"Soul Picnic" was, in the words of author Michele Kort, written in an effort to keep the legacy of Laura Nyro alive after she succumbed to ovarian cancer at the age of 49. Nyro was an extremely private person, and Michele Kort is very careful about describing her intentions in writing "Soul Picnic".

Nonetheless (or perhaps because of Nyro's privacy), "Soul Picnic" is by no means a difficult read at almost any point. The book is structured in a very clear chronological way, from Laura's beginnings to her last recordings in 1995. We see very clearly that Nyro was the child of some strongly left-wing immigrants and that this gave her an impressive social vision on her recordings, and later the example of her maternal grandfather Isidore Mirsky in avoiding meat. We then learn how Nyro grew up singing to the sounds of doo-wop and Motown in the early 1960s, beginning to write songs at a very young age before being discovered in the middle 1960s.

In the following years, Laura Nyro developed incredibly with her music through the use of extremely complex chord shapes that were actually her own devising. However, though we see how her songs were altered by such artists as Three Dog Night and the Fifth Dimension to make them palatable to mass audiences, Nyro herself was determined, once a seemingly "edited" single version of "Save The Country" failed to chart, never to compromise again. Here, we see, though, many descriptions that cannot fit my impression of her work - I find Michele may not have what I would call an accurate perspective on it. The book is not as good in describing Nyro's actual recorded output as it is in giving a good impression of her life.

[Actually, her post-"Christmas And The Beads Of Sweat" recordings were much more conventional than her seminal early albums, but the later albums were so ideologically stringent that she could never attract more than a tiny cult audience for them].

We see in detail the significance of her influence on generations of singer/songwriters beginning with the mystical "Sophia", Kate Bush and the enigmatic confessional Rickie Lee Jones, and there is a good discussion of how singer/songwriters eveolved while Nyro herself was out of the spotlight during her failed marriage. We also see a reasonable description of Nyro's romantic life, including several failed romances with men in the music business (including Jackson Browne) and an unsuccessful marriage to carpenter David Bianchini and a romance with "gypsy" Gregory Bennett before she returned to make "Smile" and "Nested" in the late 1970s.

After this untimely comeback, we see that most of the rest of Laura Nyro's life was lived with her son (fathered by an Indian man whom she refused to marry) and painter Maria Desiderio. She recorded only occasionally during this time, but Kort very clearly shows how she was not a reclusive woman, frequently moving away from her quiet cottage in Danbury, Connecticut to more urban environs in Massachussetts and Ithaca (upstate New York). She even would stay for a month in places as far afloat as Florida, and we learn about her very sweet tooth and love of fancy food - even though she managed to become a vegan and quit smoking, she always has problems with her weight.

We see that she became a working musician - though not recording much - before she was diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer after Patti DiLauria had noticed she was not well in early 1995. In these days, she was not interested in much more than her "tribe", yet she got a few quite respectable reviews for "Walk The Dog And Light The Light" - after having moved away from Columbia due to its demand of a studio album back in 1988 when she toured for the first time in ten years. We also see how she created "Mother's Spiritual" while at home rearing Gil, her son, and how she devloped the material of her later albums.

Michele Kort concludes with an impressive finale about the originality and importance of Laura Nyro, and the way in which her music has retained its relevance six years after she died. Yet, she does admit that her enduring originality as "the mother of all earth mothers" (the inventor of intensely feminine popular music) is not fully appreciated.

On the whole, very easy reading even if you are not familiar with Nyro, but could do with more accurate song descriptions.

I was very impressed by this thoughtful, detailed book about one of the most wonderful, influential songwriters of our time. Michele Kort presents Laura's "story" in a way that shares insights about the significant people in her life, and the way she (and they) viewed her life and career, in a tasteful way which does not seem to violate the very privacy she so coveted. The book is very detailed about each of the tracks on each of her albums; in fact, the detail about each recording is so scrupulous that it can at times become tiresome. But here, too, Ms. Kort perhaps mirrors some of the perfectionism she describes in Laura Nyro herself. Reading this book made me miss Laura Nyro and her music all the more, made me hope that her young son is faring well without his mother, and brought back much of the sadness and shock of her untimely death at just 49 from ovarian cancer five years ago.

Reading this book finally gave me that special "secret key" into a world no one was privy to until now. Laura Nyro's mysterious persona was always very compelling. She was someone you never could get too much of, because there never was much we were allowed to know. So, those of us who fell in love with her amazing music always were forced to read into the lyrics, to wonder, to get lost in a trance while listening as we saw visions of New York streets and imagined the people in her songs. I was 17 years old the first time I escaped into Laura's music, and that was decades ago. My reaction as I listened to each song, was that I was literally stunned. It was that melding of jazz, gospel, Broadway and how every note she played on the piano was purposeful and significant. How her voice captured all the raw emotion of real life. She was the pioneer, a woman whose creative abilities were, in my opinion, up until that time, unsurpassed by anyone, male or female. That's why the book is such a treasure. It unlocks so many of the mysteries that many of us had resigned ourselves to. Unlike the other reviewer, I relished the details of the recording sessions and everything else. At the risk of sounding snobbish, I suppose you have to be the following to truly appreciate what is offered here: 1) an absolute die-hard Laura Nyro follower and fan from the 70s, and 2) probably a songwriter and musician yourself in order to understand what it takes to create the kind of work she created. (I am both).
I suppose to sum it up it just felt really great to finally have the real Laura, unshrouded and revealed to us. The great thing is that--it was so refreshing to know that she really was just a regular girl, not someone who particularly wanted that dark aura, just someone who had a real life and didn't go for the showbiz thing very much. And, even better: someone very wonderful in her personal life as far as her generosity and kindness--and full of laughter and loving friendships. I took away the details of a woman who had an unparalleled musical gift, many friends, and a generally nice life. After all these years, and with her death, it is nice to know that she could have just been one of us. I guess you might say this book gave me some "closure". And, I felt happier as a result of reading AND re-reading it, for its endearing, real-life stories about this lovely human being.

