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Laura Nyro deserves to be in the Hall of Fame.A voice breaks the silence, like a spotlight falling on a pitch-black stage. It's a sound so shy and isolated it seems nearly autistic. Slowly, quietly, piano chords make their way around the voice, as if waiting for guidance.
For minutes, vocal and keyboard amble on, until suddenly they erupt with spirit. The singing turns exuberant, the piano becomes ecstatic, and together they form a melody that couldn?t be more winning, easy or true.
Such wild dynamics provided a key hallmark of Laura Nyro songs ? and served as but one element that made them such unique beasts. Her songs had the ability to become undying hits while also remaining shrouded in eccentricity. They were embraceable and elusive at once.
Those poles wound up making Nyro one of the great contradictory figures in the history of pop. While she created some of the most sung songs of the last half-century ? from "Eli's Coming" to "Stoney End" to "Wedding Bell Blues" ? she never managed to sell many records of her own. Her compositions have stood the test of time, yet many in her own boomer generation barely know her name.
Even Elton John, a fan and booster, mispronounced her moniker on national TV recently, calling her Laura NYE-ro. (It?s NEE-ro.)
More people should recognize not only her name but her rarity. That's what makes Laura Nyro's current bait-and-switch relationship with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame so frustrating.
Tomorrow, the controversial Hall will once again induct its latest honorees in a ceremony at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. And, once again, Nyro won't be among them.
For the second year in a row, the author of touchstones like "And When I Die" and "Stoned Soul Picnic" appeared on the nominees list, only to be sidelined in the final vote. Don?t blame me: I put her at No. 1 on my ballot both years.
That's frustrating not only because Nyro's songs have become peers to the sterling work of duos like Bacharach-David and Leiber-Stoller, but because her nexus of influences represents something unique in pop. Hers was a sound that mirrored the broad sonic story of this city itself.
No other composer/performer connected more divergent sounds and cultures from New York. In the singing and the songs of this Bronx-born star, you can hear the grandeur of the Grand Concourse, the striving of the old lower East Side, the chic of Riverside Drive and the soul of Harlem. It?s the sound of uptown and downtown ? sophisticated and earthy, lovable and strange.
When you listen to Laura Nyro albums, starting with her 1968 Columbia debut, "Eli and the Thirteenth Confession," it?s hard to name the precise genre you?re hearing. Is it jazz? R&B? Art-song? Motown? Girl group pop? Or something from the world of classical music?
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