I guess it bothers me a little that most of the young people I taught don’t know about Laura Nyro. She didn’t have the staying power of, say, her contemporary, Joni Mitchell, but this was because ovarian cancer took her away, at 49, in 1997.

That’s long-ago enough, but the funky character of this videotape, from a 1969 NBC special, shows that this performance is even longer ago. It’s Nyro and her song, which means as much today as it did then.

Nyro was an amazing performer, but what made her special is how amazing her songs became in the performances by other artists. I will now be quiet and let you be the judge of Laura Nyro.

Sara Bareilles, “Stoney End,” for the induction of Nyro into the Rock Hall of Fame.

“Eli’s Coming,” a Nyro song performed by Three Dog Night. This video, made in 2025, is one of those “First Time Hearing” videos I’m fond of, where younger folks are introduced to songs from the time of us older folks. The bonus in the video is this man’s marvelous face.

In my youth, American Bandstand was the dance show based in Philadelphia, South Train, which amazed this wee Irishman, featured amazinger dancers. Nyro’s “Stoned Soul Picnic,” showed she could go mellow, to use a terrible word. Popularized by the Fifth Dimension, the song proved that an Italian/Russian Jewish songwriter from the Bronx touched L.A. Black kids, graceful and elegant.

Nyro’s songwriting crossed genres in other ways. Blood Sweat and Tears covered her “And When I Die” that is folk-jazz-Gospel, a genre I just now made up.

We need to hear Laura’s voice again, so this is her mesmerizing performance of “Poverty Train” at Monterey Pop in 1967. She was nineteen years old.

Last call for the poverty train
Last call for the poverty train
It looks good and dirty on shiny light strip
And if you don’t get beat you got yourself a trip You can see the walls roar, see your brains on the floor Become God, become cripple, become funky and split Why was I born
No-no-no-no
whoa-oh no-no-no-no no no no, no

Oh baby, I just saw the Devil and he’s smilin’ at me
I heard my bones cry,
Devil why’s it got to be
Devil played with my brother,
Devil drove my mother
Now the tears in the gutter are floodin’ the sea
Why was I born
No-no-no-no
whoa-oh no-no-no-no no no no, no

Oh baby, it looks good and dirty, them shiny lights glow
A million night tramps, tricks and tracks will come and go You’re starvin’ today
But who cares anyway
Baby, it feels like I’m dyin’ now

I swear there’s something better than
Getting off on sweet cocaine It feels so good
It feels so good
Gettin’ off the poverty train
Mornin’…

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Twelve years after that performance, I heard another beautiful train song, this time by Rickie Lee Jones. I had the great good luck to teach American Literature to high school students, and my favorite unit featured the terse diamondlike verse of Emily Dickinson and the endless self-regard—and the verbosity—of Walt Whitman. I loved them both. Whitman believed, as I do in teaching history, that we are all connected. He is writing this poem, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” to a reader not yet born.

Laura was East Coast, Rickie Lee L.A., but time and distance avail not. Jones acknowledged and paid explicit tribute to Nyro in her album Pirates. She performs Laura Nyro songs in concert. So here is her train song, from her 1979 debut album.

“Night Train,” by Rickie Lee Jones

Here I’m going
Walkin’ with my baby in my arms
‘Cause I am in the wrong end of the eight-ball black
And the devil, see, he’s right behind us

And this worker said she’s gonna take my little baby
My little angel back

They won’t getcha, no
‘Cause I’m right here with you
On a night train

Swing low, Saint Cadillac
Tearin’ down the alley
And I’m reachin’ so high for you

Don’t let ’em take me back
Broken like valiums and chumps in the rain
That cry and quiver

When a blue horizon is sleeping in the station
With a ticket for a train
Surely mine will deliver me there

Here she comes
I’m safe here with you
On the night train
Mama, mama, mama, mama

Concrete is wheeling by
Down at the end of a lullaby
On the night train