•
Rating: In 2004, seven years after the death of this extraordinary singer-songwriter, Columbia released a live (almost) completely unreleased album, a direct evidence of a concert, her with only the piano, held in May 1971 at Fillmore East, where Nyro, who had already graced that stage with Jackson Browne, her flame for a while, enchanted those present (the maximum capacity of F.E., which closed shortly after, was 2600 people) for over an hour.
Laura Nyro was 23 years old at the time of this concert and it is incredible, the maturity, of the voice, powerful and expressive, of the piano technique (despite not being able to read music), of the compositional art of a girl who had already delivered three albums to the history of world music and who would influence generations of songwriters (women, Joni Mitchell, Rickie Lee Jones, and men, Todd Rundgren,...) and who perhaps foresaw the decline, although graceful, that awaited her in the decades to come.
The album begins with an unreleased track, "American Dove" which seems to be an anti-military anthem, with broad melodic resonance, showcasing a clear and powerful voice. Classics by Carole King ("Natural Woman", "Up On The Roof", already included in the preoccupiedly absorbed "Christmas And The Beads Of Sweat") are rendered with participative emotion, Marvin Gaye ("Dancing In The Street", "Ain’t Nothing Like The Real Thing", "Ooh Child") in a blue-eyed soul pianistic key instead of the original energetic funk, and Bacharach ("Walk On By") in a version of masterful intensity. Frequent are the medleys between her songs and others' songs and these are successful, natural, without forcing.
In listening, one encounters sparkling pieces, euphoric like "Lu", "Timer", and reflective like the delicate and long "Mother Earth" (at the beginning of which a flicker of Nyro's sarcasm is caught, in contrast with the purity of the chords and vocalizations in the song), the mysterious virtuosity of "Map To The Treasure", the attentive look at society in "Christmas In My Soul" and "Save The Country" and finally the piercing melancholy of the then-unreleased "I Am The Blues".
"Spread Your Wings And Fly" is an unmissable live of Laura Nyro, stripped either of the Broadway big band arrangements of "Eli And The Thirteenth Confession" or of the dark, yet beautiful melancholy of "New York Tendaberry", in a state of absorbed grace at the peak of her career.
Tracklist and Lyrics
02 Medley: Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing / (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman (04:10)
06 Emmie (04:55)
Oo la, la, la, oo la, la, la, la.
Emily and her love to be, carved in a heart on a berry tree.
But it's only a little farewell love spell, time to design a woman.
Touch me, oh wake me, Emily you ornament the earth for me.
Emily, you're the natural snow, the unstudied sea, you're a cameo.
And I swear you were born a weavers lover, born for the loom's desire.
Move me, oh sway me. Emily, the ornament, the earth for me.
Emmie, your Momma’s been calling you.
Who stole Mama’s heart and cuddled in her garden?
Darling Emmie, la, la, la, oo la, la la.
You're my friend and I loved you, Emily, Emily, Emily, Emily.
She got the way to move me, Emmie. She got the way to move me, yeah.
She got the way to move me, Emmie. She got the way to move me, get up and move me...
09 Save the Country (04:58)
Come on, people! Come on, children!
Come on down to the glory river.
Gonna wash you up, and wash you down,
gonna lay the devil down, gonna lay that devil down.
Come on, people! Come on, children!
There's a king at the glory river.
And the precious king, he loved the people to sing;
Babes in the blinking sun sang, "We shall overcome."
I got fury in my soul, fury's gonna take me to the glory goal.
In my mind I can't study war no more.
Save the people! Save the children! Save the country now!
Come on, people! come on, children!
Come on down to the glory river.
Gonna wash you up and wash you down.
Gonna lay the devil down, gonna lay that devil down.
Come on people! Sons and mothers!
Keep the dream of the two young brothers.
Gonna take that dream and ride that dove.
We could build the dream with love, I know,
We could build the dream with love, I know,
We could build a dream with love, children,
We could build the dream with love, oh people,
We could build the dream with love, I know,
We could build the dream with love.
"We Shall Overcome".
Loading comments slowly
