It’s Erev Rosh HaShana, the eve of the Jewish New Year. I’m (supposed to be) all geared up to stand before my Maker, give account for whether I’ve been naughty or nice during the past year, and to pray very very very hard for a positive review in the book of life for the upcoming year (ה’תשע”ח, 5778 by our count).
To tell the truth, it’s a bit hard to be writing about rock music as that Book of Life is being dusted off, the Celestial Inkwell refilled, the Quill of Fate sharpened. I need to write a posting about Penitence (you’d be surprised how impenitent rock stars tend to be), the Cycle of the Year (b-o-r-i-n-g), or at least Jewish peoplehood. And y’all people were so nice about the piece I posted a few weeks ago about Laura Nyro’s stunning live bootleg version of ‘Stoney End’. So here goes:
Spring, 1970, Kent State. “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world”. Bill went Westwards. Mike went south. I went to the East.
I became tribal. We all needed a belief to cling to. 1970 was a seller’s market, and a lot of new beliefs, cults, religions were hitting the shelves. I decided to go for The Hoary. I figured if my direct ancestors had been practicing our particular breed of ritual and practice and deportment for 3000 years, that was a good enough starting point for me. So I chose to strap myself to the Jewish tradition, all the way from Adherence to Zionism.
So I tend to perceive the world through Jewish and Israeli eyes (and in our case, ears). I’ve been doing my bi-annualish Laura Nyro binge on her early years (nothing new there), her first album (excavating treasures from underneath the layers of mucky arrangements), and especially the bootlegs from that period.
And I’ve been listening to Laura as a 19-year old Jewish girl pounding the piano and singing her Jewish heart out. As far as I know, Laura ignored her ancestry (she was ¾ Jewish, only her paternal grandfather was Italian), as did most of the other Jewish girls I knew in 1968 (including Carole King, Janis Ian, Carly Simon, Lesley Gore, Bette Midler, Cass Eliot, and Barbra Streisand).
That doesn’t stop me from retrospectively listening to Laura through parochial ears. I would think that even a Martian observer would detect a certain irony here—so many people ignoring or denying how much their common ancestry has informed them. To be perfectly honest, perhaps the galvanizing moment of my life was sitting in an SDS meeting (as a beer-carrying observer), listening to Messrs Klein, Rothman, Blackman, Cohen and Steinberg bashing Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.
Laura has a Jewish soul. Not a solely Jewish soul. Soon we’ll get to her Motown in My Soul. But the passion, the compassion, the drive to describe and define and analyze—I see these as part of the Jewish character.
So I decided to present you this week with a Rosh HaShana gift – a collection of live bootlegs of Laura performing songs which never appeared on her official studio albums (maybe for Vol. 2 we’ll – all covers, mostly Motown-ish, garnished at the end with a few standards. The order is chronological. For my ears, and I hope for yours, this is a treasure trove of obscure delights:
Written by Carole King/Gerry Goffin for The Drifters. I told the whole Carole King story in SoTW 234: Carole King, ‘Up On the Roof’ (Live, 1971). Someday maybe I’ll write yet another post about why I think Laura owns the song more than The Drifters or even Carole King herself.
The only song in this collection which did appear on an official album (“Christmas and the Beads of Sweat”), I believe the only cover she recorded other than “Gonna Take a Miracle”. I cheated. Sue me.
Written by George and Ira Gershwin in 1928, eventually becoming a jazz standard (here by Judy Garland).
So that’s my Rosh HaShana gift to y’all. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
If I may be so haughty as to address The World on behalf of the Jewish people, we have tried throughout the millennia to contribute to the world we live in. As the prophet Isaiah says (42:6):
I the LORD have called you in righteousness, and shall hold your hand and keep you and give you as a people’s covenant, as a light for the nations.
Over the last 100 years, we’ve contributed not a little to popular culture (Vaudeville, Hollywood, Broadway). More specifically for our concerns here, we’ve given you ¾ of Laura Nyro, and 8 of the 14 songs here.
Wishing everyone, everywhere, regardless of race, creed, color, gender or musical taste a very good year, a Shana Tova, full of health, happiness, pleasant surprises, and great music.
