LAURA NYRO NY TENDABERRY ALTERNATIVE COVER UNHEARD OF

$

776

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·       LAURA NYRO – NEW YORK TENDABERRY - 1969 COLUMBIA RECORDS STEREO LP CS-9737 (THE COVER IS CS-9737; THE RECORD IS KCS-9737)

·       GENUINE U.S. PRESSING

·    MONSTROUSLY RARE ALTERNATIVE COVER SHOWING LAURA NYRO ON THE BALCONY OF HER EAST VILLAGE (?) APARTMENT. THIS IS NOT A VERY COMMON COVER SHOWING THE BLACK AND WHITE IMAGE OF LAURA NYRO.

·       VERY EARLY 1971 PRESSING IN RED COLUMBIA LABEL WITH YELLOW PRINT

·       ORIGINAL, THICK CARDBOARD COVER (AMERICAN STYLE)

·      INCLUDES ORIGINAL BOOKLET (FOLDABLE BROCHURE WITH THE LYRICS)

·       CLEAN, WEAR-FREE LABELS

(►PLEASE SEE THE IMAGE OF THE COVER, LABEL OR BOTH, SHOWN BELOW)

(Note: this is a REAL image of the ACTUAL item you are bidding on. This is NOT a "recycled" image from our previous auction. What you see is what you'll get. GUARANTEED!)

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OK, FOLKS, LISTEN UP!

Once in a while, we stumble upon a real case of Mystery, Agatha Christie-style, that needs to be tackled and solved. We then take our Sherlock Holmes hat and pipe, grab the magnifying glass, summon Dr. Watson, brush up our framed Queen Victoria portrait, leash our (non-Basquerville) Hound and get down to some serious gumshoe work.

What we have here is something that we’ve NEVER (EVER!) seen in 30 years of collecting records and that no one we have asked about appears to have seen, either. A REAL head-scratcher, if ever we saw one.

Allow us to explain what this is, and what it isn’t.

Laura Nyro’s third album (New York Tendaberry) was released in late September 1969 and has been hailed for decades as her finest and her most enduring and endearing (albeit not her most accessible) work. Ricky Lee Jones, for example, cites this album as her all-time favorite. The influence of this album on the numerous generations of New York (and non-New York) rockers and singers-songwriters, particularly female ones, cannot possibly be overstated. There would never be any Patti Smith without Laura Nyro, or, for that matter, without this particular album. This is Laura at her most personal and idiosyncratic, baring her soul for the whole world to see, and some of the lyric imagery is close to uncomfortable. If you are wondering where Joni Mitchell got the idea for her “Blue” album two years later, look no further. This is it.

The album was one of the last albums to be released on the Columbia’s classic red-and-white “360 Stereo” label (Columbia would switch to the new, red-and-yellow label – the one we have here - in less than a year from the release of the album, in early September 1970). The original pressing of this album came with a nifty, foldable brochure with the song lyrics and album credits (this has got to be the first on record mention of David Geffen ever – he is credited in the brochure as a “manager and friend”). The front page of the brochure showed late-summer view of New York City skyline from Laura Nyro’s apartment: we are unable to determine the location of the apartment based on the landscape, but it appears it was located either somewhere in East Village, or on the Lower East Side)

The brochure showed very bleak, and somewhat desolate and gothic view from (and of) Laura Nyro’s terrace, shot from somewhere inside the completely dark and dreary apartment; the image on the brochure showed NO human or animate figures on the balcony. It only presented the view of the New York skyline in the early evening hours (you will note that the city lights are ON). The balcony shows a puddle of water, as if the photo was taken after one of those all-too-frequent late-summer New York showers). Now, this is an important detail: all three (the brochure AND the original cover AND the original labels) carried Columbia’s officially assigned original 1969 catalog number KCS-9737. Remember this little detail for later. Also remember this: Columbia introduced the KCS/KCL numbering prefix in late 1968. Prior to this, Columbia was using CS for their stereo releases, and CL for their monos.

The original cover (released in 1969) showed black-and-white photo of Laura Nyro, her long hair tossed by the wind. Now, here’s where the mystery begins and the plot thickens.

The cover we have here is COMPLETELY different.

The known, common version of the cover is completely gone. It is replaced by the “balcony” image found on the brochure, but - BUT ! – with some major and quite significant modifications.

-        Firstly, the “balcony” shot shows a sitting figure of Laura Nyro, leaning against the fence, facing camera, accompanied by her German shepherd. This is NOT the same photo found on the brochure. We have no recollection of seeing this photo ANYWHERE ELSE before.

-         Secondly, the front cover photo was taken in the late afternoon hours (the city lights are NOT on and the daylight is clearly visible), apparently captured a few hours BEFORE the brochure shot.

-        Third; the large glass vase shown on the brochure photo is missing (broken?).

-         Fourth, the puddle of water shown on the brochure is also missing (clearly, the front cover photo was taken BEFORE the shower).

