American singer-songwriter and pianist Laura Nyro (1947–1997) was a pioneering 1960s and 1970s artist who wrote deeply poetic, genre-blending music combining soul, jazz, gospel, and pop.... By 1969, America was singing Laura Nyro's songs without necessarily knowing her name. The 5th Dimension had a hit with “Wedding Bell Blues.” Three Dog Night took “Eli's Coming” into the Top 10. Blood, Sweat & Tears made “And When I Die” a smash. Nyro had written that last song at 17, an astonishingly assured meditation on mortality from a teenager. Her own records were another matter. The public recognized the melodies, not the composer. Raised in the Bronx, Nyro grew up listening to jazz, doo-wop, gospel and soul. She loved poetry, and she wrote as though the boundaries between those forms had never existed. Her songs changed tempo unexpectedly, climbed into gospel-like crescendos, then fell into startling intimacy. Record companies could sell a polished version of her music. Selling Nyro herself was harder. In June 1967, she performed at the Monterey Pop Festival, where Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix were becoming legends. Nyro brought a sophisticated soul revue to a crowd steeped in psychedelic rock. The experience devastated her. She believed she had been booed offstage. That became part of her legend, but surviving film tells a different story. No boos are audible. There are even shouts of approval. Her performance may have been a mismatch for the festival, yet the supposed public humiliation was never as clear-cut as the retellings suggested. Nyro kept writing. Barbra Streisand recorded “Stoney End.” The 5th Dimension returned to her songs again and again. But her own recordings attracted a devoted audience rather than mainstream chart success. Nyro did not make the music simpler to court those listeners. Her 1969 album “New York Tendaberry” explored a darker, more intimate sound, with the piano and her astonishing voice often carrying the emotional weight alone. At 24, she withdrew from the music business, moving to Massachusetts. She later returned, releasing records that remained unmistakably hers. Elton John and Todd Rundgren were among the musicians who acknowledged her influence. Nyro died of ovarian cancer in 1997, at 49. She was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2010 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012. Her voice had never become a radio staple. Her songwriting had been on the radio for decades. #archaeohistories