In SoTW 060, I talked about one of the very finest pieces of music I know, the 1961 live performance of Bill Evans’ first trio, “Live at the Village Vanguard”, with Scottie LaFaro on bass and Paul Motian on drums. I wrote there that ‘this is as beautiful as music gets, and no words can rival that’. This album is also widely acknowledged as being the invention of the modern piano trio. The recording was made on June 25, 1961. Ten days later, on July 5, LaFaro ran his car into a tree and was killed instantly.
He and Evans hadn’t been buddies. LaFaro harped at Evans frequently to give up his voracious heroin habit, to no avail. But LaFaro’s death had a debilitating effect on Evans. He lost interest in playing for half a year. Evans: “Musically everything seemed to stop. I didn’t even play at home.” His only recording sessions were unenthusiastic efforts, done only to earn a few bucks to support his habit. Bill’s brother remembers him wandering around NYC wearing some of LaFaro’s clothes. It was a bleak time.
On April 4, 1962, Evans made his first attempt to record a solo album. He recorded four cuts and aborted the session. The recordings were shelved until they were released in 1981without fanfare on a posthumous hodgepodge album of outtakes, “Conception”.
The four cuts–the Irish standard ‘Danny Boy’; a Dave Brubeck original ‘In Your Own Sweet Way’; and two standards, ‘Easy to Love’ and ‘Like Someone in Love’, have been considered Evans eulogy to Scott LaFaro. They’re uneven, unfinished, unpolished. But they are performances in which the man’s soul is speaking directly. Without mediation, without technical obstacles. Evans, his pain, and the music. Evans’ liner notes to his first official solo album, “Alone”, 1968:
Perhaps the hours of greatest pleasure in my life have come about as a result of the capacity of the piano to be in itself a complete expressive musical medium. In retrospect, I think that these countless hours of aloneness with music unified the directive energy of my life. At those times when I have achieved this sense of oneness while playing alone, the many technical or analytic aspects of the music happened of themselves with positive Tightness which always served to remind me that to understand music most profoundly one only has to be listening well. Perhaps it is a peculiarity of mine that despite the fact that I am a professional performer, it is true that I have always preferred playing without an audience. This has nothing to do with my desire to communicate or not, but rather I think just a problem of personal self-consciousness which had to be conquered through discipline and concentration. Yet, to know one is truly alone with one’s instrument and music has always been an attractive and conducive situation for me to find my best playing level. Therefore, what I desired to present in a solo piano recording was especially this unique feeling.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Brad Mehldau’s very fine new solo album, “Live in Marciac” and how differently he performs as a soloist versus his usual trio setting. I also expressed the opinion that I admire his solo works more, across the board. Could it be that I’m saying I like solo piano jazz?
Bill Evans towers over the last 50 years of jazz piano. He recorded from 1960 till his death in 1980. Three major jazz pianists emerged in the decades that followed, all immeasurably influenced by him – Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and especially Keith Jarrett. And the three of them still exert a great influence over the newer generation of jazz pianists, Brad Mehldau being by far the leader of the pack. The musical resemblance between Granddaddy Bill, Pa Keith and Li’l Brad is unmistakable.
I know it’s not fair to compare musicians, but I spend most of my waking hours doing so. And these three do encourage the comparison–all of them frequently play tunes ostensibly unsuited to quiet, introspective solo piano, usually medium tempo, light love song Standards. It’s a practice Bill Evans started, I believe. The bottom line is that I listen to Bill Evans four or five times as much as I listen to Brad, and to Jarrett hardly at all. I’d like to demonstrate why.
Here’s Bill Evans’ version of ‘Danny Boy’ from that aborted 1962 solo session. And here’s Keith Jarrett solo from 2002, clearly echoing Evans’ treatment. You listen and tell me which of the two men does a respectable, lovely job, and which is expressing a world view of pain, profound insight and gravitas. That, ladies and gentlemen, is why I prefer to listen to Bill Evans playing with one arm tied behind his back (or paralyzed by the needle) to Jarrett at the top of his game.
And here’s Brad Mehldau doing ‘My Favorite Things‘ solo. I find it very admirable. But why do I feel that, in comparison to Bill Evans, I’m watching a kid? Mehldau was 41 at the time of this recording, 10 years older than Evans was in these solo recordings.