I'm not a musician. I bought this just out of interest & wanting to know more about how Laura thought and background. I would think a musician would want sheet music to play the songs as they were written by Laura, not as arranged by someone else. Where is the original opening of "To A Child"?

Her hand written notes are interesting but presenting them as a collage doesn't allow the reader to really see them. Very interesting how some verses or lines of a song she released had at one time been part of another song either released or unreleased. Did she really have to write down her on-stage banter?

The accompanying cd is a disappointment. Three songs is fine but why are two of them covers of someone else's songs?? Doesn't make sense when it's part of a songbook of her music. The cover of Stevie Wonder's "Creepin'" is great though--better realized than his own version cause she expresses that word in both the music and her singing.

"Time And Love" is the second songbook of seminal singer/songwriter Laura Nyro (1947-1997). However, the first one has been long out of print so for those (like me) who are curious about a theoretical study of her songs, this songbook is a useful purchase. However, on receiving it from amazon.com surprisingly early, I was initially impressed, but ultimately there are many faults to be found.

Glancing through "Time and Love: The Art and Soul of Laura Nyro" does clearly give some clues to the extraordinary complexity of chords and tempo changes that made "New York Tendaberry" and the more difficult "Christmas And The Beads Of Sweat" extraordinary, ahead-of-their-time masterpieces. Laura Nyro, in contrast to the expectations of rock critics of this and subsequent eras, would never resort to loud three-chord rock. Yet, the notation used in the book is unclear - no exact tempos and very little understanding of the structures that her songs, on close examination, do actually have.

Even on her most "rock" material, such as "Beads Of Sweat", guitar players (there Duane Allman) were never allowed to indulge in heavy solos. Instead, they moved remarkably fluently with the groove of the song and its rises and falls. Most of her material was complex, many-chord and piano-based, with the added difficulty of a complex, multipersonal narrative style that can easily baffle critics. However, it was this combination of soft textures, spiritually themed lyrics and multipersonal narratives that paved the way for such works as "Hounds Of Love", "Little Earthquakes", "Victorialand" and "Days Of Open Hand".

Yet, there is a flawed focus here (as on "Stoned Soul Picnic - The Best Of Laura Nyro" and "Time And Love - The Essential Masters") on songs that other artists had hits with. Notwithstanding that without the publicity thus generated, Laura Nyro's own recordings, being so innovative and idiosyncratic, would almost certainly have sold so poorly that Columbia would probably have dropped her before her first comeback in the late 1970s ("Tendaberry" and "Miracle" actually sold enough copies to be profitable), this alone could never make Nyro significant six years after her death.

Today newcomers really need to understand Nyro's role as an influence on such artists as Kate Bush, Jane Siberry, Tori Amos and Suzanne Vega, not the fact that she wrote hits for the Fifth Dimension and Barbara Streisand (how strange would that appear for someone who inspired "Running Up That Hill")??? For a reasonably-priced songbook, this would necessarily mean deleting some of the songs the Fifth Dimension and Streisand covered.

Except for two tracks from her last Columbia album ("Walk The Dog And Light The Light"), nothing not found on "Stoned Soul Picnic" or "Time And Love - The Essential Masters" is here, not even "Captain For Dark Mornings", "Tom Cat Goodbye", "Brown Earth" or "Map To The Treasure". Also missing is a taste of Nyro's jazzy late 70s period, which produced the brilliant but accessible "Money" and "I Am The Blues".

There is also little discussion of the character and structure of Nyro's songs that would allow a reader to appreciate why they have became so significant - instead there are copies of handwritten pages from her journal that do little but scratch the surface of what Laura Nyro was doing in writing and recording, and how she did it.

On the whole, just a useful reference - not comprehensive.

"Time and Love" is a useful guide to playing many of Laura Nyro's better-known songs. It is edited by Milt Okun, who produced her first album. Although Nyro's songs were piano-based, the book also provides arrangements for guitar, which are surprisingly effective, considering Nyro's use of complex chords, often with notes added or ommited.

The book doesn't convey the full complexity of Nyro's own piano-playing, or her use of unpredictible tempo changes. However, it gives a good insight into the structure of the songs, and familiarity with her music should overcome such problems.

The songs are arranged as well as can be expected in a book of this type, and better than many I have owned. The choice of songs is good, although there are very few songs from her later albums (nothing at all from "Smile", "Nested", or "Live at the bottom line"). Still, we get "Stoned Soul Picnic", "Blackpatch", and "Upstairs by a Chinese Lamp", and those three alone make this book worth buying, in my opinion.

The book is beautifully presented, unlike any songbook I have ever seen. It contains many photos, paintings by Laura, and some interesting extracts from her journals. These reveal an artist who took her work very seriously, but also had a sense of humour (her comments about fans who objected to her performing "Wedding bell blues" made me laugh). There is also an interview with Laura about her songwriting, which is an interesting addition.

As if the book wasn't already a must for any fan, it comes with a Cd containing three unreleased tracks, including an excellent Stevie Wonder cover (Creepin').

Overall, this book is excellent. Although not comprehensive (let's hope for more books like this), it is a great introduction for anyone who wants to play Laura Nyro's songs. And it even goes some way towards showing the artist behind this incredible music.