Various Artists - The Hitmakers Sing Laura Nyro's 'Eli And The Thirteenth Confession' (2017)

Soon after the release of Laura Nyro's debut album 'More Than A New Discovery', David Geffen approached Mogull about taking over as her agent. She successfully sued to void her management and recording contracts on the grounds that she had entered into them while still a minor, and Geffen became her manager. The two of them established a publishing company, Tuna Fish Music, under which the proceeds from her future compositions would be divided equally between them. Geffen also arranged Nyro's new recording contract with Clive Davis at Columbia Records, and purchased the publishing rights to her early compositions. Around this time, she considered becoming lead singer for Blood, Sweat & Tears after the departure of founder Al Kooper, but was dissuaded by Geffen, and so she concentrated on recording her second album.  Her new contract allowed her more artistic freedom and control, and so her 1968 record 'Eli And The Thirteenth Confession', received high critical praise for the depth and sophistication of its performance and arrangements, which merged pop structure with inspired imagery, rich vocals, and avant-garde jazz. It was her first chart entry, reaching No. 181 on the Billboard 200, and many musicians, including Elton John and Todd Rundgren, were directly influenced by the album. It is second only to its predecessor in producing hit songs for other artists, with Three Dog Night taking 'Eli's Comin'' to the US top 10, while The 5th Dimension went to No. 3 with 'Stoned Soul Picnic' and No. 13 with 'Sweet Blindness'. Once again, it wasn't long before nearly all of the other songs from the record had been taken up and covered,  and such was their quality that they were still being recorded in the 2000's. Here is a nice collection of some of the very best versions of Nyro's songs from her rightly-regarded classic album 'Eli And The Thirteenth Confession'. 

Track listing

01 Luckie (Judy Kuhn 2007)
02 Lu (Peggy Lipton 1969)
03 Sweet Blindness (The 5th Dimension 1968)
04 Poverty Train (The Ark 1967)
05 Lonely Women (Linda Hoyle 1971) 
06 Eli's Comin' (Three Dog Night 1969)
07 Stoned Soul Picnic (The Supremes And The Four Tops 1970)
08 Emmie (Frankie Valli 1970)
09 Woman's Blues (Green Lyte Sunday 1970)
10 Once It Was Alright Now (Farmer Joe) (Rastus 2016)
11 December's Boudoir (Denise Mangiardi 2017)
12 The Confession (Billy Childs featuring Becca Stevens 2014)

Various Artists - The Hitmakers Sing Laura Nyro (2007)

In the mid-60's, Laura Nyro's mother Louis Nigro's work brought her into contact with record company executive Artie Mogull and his partner Paul Barry, who auditioned Nyro in 1966 and became her first managers, with Mogull negotiating a recording and management contract for her. On 13 July 1966, Nyro recorded 'Stoney End' and 'Wedding Bell Blues', as well as an early version of 'Time And Love', at Bell Sounds Studios in Manhattan, for possible inclusion on her debut album. About a month later, she sold 'And When I Die' to Peter, Paul And Mary for $5,000, and on 17 September 1966, Verve Folkways released 'Wedding Bell Blues'/'Stoney End' as a single under her own name. 'Wedding Bell Blues' became a minor hit, especially on the West Coast, and she completed her debut album in New York on 29 November 1966. In February 1967, Verve Folkways released 'More Than A New Discovery', with songs from the record later becoming hits for The 5th Dimension, Blood, Sweat & Tears, and Barbra Streisand. On 17 June 1967, Nyro appeared at the Monterey Pop Festival, and although some accounts described her performance as a fiasco that culminated in her being booed off the stage, recordings later made publicly available contradict this version of events. Over the next few years more songs from 'More Than A New Discovery' were noticed by other artists and covered on their records, particularly The 5th Dimension, who had a couple of hit singles with her songs. Peter, Paul And Mary turned their investment in 'And When I Die' into a hit, and Barbara Streisand followed them with 'Stoney End'. By 1971 nearly every song on the album had been covered, and so here are some of the best of them, reinterpreting Laura Nyro's first steps into the music business.  