I think Keith Jarrett’s a competent but rather superficial jazz pianist, not a drop more. And Brad Mehldau isn’t Bill Evans. That’s okay. No one is. Well, enough with the comparisons. We haven’t come to bury Keith Jarrett or to minimize Brad Mehldau, but to praise Bill Evans.
Here’s ‘Like Someone in Love’, written by Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Burke, a sweet piece recorded by Dinah Shore in 1944. Here’s Ella’s lovely version. And here’s Bill Evans taking a bit of fluff, and investing it with the weight of the weary world.
And then Bill Evans plays it. And he takes you to dark, harrowing places. I listen to this, my kishkes squinch up. Life as a lemon. His deftness only emphasizing the wrenching beauty of the exquisite pain he’s playing. He speaks with the voice of a musician using his art to describe the world as he has viewed it. A man who has experienced all the pain in the world. A man who has a lot to say. An artist who can inform you. What I call life-changing music.
Over the rest of his career, Evans recorded solo infrequently. Two of them are well-known among Evans aficionados. On his very first album, in 1959, he recorded Leonard Bernstein’s ‘Some Other Time’. At one point, he began improvising on the introduction to the song, and the result was his legendary ‘Peace Piece’. In 1966, three days after his father died, Evans recorded a 4-part medley, ‘In Memory of his Father’. Here’s the first part. With his last trio (1979-80), Evans frequently recorded ‘Nardis’ with an extended solo piano introduction, but the style there is muscular and energetic, a whole different ballgame. Here’s a whole long SoTW on the evolution of Bill’s treatments of ‘Nardis’ over the decades. There are also two albums he released in 1968 (“Alone”) and 1975 (“Alone Again”). They’re fine, even moving on occasion; but typically of his middle years, not Evans at his best.
Much less-well known is the two-volume “The Solo Sessions”, recorded January, 1963, but not released until 1984. These are some of Evans best recordings, the fruition of what unevenly accomplished in our four 1962 recordings. If you are as taken by them as I am, dig up the 1963 sessions. They’re moving, profound, unforgettable. For me, works that make listening to music the best part of my life. As always, Bill says it best: Perhaps the hours of greatest pleasure in my life have come about as a result of the capacity of the piano to be in itself a complete expressive musical medium.
I have been listening to Laura Nyro regularly for a very long time – I’d guess I’ve had “Eli & the 13th Confession” binges at least three or four different times a year for the past 49 years now, probably a couple thousand times altogether. Every single time I listen, I discover new joys. And every single time, my admiration for her grows.
You do the physics. We’re talking about one big heap of admiration.
Shall I spell it out? I love Laura. She challenges me, astounds me, bewilders me, frustrates me, rivets me, inspires me, teaches me, consoles me, excites me, reassures me, loves me. She even gets me to dance.
I’ve been listening to two Laura re-issues in recent weeks. The brand-new “A Little Madness, A Little Kindness” presents a new mastering of her first two albums, “More Than a New Discovery” (aka “First Songs”) and “Eli & the 13th Confession” (released here in the original mono mix for the first time). The ear-lifted sound gives me a welcome brace of cold water. After literally thousands of listens, every new angle helps.
The obscure 2012 “Sassafras & Moonshine” is a collection of Laura covers, not always the best-known versions, 12 of the 20 cuts by black singers, hence emphasizing the omnipresent R&B (even gospel) elements in Laura’s writing and performing. It’s deepened my appreciation for a number of cuts – especially some slow ones that I always felt could benefit from a bit more focus, even commercialization, especially Mama Cass’s ‘He’s a Runner’.
Photo – Stephen Paley
So often I think of Laura as a voice from a higher world. In this recent binge I’ve been listening to this early material of hers thinking of her as a (3/4) Jewish girl a year older than myself, thereby trying to drag her down into a graspable reality by putting her into a familiar context. Even that doesn’t dispel the magic, it enhances it. I knew a lot of 18 year-old Jewish girls in 1966, and I listened to a lot of creative young musicians. Laura was – and is and I imagine always will be – unique. You can compare a lot of artists to Laura. You can’t compare her to anyone.
