[3] Between 1968 and 1970, a number of artists had hits with her songs: the 5th Dimension with "Blowing Away", "Wedding Bell Blues", "Stoned Soul Picnic", "Sweet Blindness", and "Save the Country"; Blood, Sweat & Tears and Peter, Paul and Mary with "And When I Die"; Three Dog Night and Maynard Ferguson with "Eli's Comin'"; and Barbra Streisand with "Stoney End", "Time and Love", and "Hands off the Man (Flim Flam Man)".

"[11] As a child, she taught herself piano, read poetry, and listened to her mother's records by Leontyne Price, Nina Simone, Judy Garland, Billie Holiday, and classical composers such as Debussy and Ravel.

[12] Nyro was close to her aunt and uncle, artists Theresa Bernstein and William Meyerowitz, who helped support her education and early career.

[13][14] While attending Joseph Wade Junior High School in the Bronx, Nyro performed an early version of the song Eli's Coming in music class to prove to the teacher that rock and roll "wasn't junk".

"[15] Louis Nigro's work brought her into contact with record company executive Artie Mogull and his partner Paul Barry, who auditioned Laura in 1966 and became her first managers.

She completed More Than A New Discovery in New York on November 29, 1966; and, starting on January 16, 1967, made her first extended professional appearance at age 19, performing nightly for about a month at the "hungry i" coffeehouse in San Francisco.

[12] Newsweek reporter Michael Lydon reviewed her performance very negatively, writing that "the evening hit bottom" during Nyro's "melodramatic" set.

In his memoir Clive: Inside the Record Business, Davis recalled Nyro's audition for him: She had invited him to her New York apartment, turned off every light except that of a television set next to her piano, and played him the material that would become Eli and the Thirteenth Confession.

Around this time, she considered becoming lead singer for Blood, Sweat & Tears after the departure of founder Al Kooper, but was dissuaded by Geffen.

In 1968, Columbia released Eli and the Thirteenth Confession, her second album, which 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 is widely considered one of her best works.

With the exception of her attribution of "Désiree" (originally "Deserie" by the Charts), it was Nyro's sole album of wholly non-original material, featuring such songs as "Jimmy Mack", "Nowhere to Run" and "Spanish Harlem".

She turned down lucrative film-composing offers, although she contributed a rare protest song to the Academy Award-winning documentary Broken Rainbow, about the unjust relocation of the Navajo people.

Nyro performed increasingly in the 1980s and 1990s with female musicians, including her friend Nydia "Liberty" Mata, a drummer, and several others from the lesbian-feminist women's music subculture, such as members of the band Isis.

[21] Among her last performances were at Union Chapel, Islington, London, England in November 1994; The New York Bottom Line Christmas Eve Show in 1994; and at McCabe's in Los Angeles February 11 and 12, 1995.

(She made only a handful of early TV appearances, and one fleeting moment on VH-1 performing the title song from Broken Rainbow on Earth Day in 1990.)

[23] She had a perhaps yearlong relationship with Blood, Sweat & Tears bassist Jim Fielder starting in 1968, and with Crosby, Stills and Nash drummer Dallas Taylor for about six months after that.

)[24] Nyro married Vietnam War veteran David Bianchini in October 1971[25] after a whirlwind romance and spent the next three years living with him in a small town in Massachusetts.

In 1978, a short-lived relationship with Harindra Singh produced a son, Gil Bianchini (also known as musician Gil-T), whom she gave the surname of her ex-husband.

Nyro's influence on popular musicians has also been acknowledged by such artists as Joni Mitchell,[32] Carole King,[33] Tori Amos,[33] Patti Smith, Kate Bush, Suzanne Vega,[34] Diamanda Galas, Bette Midler,[35] Rickie Lee Jones,[35] Elton John,[33] Jackson Browne,[33] Alice Cooper,[35] Elvis Costello,[35] Cyndi Lauper,[35] Todd Rundgren,[35] Steely Dan,[35] Sarah Cracknell, Melissa Manchester, Lisa Germano, and Rosanne Cash.

Diane Paulus and Bruce Buschel co-created Eli's Comin', a musical revue of the songs of Nyro, which, among others, starred Anika Noni Rose.

The album, which debuted as a concert to a sold-out house at Lincoln Center's American Songbook Series in January 2007, includes several of Nyro's biggest hits ("Stoned Soul Picnic", "Stoney End") as well as some of her lesser known gems.

[41] Several of the band's songs (specifically those written by Emma Anderson) have echoed Nyro's music in their titles – "When I Die", "Single Girl".

[42] On her 2006 album Build a Bridge, the operatic/Broadway soprano Audra McDonald included covers of Nyro's songs "To a Child" and "Tom Cat Goodbye".

[46] Paul Shaffer, bandleader for the CBS Orchestra and sidekick on the Late Show with David Letterman, stated that his desert island album would be Eli and the Thirteenth Confession.

[52] And a World To Carry On, an original tribute show celebrating the music and life of Laura Nyro, written by Barry Silber and Carole Coppinger, was first performed in 2008 (2nd performance late August 2015) at Carrollwood Players Theatre in Tampa, Fla.[53] To Carry On, an original tribute show celebrating the music and life of Laura Nyro, starring Mimi Cohen, is in its second return engagement as of January 19, 2011, at Cherry Lane Theatre in Manhattan.

Ian described her as looking like a "Morticia Addams" caricature with her long, dark hair, and called her a "brilliant songwriter" but "oddly inarticulate" in terms of musical terminology.

While a member of the pop group Nazz, his great admiration for Nyro led him to arrange a meeting with her (which took place shortly after she had recorded the Eli and the Thirteenth Confession LP).

Rundgren's debut solo album Runt (1970) includes the strongly Nyro-influenced "Baby Let's Swing" which was written about her and mentions her by name.

The album features ten Laura Nyro songs performed by a long list of stars including Rickie Lee Jones, Shawn Colvin, Alison Krauss, Dianne Reeves, and Wayne Shorter.

The album was nominated for three Grammys, with the "New York Tendaberry" track featuring Renee Fleming and Yo-Yo Ma winning for Best Arrangement, Instrumental and Vocals.