I read that Laura's biggest selling hit was 'Up on the Roof', a Carole King cover she did for her album "Christmas and the Beads of Sweat". I wasn't aware that anything from "Gonna Take a Miracle" charted. In my opinion, EVERYTHING on that great album of covers should have charted. Laura's obvious love of soul and rhythm 'n blues and La Belle's exquisite stylings and harmonies made that recording irresistible--in particular, their version of "The Bells".
@bryancee51506 жыл бұрын
mysterytrain3 It's my favorite album of hers!
@chickchanteuse13 жыл бұрын
Omg, 'The Bells' kills me every time I hear it!
@royanderson95362 жыл бұрын
A moving and evocative tribute to our beloved Laura. I have the cd of Laura's demo tape.
@oughtssought11985 жыл бұрын
always rubs me wrong to hear people say Laura's versions of her songs were ignored. if it is in fact accurate that none of her songs "charted" except the2 covers mentioned in comments here; it is also true that, at least in SF BayArea where I was for HS '68 to '70, most of her 1st album cuts got AMpop radio play. so did several tunes from her 2nd + 3rd albums ... Stoned Soul Picnic, Sweet Blindness, Eli, Luckie, Time and Love, Save The Country all got significant AMradio play. A few of her more personal songs, Gibsom Street for example, got some air play also. it wasn't as if she was ignored in her early career; that came later as she persisted in being more emphatically vocal about Vietnam carnage + govt violence towards civil rights + anti-war protesters.
@aleecat7511 жыл бұрын
Anyone with access to Verve Folkways archives please look for a 1966 tape, a reel to reel demo with the Laura Nyro song "Stand Straight, Fly Right" on it. That's the 3 song demo I played Hohner blues harmonica on with Laura singing and playing piano. I played on two songs. Laura did one alone. Please contact me on my website email address if you have a copy of this music.
@vivicola11 жыл бұрын
OMG please if anyone out there has this tape please make it public!
@aleecat7510 жыл бұрын
***** Thanks you very much! I will try that contact email. Much appreciated.
@jamessonhil529110 жыл бұрын
aleecat75 I've heard rumours that Laura recorded the whole Eli and the thirteenth confession album on Verve/folkways before re-recording it with Columbia. Can you confirm this mr Merrill?
@aleecat7510 жыл бұрын
That's a rumour, not the truth.
@jamessonhil529110 жыл бұрын
aleecat75 Ok thanks for the response! :)
@Primalonna11 жыл бұрын
Alan Merrill is the signer of the original first version of the song "I Love Rock N Roll", he's not just the songwriter. He released the song in 1975 on RAK records with his band the Arrows and was the group's lead singer. The Arrows release of the song got the band their own weekly television series in England in 1976.
@aleecat7511 жыл бұрын
Yes, Americans seem to have a hard time understanding that I was the first person in the world to sing the song "I Love Rock N Roll" on record, an a-side 45 rpm single that was produced by Mickie Most on his label RAK records in the UK '75. I'm always marginalized as the "co-writer" of the song in the USA. Without my many performances on British TV of "I Love Rock N Roll" Joan Jett would have never heard the song. My performance of the song on the TV show "45" as the front man / lead singer of the Arrows in 1975 got our band a weekly TV series in England in 1976. This is where Joan Jett first heard the song, from her watching my TV show.
@lloyde.scottsnewchannel83038 жыл бұрын
+aleecat75 Good to know. Thanks for clarifying that for us. Awesome!
@lloyde.scottsnewchannel83038 жыл бұрын
+aleecat75 Good to know. Thanks for clarifying that for us. Awesome!
@lamper23 жыл бұрын
@@aleecat75 Joan made a lame song great
@jimmytman6 жыл бұрын
This is bullshit. Artie Mogul got Laura her first deal at Verve Folkways Records and Milt Okun, who shared an office with Artie on 46th street off Fifth Avenue, did her first demos. I was there, then known as Jim Taylor, working for Artie mostly as a "gopher" during the summer of 1966 and the following year while I was going to graduate school at NYU in the Village. Laura and I became good friends during those years, and her talent was so astonishing that I know I fell in love with her. After I got my Masters degree, I went to teach English Lit for three years at a small school in upstate New York, Cazenovia College, where I also wrote the score for an anti-Vietnam War musical that was produced by the drama students there. Later, in 1970, I moved to Los Angeles to work with my brother, Skip Taylor, managing and producing Canned Heat, Harvey Mandel, Sugarcane Harris, Flo & Eddie, and a few local bands. Around 1974 I went off on my own and made a deal for Neil Merryweather and the Space Rangers at Mercury Records with Denny Rosencrantz, where we delivered two albums that are still regarded as underground masterpieces and classics, even though neither received the recognition they deserved. Then I produced an album by Cheryl Dilcher for Butterfly Records and then became Butterfly's in-house remix producer for many of the disco albums for that label by THP Orchestra, St. Tropez, Tuxedo Junction, and my own extravaganza "Bernadette" by JT Connection (me and a bunch of the guys from Flo & Eddie's band and a guy named Ross Salomone, who played drums and co-produced the album with me.) When disco was declared "dead" in 1981, I sold everything I owned and moved to Maui with my boyfriend, and that was the end of my music business career, though I later wrote and recorded many songs in my home studio in Westlake Village, California that were too far ahead of their time to achieve any success. Now I'm retired and live in Tucson, Arizona.