I first discovered Laura Nyro (just as I did Randy Newman and so many others) by studying and cross-checking the liner notes and the songwriting credits on record labels, internet being over twoscore years away. In this case, it was the lead cut on Peter, Paul &Mary’s (finest) album, “Album” (1966), ‘And When I Die’, written when she was 16.
I’m not going to tell you the whole backstory (you can read it elsewhere) about how in 1966 music macher Art Mogull (who had signed the very young Bob Dylan to his first publishing contract) called a piano tuner out of the phone book, who pestered him so much about his daughter’s songs that Mogull told him the 18-year old could come in the next day, how Mogull signed her on the spot (“Over a period of months, I signed [for Verve Records Al Kooper’s] Blues Project, Richie Havens, Tim Hardin, and Janis Ian”), gave her to Milt Okun to handle, how Okun gave ‘And When I Die’ to his group Peter, Paul & Mary; and then passed her on to arranger Herb Bernstein:
Milt Okun teaches Laura arrangements suitable for ‘the average listener’
She was very artsy-fartsy. If you heard ‘Wedding Bell Blues’ the way she first played it for me, you wouldn’t believe it was the same song. She had that little riff—dah bah buh DOO buh DOO—that she used a lot, but she’d stop every sixteen measures and go into another tempo. I said, ‘Look, I’m as artistic as the next person, but you have to think of the commerciality of these things. If you’re gonna change tempo every thirty seconds, you’re gonna lose the average listener.’
The suits didn’t even let Laura play piano on the album. Because her sense of rhythm was idiosyncratic, Okun felt it would be hard for her to lead other musicians through Bernstein’s arrangements, so he hired a studio musician. Janis Ian: “Quite often you weren’t allowed to play on your own records. It was a lot more difficult to be treated seriously as a woman player. And you weren’t expected to be a songwriter, or to lead a band. Those were things the boys did.”
Laura’s (1947-1997) first album (released 1966, when she was 19) has always been somewhat the neglected little sister for me. Sure, it spawned more hits for her than any subsequent album (‘Wedding Bell Blues’ and ‘Blowin’ Away’ for the 5th Dimension, ‘And When I Die’ for Blood Sweat and Tears, and of course ‘Stoney End’ for Barbra Streisand.
But those covers invariably dragged the songs down into radio-friendliness, dumbed down the emotions, smoothed over the rhythmic quirkiness, sanitized the passion. Made it all sweet and non-threatening for Okun’s “average listener”. Middle of the Road-kill.
I always thought of the album as containing a bunch of great songs which were forced to into a girdle (why haven’t those been banned along with Confederate statues?) by The Suits. I’ve often imagined the ‘What If’ album that was never recorded.
I’ve been listening a lot to live performances from the prime of her career (up to her first hiatus, 1966-72), mostly bootlegs of dubious sound quality, as well as some pretty cool covers of the first album from “Sassafras & Moonshine”, hereafter “S&M” (sic).
Until recently I discovered, tucked away inside a 1971 solo Laura bootleg from Seattle (great thanks to fellow Nyrotic Rick Sakoda), a recording of her performing ‘Stoney End’. And I got a revelatory peek at the first album that should have been. (If you care to take a trip to ‘the mythological, apocryphal real album that should have been but never was’ territory, I highly recommend Nick Hornsby’s novel “Juliet, Naked”.)
Stoney End
Here’s the hit version you probably know best, by Barbra Streisand.
And here’s Laura’s 1971 Seattle bootleg version. There’s no real into or ending. She just kind of noodles into it via a bunch of minor chords (even though the song is in major), as if she doesn’t know what song she’s going to sing. At least it’s not that horrific intro Herb Bernstein forced on her.
I was born from love and my poor mother worked the mines
I was raised on the Good Book, Jesus, till I read between the lines
Now I don’t believe I want to see the morning.
Going to the stoney end I never wanted to go.
Mama, let me start all over
Cradle me, Mama, cradle me again.
