More than a New Discovery (1967)

Personnel:

Laura Nyro: vocals

The Hi Fashions (Dolores Woods, Fatimah Halim), Linda November, Leslie Miller, Toni Wine: background vocals

Jay Berliner, Al Gorgoni, Bucky Pizzarelli: guitar

Stan Free: piano

Bill LaVorgna: drums

Toots Thielemans, Buddy Lucas: harmonica

Lou Mauro: double bass

Jimmy Sedlar: trumpet

Herb Bernstein: arranger, conductor, flugelhorn

Recorded at Bell Sound Studios, New York City, July/November 1966

Producer: Milt Okun

Production Supervisor: Jerry Schoenbaum

Production Assistant: Jean Goldhirsch

Director of engineering: Val Valentin

Engineer: Harry Yarmark

Label: Verve Folkways

Release date: February 1967 (US)

Chart place: US: did not chart (1973 reissue peaked at 97 in US)

Running time: 36:15

Current edition: Rev-Ola 2008 CD

Self-belief swept the teenage Laura from aspirant to recording artist. In the early-1960s, Artie Mogull - an A&R man at Warner Bros. - signed Bob Dylan to his first music publishing contract. When the contract ended, Mogull quit Warner and went into the music publishing business on his own, taking Dylan with him. He tells the story of how, one day in 1966, Laura's father came to tune the piano in the publisher's office and took the opportunity to sing his daughter's praises. Lou Nigro's persistence paid off. Mogull agreed to audition her: 'Next day, this little, short, unattractive girl comes up, and the first three songs she plays are 'Wedding Bell Blues', 'Stoney End', and then 'And When I Die'. I almost fainted. I went crazy.' Whatever his reservations about her appearance, Mogull was sufficiently impressed to put her under contract, and arranged a meeting with producer Milt Okun to record a demo tape. The tape - containing several songs she never committed to disc - survives and was officially released on CD and vinyl in 2021 as Go Find the Moon: The Audition Tape. It provides early evidence of how the musical decision-makers just didn't get her. We hear Mogull try to pressure her into performing 'standards' as an alternative to her own unorthodox compositions. She resists. Okun was struck by her talent, but felt her songs needed structure. He made it a condition of their working together that they smooth out the irregularities of shape and tempo, to arrive at a more commercial product. She met the same reaction from Herb Bernstein, who was brought in as arranger for the planned album. Meanwhile, Mogull had found a niche for Laura with Verve Folkways, an MGM-owned label that was looking to supplement its folk roster with more pop-oriented acts. Recording took place over two sessions in July and November 1966.

Laura doesn't play piano on the album. Later in her career, it would be vital to her self-expression that she accompany herself, but this was one of many compromises forced upon her if her music was ever to reach the public's ears. Okun, believing her sense of rhythm was too erratic for Bernstein's arrangements, brought in pianist Stan Free. The other players were all seasoned New York session men. Backing vocals were led by a three-woman group Bernstein had worked with before, The Hi Fashions. At the time, studios were limited to 4 or 8-track recording. In this case it was 4-track, and this limitation and the restricted budget forced Bernstein to be inventive, often using no more than four or five instruments per song, with little scope for overdubbing to thicken the sound. Bernstein took a decidedly-commercial line on some numbers - including 'Stoney End' and 'Wedding Bell Blues' - but allowed Laura's unique artistry more freedom on other songs: notably ballads such as 'Lazy Susan', 'I Never Meant To Hurt You' and 'He's A Runner'.

Though at the time Laura played the game and did as she was told, she was evidently unhappy with the results. Looking back, she told Downbeat magazine in April 1970 how Bernstein had knocked out about six arrangements in three hours, eviscerating all subtlety from her hard-won effort: 'I mean, I work months and hours and years and a lifetime on my songs, and if something was a bit difficult, he'd just chop it right out. like if one of my changes was a bit difficult. They really kind of brought down my music.'

