Christmas and the Beads of Sweat by Laura Nyro

Christmas and the Beads of Sweat, Laura Nyro's fourth album, came out on Columbia in November 1970, and it closes the run that began with Eli and the Thirteenth Confession and New York Tendaberry. She cut it that early summer with Felix Cavaliere and Arif Mardin producing, but make no mistake whose record this is: Nyro co-arranged her own songs and kept her hands on the wheel.

It lands somewhere between the sunny kick of Eli and the dark, piano-drenched hush of Tendaberry. Side one rides on the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, loose and rocking, while Nyro's piano and voice keep dragging things back toward midnight. Duane Allman tears off a solo on "Beads of Sweat", and Alice Coltrane's harp floats through side two. Her cover of Goffin and King's "Up on the Roof" became the only hit single she ever had under her own name.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.