Sunday 19th June

I don’t really know that much about Laura, but I think she was from New York.  She came to fame in the mid-sixties and was really the first of the female singer-singwriters.  She played piano and sang Blues and Soul with a voice, that though she was white you could swear was black.  Her songs were covered by many other artists, the most famous probably being Barbara Streisand, who had a hit with Stoney End in the Sixties.  Laura was a great influence on many female singers, she made them realise it was possible to sing your own songs get them recorded.  But strangely her best record in my opinion was one she made of covers of Tamla Motown songs “Gonna Take A Miracle” where she was backed by a black trio Labelle.  The songs are clearer and I think more vivid than the originals, Laura adds something, some sense of space and clarity to such well-known songs as “I met him on a Sunday’ and ‘Jimmy Mack’ and ‘You Really Got a Hold On Me.’

But when the singer-songwriter boom of the early Seventies took off Laura got left behind and faded into some sort of obscurity.  She died quite young too, in 1997 of cancer aged just 49, her best years long behind her.  I have collected most of her records, now available on CD and still enjoy her bluesy and individual soulful voice.  If she had recorded no other song but Stoney End I would still love her.