"Reimagining Laura Nyro" w/Alison Krauss, Wayne Shorter, Rickie Lee Jones & Others (9/14)

This could be something. Can't wait to hear Rickie Lee Jones and Chris Potter doing "Been on a Train." Click the link below for Alison Krauss' version of "And When I Die."


Track Listing:
1. New York Tendaberry - feat. Renée Fleming & Yo-Yo Ma
2. The Confession - feat. Becca Stevens
3. Map to the Treasure - feat. Lisa Fischer
4. Upstairs by a Chinese Lamp - feat. Esperanza Spalding & Wayne Shorter
5. Been on a Train - feat. Rickie Lee Jones & Chris Potter
6. Stoned Soul Picnic - feat. Ledisi
7. Gibsom Street - feat. Susan Tedeschi & Steve Wilson
8. Save the Country - feat. Shawn Colvin & Chris Botti
9. To a Child - feat. Dianne Reeves
10. And When I Die - feat. Alison Krauss & Jerry Douglas


http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2014...ilds-on-laura-nyros-and-when-i-die-exclusive/

Although Laura Nyro had some success during her too-short career, especially in the late 1960s and early ’70s, she ranks among artists whose commercial fortunes have never quite matched their influence. Count Billy Childs among those inspired by Nyro’s music: the jazz composer and pianist has delved into her catalog for “Map to the Treasure: Reimagining Laura Nyro.”

The all-star tribute album features contributions from artists including Renee Fleming, Esperanza Spalding, Yo-Yo Ma, Ledisi, Wayne Shorter and Alison Krauss and Jerry Douglas, who join Childs on a version of “And When I Die” premiering today on Speakeasy.

Nyro wrote the song as a teenager, and sold it to Peter, Paul and Mary. The folk trio recorded it for their 1966 release “The Peter, Paul and Mary Album.” Blood, Sweat & Tears later took the song to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart when they recorded it for their self-titled second album in 1968.

This version takes a more quietly mournful tack. Krauss wraps her silky voice around lyrics that, in retrospect, seem achingly prophetic: Nyro was just 49 when she died of ovarian cancer in 1997. Childs accompanies Krauss here with nimble piano figures, and Douglas, who plays in Krauss’ band Union Station, adds a rousing Dobro solo.

Due Sept. 9 on Sony Masterworks, “Map to the Treasure: Reimagining Laura Nyro” also includes Fleming singing “New York Tendaberry” with accompaniment from Yo-Yo Ma, Spalding and Shorter performing “Upstairs by a Chinese Lamp” and Shawn Colvin singing “Save the Country” with help from Chris Botti.

 

Looks terrific! I'm in . . .

 

Some interesting artists! Especially looking forward to hearing Renee Fleming and Lisa Fischer, along with Rickie Lee Jones.

 

I've posted many times how I wish I could hear RLJ's version of "Been on a Train" done at a Laura Nyro tribute concert many years ago, but this will do. With Chris Potter in on it, it'll definitely have a jazz edge. And, yes, Renee Fleming singing "New York Tendaberry" has me curious. Also, Wayne Shorter on "Upstairs by a Chinese Lamp" should be cool. And bless Dianne Reeves for doing something from later on in Nyro's catalog.

 

I still keep hoping for Bette Midler's Nyro songbook album that was talked about a few years ago. There's a version of Bette doing "Been On a Train" from her early days that was terrific (there used to be a version on YouTube, not sure if it's still there)!

 

Wow.

 

Looks fantastic. Maybe this end up placing Laura where she deserves

 

I never heard "Eli & The Thirteenth Confession" until a friend played the Legacy CD for me a couple of years ago.
It was one of those "wow" moments where you ask yourself "how did this escape me for all these years?"
A really unique and really great album.

 

Couldn't find that on YouTube, but did learn there that Alice Cooper was a Nyro fan:

 

I don't know some of the artists on this project, and I think the song selection could be better, but I'm in just for "Upstairs by a Chinese Lamp" with Esperanza Spalding and Wayne Shorter. Very excited about that one.

 

I'm a huge Nyro fan (as I assume most in this thread are) but in general, I haven't had any more than a 'meh' reaction to tribute recordings of her material. Without delving into the age old "should a cover be a re-imagining or simply an update of the original?" question, I haven't gotten anything special from these projects. I'm talking about records like the Judy Kuhn "Serious Playground," the multi-artist compilation "Music of Laura Nyro" (1997) and others from various cabaret singers and smaller artists that I've only sampled on Amazon. They all have charms of their own but I can't see why I'd listen to them over listening to Laura herself. I also think the tracklist from this particular project isn't varied enough. Too many deep(er) cuts from the first three records and nothing (except "to a child") from the entire second half of her career.