We are not big on symbolism and cryptic esoterics of any sort – perhaps we should have summoned C.G. Jung instead of our faithful Dr. Watson for this occasion - but we could not help noticing that the two images are clearly of a pair. They are inseparable and connected in subtle and delicate ways and in more ways than one. Obviously, there is a hidden message of some sort in these two before-and-after images, waiting for the viewer to reveal it. And we feel –  strongly – that the cryptic message is one of depression and (perhaps) impending suicide, perhaps Laura Nyro’s scream for help. One moment, Laura Nyro is barely there and the next moment the summer shower washes her away in the sea of silent darkness and gloom. To paraphrase Richard and Linda Thompson, did she jump or was she pushed?

There are numerous possible explanations what this cover represents, and how it came about:

(1)         The first theory was that this is a later reissue with the changed cover. In the mid-70s. Columbia reissued most of Laura Nyro’s works, and some albums received revised and modified covers. However, this theory does not hold water and is highly implausible. First of all, the cover we have is DEFINITELY made IN OR BEFORE 1971 and the record was definitely pressed in 1971 (we can pinpoint the exact year because there are precious few KCS releases on this red-and-yellow label, all of which came out in 1971). In addition, this album was consistently reissued throughout the 70s with exactly the same cover as the original – why would Columbia go through the futile, pointless exercise of alternating two reissues with two different versions of the cover concurrently in circulation? This would simply make no sense. In addition, most of Nyro’s mid-70s reissues were printed on thin, paperboard covers. This one, however, is made of hard cardboard. More importantly, though, Nyro’s mid-70s pressings always carry a PC-, JC- or KC- prefix. Not one of them has a KCS or CS prefix like this one does. There is also another argument against this theory: Nyro’s 70s reissues are dime-a-dozen. They are really, really common. This cover, on the other hand, is essentially unheard of – something that would be extraordinarily unusual for a reissue that received a wide national distribution.

(2)          The second theory is that this was a Record Club pressing with an alternative record-club-only cover. Hmmm. An interesting and intriguing theory that, in our view cannot withstand scrutiny, either. Namely, Columbia WAS indeed known around 1970/71 to have issued some of their titles as Record Club pressings with different covers. Check out, for example, Miles Davis’ Live/Evil album with a COMPLETELY different cover from the known release. Ah, but, there’s a catch. All those revised Columbia record covers were VERY generic, and had somewhat bland (cheap) graphic designs. Miles’ album, for example, only has white letters on a black background. The odds that Columbia would order a very expensive revision to the cover only for the short-lived Record Club release are less than zero. Also, all known Columbia Record club pressings are clearly identifiable as such: they either have a CRC sticker, or a slightly modified catalog number, or a small inscription (usually on the back cover) identifying the album as a Record Club release. This one has none of the above.

(3)         Made-for-Export release? No. And this is a firm, categorical: NO. This is the least plausible and the most unlikely of all possible explanations. By 1969 Laura Nyro was already a well-established, worldwide star whose albums were licensed for domestic release from Canada to Japan (the string of Nyros’ charting covers by Blood, Sweat and Tears, Barbra Streisand and Three Dog Night, as well her appearance at the Monterey International Pop Festival only cemented her global fame and reputation). There was absolutely no need for Columbia to bend over backwards in order to release the export-only version of this album. And knowing what a bunch of cheapos Columbia was at a time (remember, this was when Clive Davis was heading the company – the gentleman who eliminated mono pressings just because they were too expensive to store!!!) this is even less likely than the other two theories.

(4)            So, what is it, then? Well, here’s what we think it is: We think that this is the ORIGINAL, first version of the cover, withdrawn BEFORE the album’s official release. In fact, we don’t THINK it is. We KNOW it. How do we know? Just look at the catalog number on the front cover: it shows CS-9737. Being that Columbia abandoned CS- prefixes in late 1968, it is ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE that the cover with a prefix CS- would FOLLOW the cover with the catalog number KCS-. In other words, what you see here is the PROTOTYPE OF THE COVER ARTWORK THAT WAS NEVER INTENDED TO BE RELEASED – NOT EVEN AS A REISSUE and ended up in the stores by mistake. So, how did it end up being released, then? Hmmm. Good question, my dear Watson. We think that Columbia simply ran out of pre-printed copies of the cover at a time when market demanded more copies, and so someone at the pressing plant grabbed a batch of discarded copies which were meant to be destroyed – but obviously never were - and released the second pressing of the record in the original, withdrawn covers. In other words, some clueless clerk who didn’t get the memo simply grabbed the nearest pile of pre-printed (withdrawn) covers and sent them to the retailers. Someone at Columbia then obviously caught the mistake and pulled these unheard-of covers from the market. However, because the BACK cover has the officially assigned (later) catalog number (KCS-9737), it is more likely that the only thing that was used by mistake was the pre-printed paper slick, rather than the existing batch of pre-printed covers. When the printing facility ran out of “official” (approved) paper slicks, they simply decided to use the wrong ones. Hence the inconsistency in catalog numbers between the front and back panels of the cover. PLEASE NOTE THAT THE SPINE ALSO HAS THE ORIGINAL 1968 CATALOG NUMBER (CS-9737) AND NOT THE OFFICIALL 1969 NUMBER (KCS-9737)