In fact, the album stands up well enough. It showcases the range of Laura's influences and her songwriting talent, and she delivers some visceral and truly soulful vocals. In a sense, the money men were vindicated. Laura's songs - regularised, flattened out by commercial interests - were soon being picked up elsewhere, and this album would supply more hits for other artists than any of her later albums. The publishing royalties were assured, even if she'd been denied the chance to record her songs as she conceived them. Within little more than a year, it would be a different story.

In an effort to broaden the label's appeal, in 1967, Verve Folkways rebranded itself as Verve Forecast. Laura's first album was reissued under that imprint in 1969, at which point it was retitled, the cover design changed, and the tracks reordered to put the (by then) most familiar tracks first and last:

Side One: 'Wedding Bell Blues', 'Billy's Blues', 'California Shoeshine Boys', 'Blowin' Away', 'Lazy Susan', 'Goodbye Joe'

Side Two: 'Hands Off The Man (Flim Flam Man)', 'Stoney End', 'I Never Meant To Hurt You', 'He's A Runner', 'Buy And Sell', 'And When I Die'

After Laura's move to her long-term label Columbia, they reissued the album - now titled The First Songs - with yet another change of cover, but with the original track order restored. One wonders whose decision it was to reorder the tracks. By 1969, Laura was taking control of her work in a way she'd been denied hitherto. However, her later indifference to the album, her tendency in interviews to refer to Eli and the Thirteenth Confession as her 'first' album, and the restoration of the original running order in 1973, all suggest that these decisions were out of her hands.

'Goodbye Joe' (Laura Nyro)

Released as a single A-side, 25 February 1967, b/w 'Billy's Blues'

Released as a single A-side, October 1969, b/w 'I Never Meant To Hurt You'

In some ways, a song of valediction is a strange way to open an album, but it's typical of Laura's lyrics that we cannot be sure how she feels about Joe's departure from her life. 'Joe' is the first of several named figures on the album. It would be naïve to identify him, or the others, with any one individual. However, the lyric suggests an affair that began out of town - 'on the highland', among the deer - and continues, perhaps ends, in the city (Manhattan). Whether or not the relationship ended by mutual consent, either way, Joe's 'got to go'. Laura is 'trying not to cry', but stoically she recognises that 'time is full of changes'. Perhaps this is a new beginning, hence the track's pole position. (On the 1969 reissue, the tracks were reordered. 'Goodbye Joe' became the last track on side one, perhaps a more appropriate point to say goodbye, or at least au revoir. But as we've suggested, it's unlikely that Laura had much say over sequencing.)

The first of the album's 'rollicking shuffle-beat numbers' (in Nyro biographer Michele Kort's phrase) features the vocal trio prominently on the title line, and some overemphatic brass. Following 'Wedding Bell Blues', it was the album's second single, released at a time when Verve were still struggling to position Laura as a pop artist. 'That 'Wedding Bell Blues' gal has lost another man and found another hit!' ran the cringeworthy advertising copy for the single. Despite their efforts, and unlike the album's other tracks, this one wasn't picked up by other artists, apart from an amiable version by jazz artist Carmen McRae, with The Dixie Flyers, on McRae's 1970 album Just a Little Lovin'.

'Billy's Blues' (Laura Nyro)

Released as a single B-side, 25 February 1967, b/w 'Goodbye Joe'

After the upbeat opening track, the mood turns melancholy. Chimes introduce this beautiful ballad, presented in a spare arrangement built around piano and guitar. To this, Bernstein added what he called a 'bluesy trumpet thing right out of a nightclub', establishing a smoky atmosphere, like the trails of a dozen cigarettes. Speaking about the album later, Bernstein mentioned an unintended edit that crept in after his work was done. He'd ended his arrangement as it had begun, with two chimes. They disappeared in the final cut. The listener doesn't know that, and in fact, the song ending on Laura's unaccompanied voice is hugely effective.

It's an astonishingly mature vocal for a 19-year-old. Little wonder that those who first heard the teenage Laura thought she must be a much older woman. The sustained vowel sounds, the careful placing of final...