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.

Those Days: Rock Me on the Water: 1974—The Year Los Angeles Transformed Movies, Music, Television and Politics by Ronald Brownstein

I thought this book was sensational – a well-written look at a pivotal year in American culture and politics that cleverly used the calendar as an organizational tool, with the focus on what had become the new center of it all, Los Angeles.

In June 1974, I turned nineteen, and in September returned to college for my sophomore year, making me one of the Baby Boomers that the author, Ron Brownstein, a respected journalist, mentioned so often in the text. While I certainly knew the music and TV shows he wrote about, and saw most of the movies, I was not as yet that attuned to politics, and I can't remember if back then I had ever heard of Governor Jerry Brown of California, though at some point I became aware that he was dating Linda Ronstadt, which certainly made him intriguing. I had never been to California, and had no plans at that point to go there. As a native of Philadelphia, I was East Coast-Centric, and California was the distant home of Disneyland, surfing and the Beach Boys, nothing more. New York had much more allure, though in the mid-'70s, it was crime-ridden and decaying, and going there could be a scary adventure at times (little did I know that New York would become my home less than five years later).

Over the years, I have become much more aware of the importance of Los Angeles to the music scene of that time period, but I didn't really know all that much about how the television and film industries interacted with the music world. I was also fairly hazy on the dates of the political rise of Brown, and his predecessor Ronald Reagan. I knew much more about the life and death of the Kennedys, Martin Luther King, and other key figures of the '60s, and had followed the news of Watergate and watched the hearings as they happened, but reading Brownstein's book gave me an overview that helped to put so much more of 1974 and the mostly hopeful years just before and after it in perspective. It made it abundantly clear how the country turned towards the conservatism and negative values of Reagan, leading to the nadir of the Trump presidency, and the circumstances of hate and division that were unleashed (with an interlude of overall optimism during the Clinton years, which now feels to me like some lost Nirvana).

I also found the book very entertaining and mostly positive, with so many insights from individuals such as Rob Reiner and Jackson Browne, that reminded me what it was like to be living in a time of youthful discovery, surrounded by the peers of my generation, knowing that we were just getting started, and still optimistic towards our future. 

Ooh, la, la – When Paris Sizzled: The 1920s Paris of Hemingway, Chanel, Cocteau, Cole Porter, Josephine Baker, and Their Friends by Mary McAuliffe

I'd like to time travel back to the Paris of 100 years ago after reading this book...imagine being in the milieu of artists like Chagall, Picasso, and Modigliani, composers like Stravinsky or Porter, seeing a performance by Josephine Baker, or simply people-watching in Montparnasse. There was an amazing confluence of art, music, theater, fashion, and literary activity taking place, and living there was very reasonable.

The details and insights of this era were insightfully presented, and the many photos added additional realism to the texts. Truly this was one of Paris's great eras, when the creative energy flowed and it all came together.

Sadly, it was also made clear that fascism and anti-Semitism were on the rise in the background, and soon times would change, and not for the better...but while the art, music, and dance were encouraged and flourishing, it would have been wondrous! 

Betrayed by the Land – The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah

I've read a few of Kristin Hannah's novels, and found them middling to pretty good, but this one is a standout. I began by listening to the audiobook and got so involved that I wanted to speed up the pace, so I switched to the hardcover edition. I enjoyed both so much. 

Elsinore (Elsa) Wolcott was the eldest daughter in an upper middle class family, in a prosperous small town in the Texas Panhandle, and came of age in the early 1920s – but was deemed a spinster at 25, according to the mores of the time and setting. Due to an illness in her teens, the family viewed tall, slim, blue-eyed and reddish-blonde Elsa as delicate, unattractive and unsuitable for marriage. Her class-conscious parents and sister relegated Elsa to her upstairs bedroom in their comfortable home where she read novel after novel, embroidered and sewed. Other than that, she learned no domestic skills. She was an unloved outcast in her own home. Her life was dull and confining in every way and she keenly felt the lack of love and prospects for any kind of happy future.

Eventually her frustration led her to break free, despite her fearfulness, creating circumstances that propelled her into a very different setting. She became Elsa Martinelli, wife to Rafe, a young Italian-American man, mother of Loreda and Anthony, and daughter-in-law to his immigrant parents, Rose and Tony. Living on their remote farm, she gradually learned self-sufficiency and how to cook, bake, garden and care for the livestock. As immigrants and Catholics, the Martinellis were shunned by Elsa's parents, who had disowned her. Elsa embraced her new life and family.