Does anybody else really dig any specific interpretation projects/albums of Laura's music enough to spin it regularly?

 

I've enjoyed the Nyro tribute projects, though of course not as much as Laura's own work! I don't think the point is to replace her work, but to maybe introduce it to people via different audiences: country for Alison, jazz for Esperanza and Dianne, classical for Renee, etc.

I rather like the tracklisting in that includes some more obscure tracks -- except for "Stoned Soul Picnic", "Save The Country" and "And When I Die", most of the cuts are album tracks, and ones that aren't normally covered!

 

Yeah, I don't expect any covers to top Laura's own versions, but these types of projects are a way for me to get introduced to unfamiliar artists. Becca Stevens here, for one.

Given that there's three tracks from Christmas and the Beads of Sweat, I'm pretty happy with the tracklist, though I agree it wouldn't hurt to have a song or two more from later on. I was going to suggest "I Am the Blues" from Smile as a good one for someone to tackle, but since it originally appeared on 1971's live Spread Your Wings and Fly, I guess it's technically an early track.

 

Can't find the Bette either -- my friend tells me it was on a site called Bette On Boards, which is no longer around. Fortunately he made me an MP3 of the audio portion. It's just very cool to hear Bette with just Barry Manilow on piano (I'm pretty sure it was him).

 

Both the idea of exposing new listeners to Laura's music and the idea of exposing ourselves to new artists are compelling indeed. Thanks for getting me to think about this a different way.

 

Damn! I'm trying to stop buying albums and they bring this out. I have to get this, just to go along with this one...



Edit: It does seem kind of weird that Alice Cooper is such a Laura Nyro fan, but I guess that just speaks to how good Alice is at promoting that image of himself as against what he actually really is.

 

I had a bit of trouble imagining Manilow playing "Been on a Train", but I guess he's a big Nyro fan. Barry Manilow AND Alice Cooper...


http://www.downbeat.com/default.asp?sect=news&subsect=news_detail&nid=2455

Laura Nyro was an intensely emotional powerhouse of a singer-songwriter who, over the course of a 30-year career, wrote huge hits for others. One measure of her impact is that, for two weeks in 1969, she had written three songs in Billboard’s Top 10. Yet, as a performer, she never won a Grammy award or earned a Top 40 single before her untimely death in 1997 at the age of 49.

A new album of her songs by Grammy-winning composer-pianist Billy Childs and all-star cast of singers and musicians seems likely to win Nyro new fans and reinvigorate her musical legacy. Much more than a tribute album, Map To The Treasure: Laura Nyro Reimagined (Sony Masterworks), which is set for release on Sept. 9, boldly reinterprets and recontextualizes her songs, drawing on jazz and chamber music, while retaining the joyous blend of Brill Building pop, soul, gospel and jazz that made Nyro such an original.

Although she never won more than a fervent cult following as a singer and performer, almost everyone has heard the great covers of Nyro songs like The 5th Dimension’s “Stoned Soul Picnic” and “Wedding Bell Blues”; Blood, Sweat & Tears’ “And When I Die”; Three Dog Night’s “Eli’s Comin’”; and Barbra Streisand’s “Stoney End.” Yet her most lasting legacy might be her influence on a generation of pop and jazz innovators: Joni Mitchell, Donald Fagen, Rickie Lee Jones, Todd Rundgren and Elton John have all acknowledged her as an inspiration.

Also among her early fans were two 16-year-old, budding jazz musicians from Los Angeles: Childs and a young bass player named Larry Klein, who had met in a music theory workshop for musically gifted high schoolers at USC. After class, the two friends found inspiration listening to Nyro records together; they would later play together as sidemen for Freddie Hubbard in the late 1970s. (“Larry got me on that gig,” Childs said recently.)

After that, their musical paths diverged: Childs became a jazz pianist and composer of chamber and symphonic music, while Klein found fame as a producer for Mitchell and other pop and jazz artists. The Nyro project, with Childs arranging and playing keyboards, and Klein producing, is their first collaboration since touring with Hubbard.

