It didn't take long for New York Giants fans to celebrate the team's NFC Championship win Sunday over the San Francisco 49ers with a pertinent Super Bowl music video posted all over Facebook: Laura Nyro's classic "Eli's Comin'," in honor, of course, of Giants quarterback Eli Manning, now leading his team against the New England Patriots at Super Bowl XLVI on Feb. 5 in Indianapolis.
The song was a key cut on Nyro's majestic 1968 album Eli And The 13th Confession. Covered by Three Dog Night, it reached No. 10 in 1969, while two other album songs, "Stoned Soul Picnic" and "Sweet Blindness," were big hits for The 5th Dimension.
"It's such a Laura Nyro song in that it's so full of her unique kind of energy and mystery," says Judy Kuhn, the Tony-nominated actress who won an Obie Award for her starring role in Eli’s Comin’--the novel 2001 trip through Nyro’s songs that was staged at the Vineyard Theater.
"You kind of know what it's about but can never articulate it," she adds. "But I'm a diehard fan, and can't really say enough about her."
Kuhn was so impacted by her Eli's Comin' experience that she performed Nyro songs solo as part of Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series, then recorded the tribute album Serious Playground: The Songs Of Laura Nyro in 2007.
"It's about time she was inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, given her profound influence on so many songwriters," she says, noting Nyro's forthcoming induction. "It's unimaginable that she's not there already: She really was a trailblazer who did things nobody had done, and so unique that there really isn't anyone like her. And it's amazing how many people still hear her name and go, 'Who?' and then you start singing her songs and they go, 'Oh! Okay.'"
But as for the new tie-in between Nyro and "Eli's Comin'" and The New York Giants and Eli Manning, she concedes she's from Washington, D.C., and grew up a Redskins fan.
"But I'm rooting for the Giants!" Kuhn concludes.
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