932 Laura Nyro “Wedding Bell Blues” 1966

“Jan Nigro remembers seeing Laura’s list of possible name changes, all variations of Nigro. Her father recalls that she seriously considered ‘Niagra,’ a name she had used on her creative writing book in 1960. But Lou had pointed out to her that it would not lessen the wisecracks. ‘Laura,’ he said, ‘if you trip, someone will say, Niagra falls. She settled on Nyro—pronounced, coincidentally, the same as the surname of a well-known earlier Music and Art alum, pianist Peter Nero. Spelled with a y, though, it would almost always be mispronounced as Nigh-ro—just as her father also warned. Perhaps the NY represented New York (NY); perhaps it had a resonance to a kindred spirit Bob Dylan’s name (which was often similarly mispronounced as Die-lan. ‘I think it was just an unusual name that she liked the sound of,’ says Jan Nigro. Whatever it stood for to her, Nyro was certainly unique: There was not another in any New York City phone book” (Michele Kort, Soul Music: The Music and Passion of Laura Nyro, 2002). 

Laura Nyro “Wedding Bell Blues”