Laura Nyro Remembered...Soul Picnic: The Music and Passion of Laura Nyro by Michele Kort

When I mention Laura Nyro (1947-1997), the composer/singer/pianist who was favorably compared to Joni Mitchell, some people react enthusiastically, but some fail to recall her until I mention some of her songs, like "And When I Die", "Eli's Comin'", "Stoned Soul Picnic", or "Wedding Bell Blues", all huge hits in the late 60s/early 70s as covers by artists like Blood Sweat and Tears, Three Dog Night, and The Fifth Dimension. Barbra Streisand, whose highly successful 1971 "Stoney End" album updated her image and appealed to younger generations looking for contemporary music, also included Nyro's "Time and Love". Nyro released multiple albums of her own, including "Eli and the Thirteenth Confession" and "New York Tendabury". In 2014, Billy Childs and Allison Kraus revisited Nyro's work with "Map to the Treasure: Reimagining Laura Nyro", with help from Chris Botti, Renée Fleming, and Yo-Yo Ma, among others.

Nyro was born in The Bronx, New York. Her father was also a musician. She began her idiosyncratic career when she was still a teenager, but in time became something of a legend, as a friend and protégé of then talent agent David Geffen, who was a huge force in popular music before he moved on to film production. She died of uterine cancer at forty-nine, which had also claimed her grandmother and mother.

Michele Kort's book is a well-researched biography of Nyro, and celebrates not just her legacy, but the music scene of the era when her career began, and brings it back to life. It was wonderful to imagine her performances at sadly now-defunct clubs like New York's The Bottom Line, where I went often. Just a little more careful editing would have made it a five-star effort, but it is truly compelling reading for fans of both Nyro and those interested in the singer/songwriter movement, and the music of the 60s and 70s that lives on in many of our memories.

A Voice Silenced: Little Girl Blue, the Life of Karen Carpenter by Randy L. Schmidt

What a sad, sad tale...a young life and a great talent snuffed out by mental and physical illnesses. It's well-known that Karen Carpenter died at the age of thirty-two from heart failure brought on by an extreme case of anorexia nervosa. How she reached that disastrous point has been thoroughly traced and documented in this biography by Randy L. Schmidt.

While her older brother Richard's talents were intrinsic to their ultimate superstar-level success, it was Karen's singing voice that captured the attention of everyone who heard it. Her interpretations of songs by composers including Paul Williams, Burt Bacharach, Lennon-McCartney and others were, in many cases, the indelible and definitive versions of those songs and remain so decades after her death.

Schmidt explores the family dynamic of the Carpenter family in great detail. The family unit, consisting of Karen and Richard, and their parents Agnes and Harold, was tight and intense. The children were so controlled by Agnes Carpenter that they continued to live at home well after they were thoroughly adult and incredibly wealthy from their musical success. These circumstances set the stage for Karen's later problems.

Schmidt explains that Richard had a great talent for the piano, playing, arranging and composing music. This was recognized early on by their parents, particularly Agnes, who made sacrifices of all kinds to forward his career, while Karen was treated as a very secondary talent...and child. Nearly all attention was lavished on Richard, and Karen was left trying to please her mother and get some of the love and approval so freely given to her brother. Despite the great success of the duo, and Karen's singular recognition as an extraordinary singer and interpreter of lyrics, it never seemed to be enough, and Karen spiraled down from her early negative feelings into depression, self-doubt and sadness, which manifested itself in her eating disorder, a problem that was not recognized as it is now. In fact, it is because of Karen's death that attention was brought to anorexia and related conditions.

During her career, Karen developed close friendships with fellow singers Olivia Newton-John, Petula Clark and Dionne Warwick. Warwick contributed the foreword to this book. Schmidt interviewed them, along with many others, to obtain intimate details of Karen's troubled life and disappointments, her failed marriage and professional challenges. This chronicle of her life conveys what was truly a tragedy. To be so talented and so successful, yet in so much pain, is a terrible waste and a testament to the necessity for more awareness of mental and emotional illnesses, and better mental health treatment, especially for girls and women.