@ShaggyDawg6 жыл бұрын
Why would you leave Westlake Village? Nice town!
@davester14324 жыл бұрын
In 1970 there was no "Flo & Eddie". There was The Turtles. So if this guy is "bullshit" about what he remembers 50 years later, then so are you. No offense. :-)
@TerriBingham2 жыл бұрын
@@davester1432 Alan acknowledges in the interview that he's getting old and can't remember everything, easy!
@reghunt24873 жыл бұрын
Alan Merrill's mother was the singer Helen Merrill, who supposedly inspired the song "Wedding Bell Blues" because she was having an affair with a married man named Bill.
@samkohen45893 жыл бұрын
His death must have hit her hard
@aryehfinklestein90416 жыл бұрын
Fascinating...thanks.
@SuperZimbba4 жыл бұрын
So sad that Alan is gone now too - his wife posted a horrific story about not getting treated for COVID in time - what a talented family.
@seeburg102 жыл бұрын
He sounds like a warm, generous soul.
@samkohen4589 Жыл бұрын
@@seeburg10 Left a daughter named Laura (guess why). Also a very talented singer and a drop gorgeous woman
@gailkinney86837 ай бұрын
I was shocked when I read about Alan's death. Apparently he went to a hospital ER sick from Covid. He was a victim of triage. The hospital was swamped with Covid patients, and Alan was lying on a gurney for 11 hours without receiving any treatment, and he eventually succumbed to Covid. It was beyond tragic.
@dgrjazz3 жыл бұрын
I just read elsewhere that her only hit hit was Up on the Roof... Carole King I think
@edwardanthony72837 жыл бұрын
What a lucky guy!
@Derry_Aire7 жыл бұрын
Yep. Imagine being "dragged" to parties and concerts by Laura - and, well, just knowing her.
@edwardanthony72837 жыл бұрын
It was a great learning experience for him. Laura's music is still state of the art today & I was a young kid when most of it was covered by major groups like The 5th Dimension & 3 Dog Nite with many of her songs hitting the Top 20 or higher... Too bad she's been gone for 20 years already.
@samkohen45893 жыл бұрын
Son of Helen Marshall, also a great artist. His passing must have hit her hard
@DexterHaven3 жыл бұрын
3:20 that is not true at all. Geffen did not switch her to Columbia records. Geffen desperately wanted Laura, his close friend, to sign with his new label, but Laura jilted him, he said, and signed with Columbia, which made him cry, as if betrayed by a friend. Laura resented that Geffen had already taken half her money from the sale of her songs to CBS. So she felt used by Geffen.
@rogerdodger60253 жыл бұрын
Geffen got Laura the deal with Columbia. It was a few years later after he made money from her publishing and started Asylum records where she was slated to be the flagship artist but changed her mind and stayed with Columbia. That's when they had a falling out.
@GeeBee9093 жыл бұрын
@@BonRain8734 Was that "other guy" Johnny Rivers???? He owned a record co. back then called Soul City Records (I think) that the 5D recorded for and I believe released Stone Soul Picnic on
@samkohen45893 жыл бұрын
She was at that time planning to quit the whole industry, as she was just fed u with the whole music industry. She was 24 years old.
@frederickglasser56175 жыл бұрын
This guy's musing about Laura as an 18 year old, no mention about her writing And When I Die as a 16 or 17 year old.
@royanderson95362 жыл бұрын
I find the comments from 'o' about the way he/she perceives the way that Laura delivers her songs frankly insulting.
@oppothumbs13 жыл бұрын
For some reason Laura didn't do well at Monterey despite her talent.
@reghunt24873 жыл бұрын
That's actually a myth. Footage of that performance shows she was received well.
@stevenfitzpatrick58003 жыл бұрын
because Janis Joplin played for the very first time at Monterey Pop and STOLE THE SHOW. Laura felt "less than" after Janis. and honestly.... who wouldn't ??
@frederickglasser56175 жыл бұрын
This guy is on drugs, the song is Straighten Up and Fly Right. Marvin Gaye has done a version of it. And And When I Die isn't morbid. How about brilliant. Or precocious.
@sportsmediaamerica6 жыл бұрын
Laura Nyro did NOT write "Gonna Take a Miracle."
@ronster3695 жыл бұрын
Why don't you scream at me too for thinking Laura wrote O-O-H Child after I made the mistake after she sang it and was rudely corrected by an acquaintance 20 years ago. Go ahead. Get it out of your system finally once and for all.
@davester14324 жыл бұрын
Laura didn't write a single song on that album. The whole point of the album was that they were doing covers of other songs.
@rogerdodger60253 жыл бұрын
He stated that the only hit she had wasn't written by her when he mentioned that song. Try listening.