a sophomore, planned to go to Swathmore

  13. Laura Nyro’s songwriting is sublime, thanks so much for posting about her.

  14. Careful with that Weltschmerz. It’s what did the dinosaurs in. (or so I’ve heard)

    Love Laura Nyro. Never had any of her albums, though.

  15. Here’s my favorite:

    The Modern Lovers
    Modern World
    written by Jonathan Richman
    “Put down your cigarette,
    And drop out of B.U.”

  16. Nuts. Yet another contest I can’t win, and I want the damn signed book.

    What means “Weltschmerz”? Is that German for the blues?

    1. Speaking of American colleges and universities, today is the 41st anniversary of the Kent State shootings in Ohio. Bummer 🙁

        2. Not me. However that was probably right about the day my biological mother was officially given the news she was pregnant with me. 🙂

          1. Ha! I, at least was alive at the time.

            …but only had been for a month….

            I still often find myself wondering how I got so old….

            b&

        4. Even though I was 11 at the time, I agree with Bob. Where did the time go?

      2. When I read “When I have Weltschmerz” I just wanted to give JC a big hug! 😉

        Still, that is what kittehs are for!

      2. This describes most of what is going on in my head most of the time. I also find release, escape even, in music. Music’s really the only thing I like about myself.

        I think Weltschmerz might go a long way toward explaining why smart people can be religious.

        1. I was going to say “I’m lost in music…” etc but have thought better!

  17. I had Nyro’s “Stoned Soul Picnic” on a CBS sampler (remember them?) called ‘Rock Machine’. She was great.

  18. When I read the word “Weltschmerz” my brain decided to read the word as “mittelschmerz”. I momentarily became confused.

  19. She is awesome. Check out this vid of ‘He’s a Runner’. Even with a poor quality recording the power of the performance melts the heart.

  20. One of these days, Dr. Coyne, ONE OF THESE DAYS!… I will win a signed copy of WEIT. I haven’t read it yet, although professor Dawkins mentions you in The Greatest Show on Earth quite a few times.

  21. Well, I guess this doesn’t count, but many of the titles of Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts albums were themed around campus life . . . “On Campus,” “Homecoming,” “Rush Week,” etc. Of course, the songs are another matter . . . “Baby Let Me Bang Your Box,” “Hot Nuts,” “The Bearded Clam,” etc. Apparently, they were the inspiration for Otis Day and the Knights of Animal House fame.

  22. I’ve got a song nobody mentioned:

    UMass, by the Pixies. Qualifying lyric:

    “University of Massachusetts, please”

    It was an alt-hit when I was in high school. I freakin’ loved that band.

  23. And from the world of Jazz, Charles Mingus’s piece, “Vassarlean”.

  24. Perhaps the first song mentioning a college/U specifically, 1930 (lyrics start @ 1:12)

  25. How about Steely Dan’s “My Old School”
    “Oh no, William and Mary won’t do
    and I’m never goin’ back to my old school”

  26. If the band doesn’t also have to be American, I proffer Roxy Music’s “Street Life”:

    “I’m just passing through Harvard or Yale
    Only window shopping, but strictly no sale”

    1. Correction to the lines which were quoted from memory:

      “Pointless passing through Harvard or Yale
      Only window shopping it’s strictly no sale”

      The same song also has the lines:

      “Back to nature boys – Vassar girls too
      Watch what you say, or think, or do”

  27. Maynard Ferguson recorded “Eli’s Coming” and “Stoney End” with his British big band circa 1969. This post of “Stoney End” sounds fine — you get the original stereo image, with Maynard on valve trombone (0:16-0:39), and at the climax of the song (2:25-2:40), Maynard’s trumpet playing combines exceptional physical power with accuracy and lyricism. But this post of “Eli’s Coming” sounds a little goofy — it’s the LP M.F. Horn on a turntable played through speakers into a single microphone, and collapsing the stereo to mono makes a nasal timbre. For better sound quality, Maynard’s albums from this period have been reissued on CD by Wounded Bird Records.

    [And a 9-minute live version of “Eli’s Coming” is on The Lost Tapes of Maynard Ferguson, Volume 2 at Sleepy Night Records, although the live sound would probably strike you as rough if you’re not already a fan. The CD booklet notes that Adrian Drover’s arrangement for Maynard’s big band was inspired by another instrumental arrangement of “Eli’s Coming” that Don Ellis’ big band was playing at the time.]

  28. Obscurity? Perhaps, but certainly not without import. Elton John told Elvis Costello on “Spectacle” that Laura Nyro was the singer-songwriter who most influenced him.

    She was a craftsperson of the highest order.

  29. Laura Nyro and Labelle did a great album of covers, too (“Gonna take a miracle”)–she was an incredible performer on other people’s songs, too.

  30. She was self-named, understandably, since her birth name was Laura Nigro. (And her contemporary, Janis Ian, was born Janis Fink.)

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