Track listing

01 Goodbye Joe (Carmen McRae 1970)  
02 Billy's Blues (B. J. Ward 1970)  
03 And When I Die (Blood Sweat And Tears 1968)
04 Stoney End (Linda Ronstadt & The Stone Poneys 1968)
05 Lazy Susan (Amy London 2007)   
06 Hands Off The Man (The Sunshower 1970)
07 Wedding Bell Blues (Bobbie Gentry 1970)
08 Buy And Sell (Chris Connor 1971)
09 He's A Runner (Mama Cass 1969)
10 Blowin' Away (The 5th Dimension 1969)
11 I Never Meant To Hurt You (Barbara Streisand 1971)
12 California Shoe-Shine Boys (Karen Wyman 1970)

Thanks to Ergon3 for supplying the Amy London track.

Duane Allman - ...and on guitar (1971)

Before Duane Allman became a guitar hero in the Allman Brothers Band, he was a hotshot session guitarist who was logging tons of studio time with some of the best R&B singers in the world. After the Allman Brothers started to be appreciated for their albums, Duane continued to record with other artists, most notably with Eric Clapton in Derek And The Dominos, until his death in 1971. Some of his best recordings were with artists like John Hammond, who was the son of the record-company exec who helped launch the careers of everyone from Billie Holiday to Bob Dylan, and from Aretha Franklin to Bruce Springsteen. Like his father, he loved rural acoustic blues music and built a cult career paying tribute to his heroes, attracting some famous fans, including Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Allman, who played on a couple of Hammond's albums. Clarence Carter was a blind R&B singer who hit the Top 10 with 'Patches' and 'Slip Away,' which Gregg Allman later covered, but on 'The Road Of Love' from 1969 he takes on soulful blues with some help from an eager horn section and Duane Allman's jagged guitar. Delaney & Bonnie had lots of famous friends and fans, including Clapton, Leon Russell and George Harrison, and their 'Livin' On The Open Road' is a bluesy R&B rocker with a positively piercing guitar solo provided by Allman. Boz Scaggs spent two years with the Steve Miller Band when he booked some time at the famous Muscle Shoals recording studio, working with its terrific in-house session group, and his eponymous 1969 album is filled with great music, including the superb 'Waiting For A Train'. Aretha Franklin's 'This Girl's In Love With You' includes some great covers, such as The Band's standard 'The Weight', as well as the soulful 'It Ain't Fair', and fellow soul-maestro Wilson Pickett also benefited from Allman's guitar prowess on his 'Hey Jude' album, most noticeably on the title track. Alongside these legendary US performers, he also played with a number of lesser-known artists, such as Johnny Jenkins, Eric Quincy Tate, Judy Mayhan, and Sam Samudio, as well as renowned bluesman Otis Rush, and Canadian rocker Ronnie Hawkins. Most of the songs on here were included on the extensive 2013 'Skydog' album, but they were scattered throughout the seven discs, and included multiple tracks from some artists, and so I've extracted what I consider to be the best of them from the years 1969 to 1971. So that this is not just a rip-off of that record, I've managed to track down one additional song that wasn't on 'Skydog', from Judy Mayhan, and I've only selected the recordings where you can really hear the contribution that Allman is making to the music, thereby condensing the 7CD set into one concise 55-minute album.  

Track Listing

01 Twice A Man (from '2 Jews Blues' by Barry Goldberg  1969)
02 You Reap What You Sow (from 'Mourning In The Morning' by Otis Rush 1969)
03 Dirty Old Man (from 'New Routes' by Lulu 1969)
04 Cryin' For My Baby (from 'Southern Fried' by John Hammond 1969) 
05 Hey Jude (from 'Hey Jude' by Wilson Pickett 1969)
06 The Road Of Love (from 'The Dynamic Clarence Carter' by Clarence Carter 1969)
07 Waiting For A Train (from 'Boz Scaggs' by Boz Scaggs 1969) 
08 Ghost Of Myself (from 'I'm A Loser' by Doris Duke 1969)
09 Everlovin' Ways (from 'Moments' by Judy Mayhan 1970)
10 Comin' Down (first album demo by Eric Quincy Tate 1970)
11 Down In The Alley (from 'Ronnie Hawkins' by Ronnie Hawkins 1970)
12 It Ain't Fair (from 'This Girl's In Love With You' by Aretha Franklin 1970) 
13 Down Along The Cove (from 'Ton-Ton Macoute!' by Johnny Jenkins 1970) 
14 Beads Of Sweat  (from 'Christmas And The Beads Of Sweat' by Laura Nyro 1970) 
15 Living On The Open Road (from 'To Bonnie From Delaney' by Delaney & Bonnie 1970) 
16 Relativity (from 'Sam, Hard And Heavy' by Sam Samudio 1971)