When the Great Depression hit, the Martinellis, like most Americans, were its victims. Gradually their circumstances declined and when the Dust Bowl hit the Great Plains, the farm's topsoil blew away, and their wheat crop failed. Conditions became dire, with many on the edge of starvation, and other farm families they knew, their homes and farms foreclosed on, joined the tens of thousands of "Okies" heading west to California, where it was rumored that there were jobs for everyone – in what the rumors said was a latter day "land of milk and honey".

Elsa and thirteen-year-old Loreda were constantly at odds. Loreda made it clear that she adored her father, a dreamer, and constantly rebelled against and criticized her mother. She was not the first young girl to challenge her mother, but she was full of anger and frustration, and took them to extremes. As time passed, and the situation on the farm became more dire, the tension between mother and daughter escalated. When Rafe gave in to his own disappointments and deserted the family, each remaining member was heartbroken in their own way.

Eventually circumstances became so desperate that the Martinellis made the decision to abandon the farm and head for California, but only Elsa and the children ultimately made the journey. Her in-laws would not leave their land and home, so the three set off on the 1,000-mile journey...

This work of historical fiction presents the struggles of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl as experienced on America's farms and in its small towns, exemplified by the struggles and conflicts of the Martinellis. The breadlines, apple and pencil sellers, and other well-documented images of the Great Depression in the large cities, which many readers may have seen, are not a part of this book, which has much in common with John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath – though in fairness, the migrant camps, the exploited farmworkers, and other aspects of both novels are based on real events that occurred during that period. In addition, quick research on The Grapes of Wrath brings to light that Steinbeck himself may have taken some of his ideas from the notes of Sanora Babb, a California writer who worked for the Farm Security Administration (FSA), an arm of FDR's New Deal. Babb wrote her own novel, Whose Names Are Unknown, which was accepted for publication but dropped when The Grapes of Wrath came out first. I am planning a read of Babb's book, which was finally published in 2004 by the University of Oklahoma Press, and then I will make my own judgment.

Returning to The Four Winds, it is a powerful saga that commands the reader's attention. Elsa and Loreda are richly drawn characters. The depictions of the stifling Texas environment where Elsa grew up, and the Martinelli family's work to establish and maintain their farm, and then of the California agricultural conditions are almost photographically vivid. The emotional impact resonates throughout, and the beautifully executed plot ends with perfect resolution.

Stanley Tucci, You Could Fix This! Dinner in Rome: A History of the World in One Meal

This might be a poor translation of this non-fiction book, or perhaps it's just the author's writing style. I skipped around, got bored, but liked the final chapter – a discussion of the lemon, the tart citrus that brings flavor to so many foods, and perfumes the air with its scent of sunshine.

It is a clever concept – to lay out the history of Rome, the "Eternal City" through the foods eaten in one sitting. I love Italy and Italian food, have traveled there several times, the first a week spent mainly in the capital, and am a generally a fan of the genres of food writing as well as travel writing. Perhaps a more skillful or entertaining author/presenter could have done more with this idea – my choice would be Stanley Tucci, who has presented such a wonderful CNN series on Italian locations and their food, and written several several delightful cookbooks and a memoir. If only Stanley could step in here and add the humor and charm this book so badly needs, and turn it into something far more palatable.

Jann Wenner Touts Male Privilege in Popular Culture – Like a Rolling Stone, a Memoir

I have such mixed feelings about this book. If I rate it for the quality of the writing and what I learned from it, it's quite positive, but for the personal appeal of the author, let's just say I'd never want to meet him.

Jann Wenner founded the magazine Rolling Stone back in the late '60s and built it into an important powerhouse of music reviews, politics, and cultural comment. Reading about his life and the evolution of his journalism career was simultaneously fascinating and infuriating.

Fascinating, for his insider's perspective, because I too was young (though some years younger than Wenner) through the '60s, '70s, and '80s, the three decades that represent the heyday of the magazine's development, and a fan of some of the musicians and others that populated his world. What I found most interesting of all was his friendship with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, which seemed initially like an improbable class and culture clash, but in the reading, it became clear just how connected Wenner became with some of the most iconic people of his time – not just those in rock music.