Stoney End
I can still remember him with love light in his eyes
But the light flickered out and parted as the sun began to rise
Now I don’t believe I want to see the morning…
Never mind the forecast, ‘cause the sky has lost control ‘Cause the fury and the broken thunder’s come to match my raging soul
Now I don’t believe I want to see the morning…
This ‘stoney end’ is both tempting and frightening. ‘The morning’ is bringing a new reality, a new awareness. She wants her mother’s reassurance, but she also wants to break through to this new, adult reality. She’s passionately confused. Just like a 17 year-old rock and roll sorceress. Just like a sexennial music blogger.
This bootleg reading has a minor cast to it, emphasizing the ominous aspect of the journey. But the lyric remains vexingly enigmatic. Streisand once said that she never understood the words. Laura wrote it at 17. Here I am, a grown-up male, 50 years on, still puzzling over what she meant.
Stoney End
I’m just so grateful I’ve discovered this version, ‘Stoney End’ the way Laura meant it, the ‘real’ version. Here are some more alternate versions of Laura songs you may or may not know, all from that neglected little sister of a first album. They may be revelatory for you, or mildly interesting, or near misses, or bloopers. That’s for you to decide.
The important thing is that you listen to Laura Nyro. Because she’s so wonderful in so many ways. Because she’s in a league of her own. Because great music deserves to be listened to. And because it will enrich you. Trust me. Trust her.
Off the top of my head, I can think of three cases in which a composer puts out his version of a song, only to have it quickly co-opted by someone else. I’m not talking about Pat Boone’s version of Fats Domino’s ‘Blueberry Hill’ or Bobby Darin’s version of Tim Hardin’s ‘If I Were a Carpenter’. Those are embarrassing covers. I’m also not talking about Rod Stewart’s cover of Tom Waits’ ‘Downtown Train’. There are kazillions of examples of respectable singers making respectable, respectful covers of worthwhile songs.
I’m talking about the rare case where an original version is eclipsed by a cover, where the subsequent version discovered qualities the author himself didn’t grasp.
Jimi Hendrix (1942-70) kidnapped ‘All Along the Watchtower’ from Bob Dylan. Well, most people think so, including Mr Zimmerman himself. Yours truly is, of course, in the minority dissenting opinion. Dylan, on how he felt when first hearing Hendrix’s version of ‘All Along the Watchtower’: “It overwhelmed me, really. He had such a talent, he could find things inside a song and vigorously develop them. He found things that other people wouldn’t think of finding in there. He probably improved upon it by the spaces he was using. I took license with the song from his version, actually, and continue to do it to this day.”
Clapton (l), Duane Allman (r)
But then Jimi had the tables turned on him with the song ‘Little Wing’, from “Axis: Bold as Love” (1967). Although the album captivated the collective imagination of the entire Freak Nation, ‘Little Wing’ itself went largely unnoticed. In 1970, Eric Clapton recorded it with Derek & the Dominoes (on the same day he recorded ‘Layla’). Hendrix died 9 days later, so we’ll never get to hear his opinion of Clapton’s version. But it was Slowhand’s version that catapaulted the song into the status it now holds, both as a rite-of-passage for wannabe guitarists and as an inspiration for other explorations.
The song itself is a masterpiece of enigma. Here’s Hendrix’ own very elucidating description: “Well, that was one song on there we did a lot of sound on, you know. We put the guitar through the Leslie speaker of an organ, and it sounds like jelly bread, you know….It’s based on a very, very simple American Indian style, you know, very simple. I got the idea like, when we was in Monterey, and I just happened to…just looking at everything around. So I figured that I take everything I see around and put it maybe in the form of a girl maybe, something like that, you know, and call it ‘Little Wing’, in other words, just fly away. Everybody really flying and they’s really in a nice mood, like the police and everybody was really great out there. So I just took all these things an put them in one very, very small little matchbox, you know, into a girl and then do it. It was very simple, you know. That’s one of the very few ones I like.”
Well, okay, Jimi, thanks for that. Jelly bread???
Guitarist (l), Glockenspeil (r)
Hendrix’ recorded version showcases his (right-handed) guitar (flipped over to be played upside down by left-handed Jimi) being run through a Leslie speaker, usually used with Hammond organs, together with a distortion effect giving it a unique tone. Mitch Mitchell’s explosive drums cut the dream with speed; Noel Redding’s bass serves as both a floor and a ceiling, without which they’d probably just float away into the sky; a pinch of glockenspiel provides the celestial. Two and a half minutes. It was one of Hendrix’ performance favorites. I found one collection of 14 bootlegged live performances. Here’s one for you, from the Royal Albert Hall, London, England, February 24, 1969.