The friends have assembled an impressive cast of singers for the project, including Jones, Esperanza Spalding, Renée Fleming (who sings the aria-like “New York Tendaberry”), Alison Krauss, Dianne Reeves, Ledisi, Becca Stevens, Shawn Colvin, Susan Tedeschi and Lisa Fischer (of 20 Feet from Stardom fame).

Guest musicians on the album include soloists Yo-Yo Ma (who accompanies Fleming), Wayne Shorter, Chris Botti, Jerry Douglas, Chris Potter and Steve Wilson, along with the inspired pianism of Childs and a band that includes drummers Brian Blade, Jay Bellerose and Vinnie Colaiuta, bassist Scott Colley and guitarist Dean Parks.

Klein has ample experience producing large, complex projects; he co-produced River: The Joni Letters with Herbie Hancock, which won the Album of the Year Grammy in 2008. That record explored the jazz implications of Mitchell’s songs and led to a greater acceptance of her as a composer of jazz standards; this album could do something similar for Nyro.

In scoring a suite of Nyro songs, Childs drew upon his background in both jazz and classical formats—he has written works for orchestras, including the L.A. Philharmonic as well as leading his own chamber jazz group. The result is full of revelatory moments including inspired soloing by Shorter to adorn Spalding’s pure vocal in “Upstairs By A Chinese Lamp”; Botti’s mournful trumpet elegy in the introduction to a solemn, orchestral interpretation of “Save The Country” (sung with feeling by Colvin); and the way “Stoned Soul Picnic,” fully inhabited by r&b singer Ledisi, morphs at the end into a funky, boppish piano solo.

When selecting songs for the album, Childs chose to explore Nyro’s Gothic imagination, which may surprise fans of her more familiar and sunnier melodies. “Her songs are like part of one long opera,” he said by phone from Los Angeles, “where there are these recurring characters—God and the Devil, her father, her mother, her friends, men who have done her wrong and men who are good. It’s like a great novel.”

He said he felt compelled to include not only some of the hits, like “Stoned Soul Picnic” and “Save The Country,” but also very dark songs that confront the world’s evils, like the heroin ballad “Been On A Train,” harrowingly realized by Jones; and “Gibsom Street,” whose chilling lyrics, sung by a world-weary Tedeschi (sample verse: “Don’t go to Gibsom cross the river/ The devil is hungry, the devil is sweet/ If you are soft then you will shiver/ They hang the alley cats on Gibsom Street”), reminds Childs of German expressionist films like M or The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

Childs enjoyed working with his old friend Klein. One example of their collaboration was rethinking the song “Save The Country.” Nyro’s version had an optimism—it was like a rallying song for the nation’s spirits following the assassinations of President Kennedy; his brother Robert Kennedy; and Dr. Martin Luther King. Childs said, “I loved the tunefulness and the upbeat quality of her version, but Larry had an idea: He said, ‘Why don’t we do it with a more somber approach, as though we’re looking back on the past 40 years, and the country has gone to hell in a handbasket?’ It’s more of a desperate plea, so I approached it that way. And it was a great idea.”

Childs knew he faced a tremendous challenge in reimagining Nyro’s work. “How do you improve on something that’s already perfect?” Childs asked. “The point for me is not to improve on it, because you can’t. But I love this music so much, and it’s had such a profound effect on me, that I want to put it through the prism of my own experience.”

 

I wonder if Todd Rundgren was asked if he wanted to be part of this project?

 

Songwriter Desmond Child is another surprising Nyro fan (I see he named one of his sons Nyro).

 

Ledisi is doing "Stoned Soul Picnic"? I can't wait to hear that.

 

The only two castaways to have selected a Laura Nyro record on the BBC’s ‘Desert Island Discs’…
Type ‘Nyro’ in the search field and check the ‘Musical Choices’ radio button

 

Perhaps it's just me but I'd rather more songs were done from side 1 of Tendaberry instead of side 2 even though I like side 2 as well...I think both You Don't Love Me When I Cry and Tom Cat Goodbye are just stunning in their extremes

 

Yeah, I can't find the article, but I'm pretty sure that he performed "Christmas in My Soul" at the Nyro memorial concert in the '90s where Rickie Lee Jones did "Been on a Train." IIRC, she really really wanted to do "Christmas in My Soul" but I guess Child had dibs on it or whatever.

 

My first thought too. It looks like a great project, I can hardly wait. Laura deserves to be "rediscovered" by a new audience of younger listeners.

 

Singer/songwriter and James Taylor back-up singer David Lasley has been working on a Laura Nyro project forever. Not sure if it ever was/will be released!