The infuriating aspect struck me some 100 pages in – just how evident what an old boys' club the music business and the magazine itself, like so many others, was and generally is. Certainly, I knew that, but he brought it home so clearly. Women musicians and journalists did not appear much in Wenner's massive book. He described Bette Midler as a close friend, and mentioned a few occasions in which she performed a song at a social gathering, but there is nothing much about her illustrious career, or her smash albums like The Divine Miss M. He briefly touched on Janis Joplin (mostly her death by overdose), Joan Baez's name cropped up a couple of times, and Judy Collins exactly once, but where were Joni Mitchell, Bonnie Raitt, Linda Ronstadt, Carly Simon, or other music-making women of the era, like Karen Carpenter, Laura Nyro, and Cass Elliot? Even Carole King failed to appear, despite her enormous impact on popular music. Her album, Tapestry, was number one for months and a best-seller for years; and of course she wrote "You've Got a Friend", which helped shoot James Taylor's career into the stratosphere, where it still hovers decades later. Wenner stressed his close ties and friendships with some of the very biggest male names in music: Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and Bono, and wrote extensively about them. When he wrote about Yoko Ono, it was usually in the context of her relationship and marriage to Lennon.

The woman who figured most in the development of the magazine was photographer Annie Leibovitz, but while on one hand he touted her brilliance, he alternatively spared no detail of her drug use and addiction. He wrote extensively about the drug and alcohol habits and destructiveness (his own and otherwise) of many, including Keith Richards, but he really savaged Leibovitz.

Wenner discussed his sexual confusion and ambivalence from early on, but eventually came out as gay. He described the developments of his evolution in depth. He seems content, but I felt so sorry for his wife, Jane, who was with him for decades, and with whom he had three sons. He eventually left her for a man, Matt Nye, who was quite a bit younger. Their relationship is long term, and now a married one. They had three additional children via artificial insemination with an unknown woman (or women, not disclosed). He mentioned occasionally about how hurtful it all was for Jane, and the book is full of painful public revelations about their relationship and family. I can't imagine how it must be for her, and even though he writes something of what he deems her acceptance of the circumstances, it makes me sad for her.

Like so many men, privileged like Wenner, or not, straight or gay, he is essentially misogynistic but doesn't recognize it – to some degree that makes him a product of his times and culture, but it is not something that can be easily overlooked. Women's contributions in his field and at his former media empire were diminished, or demeaned as with Leibovitz. He tries to excuse himself and portray himself somewhat differently, but when he mentions perhaps halfway through that he was adding women writers to his previously all-male staff, it felt condescending and false. I considered returning the book to the library at that point, but since I had already invested so much time, I continued, with growing wariness.

However, it is a memoir, and highly personal, so as such it covers his life, career, and relationships from his perspective, but it is a forceful reminder of how women have been treated marginally in music and journalism, and that is something that can’t be ignored.

Carole King Reflected on Burt Bacharach – the Generosity of an Exceptional Woman of Music

Carole King, long an icon of popular music as a composer, lyricist, and performer, and now past 80 herself, wrote a wonderful and moving tribute to Burt Bacharach, her fellow composer and former Tin Pan Alley denizen, who passed away last week aged 94.

The piece, which appeared recently in the Washington Post in the opinion section, related her personal experience, describing her first time hearing his "Walk On By" on the radio, as sung by Dionne Warwick, who became the primary interpreter of his songs, though of course there were many others.

It was laudatory of his brilliant work, and I completely agree that Bacharach was an extraordinary composer and musician: I loved his songs and there were so many wonderful ones.

https://wapo.st/3YKuc3V

With Bacharach's career so widely covered by the press, and the multitude of tributes (well-deserved) to his career, I got to thinking how men did, and still, predominate in the music world. There are many extremely talented women across the genres of music, be they rock, pop, classical, R & B, jazz...but compared to the men, how many do we regularly hear of? Yes, of course, Beyoncé and Lady Gaga are widely covered and award-winning, along with some others like Adele, but yet, the men still seem to rule.

Coincidentally, I just finished reading Like a Rolling Stone, Jann S. (don't forget the middle initial) Wenner's memoir of his creation and development of the magazine Rolling Stone. Wenner founded the magazine back in the late '60s, and it was an important powerhouse of music reviews, politics, and cultural comment. Yet what struck me maybe 100 pages in, was what an old boys' club the music business and the magazine itself, like so many others, was and is. Carole King, as just one example, never appeared, despite her enormous impact on popular music.

Bacharach's brilliance should be celebrated and remembered, and I'll continue to enjoy appreciate the his many songs, but not forgetting that many of his collaborators were women, including one of his former wives, Carole Bayer Sager, an accomplished and award-winning lyricist, and performers like Warwick and the late Karen Carpenter. What I'll also think of is King's expansive tribute, which was a great piece of writing, and so generous.