Let us go back to the catalog number (CS-9737). This number is critical in understanding not only the provenance of this item, but also the album’s recorded history as well. We know that the album was RELEASED in September 1969, but we could not determine when it was RECORDED. Based on the catalog number – AND REMEMBER: THIS IS THE ONLY PRESSING IN THE WORLD WHERE YOU WILL FIND THE ALBUM’S ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED CATALOG NUMBER CS-9737, we claim that the album was recorded – or at least SCHEDULED to be recorded – much earlier, probably in mid 1968, and that it was (probably) scheduled for release more than a year before it actually came out (Nyro’s previous album, Ely and the Thirteenth Confession, was released in March 1968). We speculate – but have no way of proving - that this album (NY Tendaberry) was originally scheduled for the release in August or September 1968. More than likely, the album was postponed by Laura Nyro’s slow and deliberate creative process which was prone to numerous delays and jump-starts. And more than likely, the cover was completed way before the actual recording.

Why would Columbia (or Nyro?) delay for almost a year the release of the album and change its original cover and original catalog number? We don’t know. Perhaps the artwork was deemed too unflinchingly depressive and gloomy for mass consumption during the flower-power era. Perhaps they didn’t want to be seen as endorsing the artist’s depression. Or both. We may never know.

There are simply too many questions and too few answers. What we do know for fact is this: this rare version of Laura Nyro’s third album has never been offered on eBay that we could establish, and very few people in the world – including some of her fiercest and most dedicated fans – know about its existence. Bid now, or shed bitter tears later.

For additional historical information on this album, including track listing ►click here

THIS IS A NO-RESERVE AUCTION!

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·       CONDITION:

·       RECORD

(IMPORTANT NOTE: unless otherwise noted, ALL records are graded visually, and NOT play-graded!; we grade records under the strong, diffuse room light or discrete sunlight)

(a)            WE GRADE THE VINYL AS EXCELLENT. This is one of those albums that are somewhat difficult to grade. It is somewhere between VG++ and NEAR MINT, just a notch below NEAR MINT. A few light abrasions ARE visible, but they are extremely shallow, superficial and only moderately visually distracting (nothing significant).For the most part, the vinyl looks impeccable without any MAJOR visual flaws or imperfections. Much of the original luster is intact, and the vinyl shines and sparkles almost like new.

(b)            The record is apparently pressed on a RELATIVELY thick, inflexible vinyl. This is NOT a thin, flimsy ('dynaflex' type), vinyl, but not the thickest, most rigid vinyl, either.

(c)             Of course, this is a full-bodied ANALOG recording, and not an inferior, digital recording!!!

·       COVER

THE COVER IS ABOUT VERY GOOD+ (VG+)

The following flaws or imperfections are noted on the cover:

-         Cover has some light ring wear (nothing significant); On the scale from 1 to 10 (1 being the least, and 10 being the most severe), we assess the severity of ring wear as 4 (front side) and 3 (back side).

-         Back cover has a small peel-off mark, probably from the careless removal of the price sticker (no part of the paper is missing; the small piece of paper is simply wrinkled).

-         Minor shelf wear noted on the top and bottom seams (nothing significant)

-         Cover has two corners at the mouth (opening) slightly worn / frayed / bent.

NO OTHER IMPERFECTIONS ON THE COVER:

-         No split seams

-         No cut-out (drill) holes.

-         No cut-out corners

-         No saw-marks or indents

-         No dirt/dust rubbing stains (friction marks caused by rubbing against other covers)

-         No yellowing from aging

-         No writing

-         No stamps

-         No tearing: no chips, dents or nicks on the seams

-         No stains

-         No mold or mildew spots

-         No stickers or labels

-         No water damage

-         No razor marks, scratches, pressure marks, lines, streaks, or cuts.

-         No warping

-         No wax, glue, paint or liquid drops on the cover

-         No bar codes

-         No RIAA stamps or stickers.

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POSTAGE & SHIPPING:

Generally, US postage is $4.80 per item shipped via priority mail. International postage- and insurance rates vary from country to country. For SPECIFIC international and domestic postage and insurance rates ►click here. While you can be rest assured that our packaging is careful, sturdy and impact-proof, please note we are NOT responsible for uninsured items. Please do NOT send $1.00 for international insurance, as this rate applies to domestic (USA) shipments ONLY. As of August 2004, we will charge additional $1.00 per order (not per item) for shipping and handling, in order to offset increasing costs of labor and packaging material.

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