Laura Nyro

The second 2012 inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame I'll discuss is Laura Nyro. Frankly, I knew next to nothing about her before I picked up a two-disc collection called The Essential Laura Nyro. What I found out is that she wrote many well-known songs recorded by other artists, and many of them when she was very young.

Born in 1947, Nyro played the Monterey Pop Festival. One of the first songs she wrote, when she was 17, was "And When I Die," which was recorded by both Peter, Paul, and Mary and the version I know, by Blood, Sweat, and Tears. To listen to the lyrics one can hear the youthful attitude about death, which seems so far away: "And when I die, and when I'm gone, there will be one child born in a world to carry on." At the end of the collection is a live version she recorded much later, only a short time before her own death at age 49 from ovarian cancer, which takes on a whole new meaning.

Most of Nyro's most famous songs were recorded for The 5th Dimension, including "Wedding Bell Blues," "Stone Cold Picnic," "Blowin' Away," and "Sweet Blindness." "Wedding Bell Blues" is an almost-perfect pop song, written when she was only 19. It's terrific structure and her lilting voice hides that is a song about a woman begging for her boyfriend to marry her: "I love you so, I always will. In your voice I hear a choir of carousels. But am I ever going to hear those wedding bells?"

Nyro also wrote "Eli's Coming," a hit for Three Dog Night, and "Stoney End," for Barbra Streisand. Other artists who covered her songs include Suzanne Vega, Carmen McCrae, Chet Atkins, Frank Sinatra, Linda Ronstadt, Maynard Ferguson, Patti Larkin, and Thelma Houston.

After her early days of writing pop influenced by folk and soul, Nyro got more experimental, and this is where she loses me. Her writing took on a more free-form, jazzy style,  the lyrics tending toward the earnest, Lilith Fair stuff. She wrote about motherhood, Native American causes, and animal rights, often in down tempo songs that seemed to blend into one to me. She has a song called "Smile" that includes an instrumental portion, complete with Asian instruments, that sounds like something you might hear while getting a massage.

It's pleasant enough stuff, music that is lovely in the background, but can kind of boring if you listen to it actively. Her voice was wonderful, as clear as a bell, with a wide range.

Her inclusion in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is tenuous, given that she really didn't have hits performing her own stuff. That Hall, unlike others, is much more generous in certain circumstances, especially given that I'm not sure Nyro wrote or performed what can be called rock music. I'm glad to have learned more about her, though.