Derek & the Dominos’ version is indeed inspired, from the majesty of the very opening guitar riff. Listen for example to this performance by the Allman Brothers, guest-starring Clapton, 2009. The vocals are fine, Clapton’s guitar is fine, Derek Trucks’ solo is really exciting. But it isn’t in the same stratosphere with the Carl Radle (b)/Jim Gordon (d)/Bobby Whitlock (p) rhythm section, not to mention the second lead guitar of Duane Allman. Or the production of Tom Dowd, who is credited by all involved to have been the key moving force in making the legendary “Layla & Other Assorted Love Songs”.
Dowd’s production is genius, pure genius. I don’t need to walk you through ‘Little Wing’ or ‘Layla’ or ‘I Looked Away’ or ‘Bell Bottom Blues’, you’ve listened to them as often as I have. The expansive tapestry of the two guitars, the organ, the drums, the two voices and the bass (that’s all there is), sounding richer and certainly more complex than Phil Spector’s 27 kettle drums on ‘Da Doo Run Run’. You don’t need me to tell you how thrilling and uplifting this music is.
It was D&tD’s version that has inspired the many and varied covers of ‘Little Wing’. There are oodles of virtuoso guitar homages to Clapton/Allman by the likes of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Steve Vai. There are stripped-down melodic versions by the Irish band The Corrs and Tuck & Patti, a knock-out husband (guitar) and wife (vocals) team who perform it as the second half of a medley with another song from “Axis: Bold as Love”, ‘Castles Made of Sand’. If you don’t know Tuck & Patti, give them a listen. They’re not as well-known as they should be, but they are infallibly musically tasteful and technically impressive.
Sting (l), Gil Evans (r)
One of the great arrangers of the 20th century, Gil Evans (here’s a posting I wrote about his work with Miles Davis) was planning a collaboration with Hendrix before the latter died. The pairing is surprising, seemingly disparate beyond fusion. Evans later recorded with his orchestra a CD of Hendrix music, including a version of ‘Little Wing’. It’s so embarrassingly bad, and I have so much respect for Gil Evans, that I won’t even give you the link to it. But Evans did help out Sting with his version of the song, which has gained a well-deserved stature in its own right. It’s an impressive amalgam of other treatments, incorporating both the melodic and personal side of the song as well as the complex, energetic, symphonic orchestration.
So what are we left with here? I think I usually know what subject I’m addressing–a song, an artist, a song as representing an artist, or an artist as expressing himself in a song. But here it’s an unusual aggregate of a song, various artists, a range of approaches. In the end, I don’t go to Hendrix for songs, but for his disassembly of world order. But he has inspired this one jelly bread of a song, haunting, the rare meeting of psychedelia and reality, a most electric and eclectic homage to the ephemeral bliss of the carnal, Derek & The Dominos’ rapturous recording of ‘Little Wing’.
Well she’s walking through the clouds
With a circus mind that’s running round
Butterflies and zebras
And moonbeams and fairy tales
That’s all she ever thinks about
Riding with the wind.
When I’m sad, she comes to me
With a thousand smiles, she gives to me free
It’s alright she says it’s alright
Take anything you want from me,
Anything.
So I tend to perceive the world through Jewish and Israeli eyes (and in our case, ears). I’ve been doing my bi-annualish Laura Nyro binge on her early years (nothing new there), her first album (excavating treasures from underneath the layers of mucky arrangements), and especially the bootlegs from that period.
Laura has a Jewish soul. Not a solely Jewish soul. Soon we’ll get to her Motown in My Soul. But the passion, the compassion, the drive to describe and define and analyze—I see these as part of the Jewish character.
The only song in this collection which did appear on an official album (“Christmas and the Beads of Sweat”), I believe the only cover she recorded other than “Gonna Take a Miracle”. I cheated. Sue me.
10. ‘Baby, It’s You’ (“Late Sky”, unreleased studio recording, 1994-5)
