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Randy Newman

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Randall Stuart Newman (born 28 November, 1943) is an American songwriter, arranger, singer and pianist who is notable for his mordant pop songs and for his many film scores. He is a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles.

Newman is noted as a lyricist of considerable sophistication. He frequently writes songs from unusual perspectives, often utilizing an unreliable narrator. For example, "Sail Away" is a slave trader's come-on, "Birmingham" is written from the perspective of a man – "a roller in a steel mill" – who loves his ordinary life in Birmingham, Alabama, while "Political Science" complains of worldwide hatred of America and proposes a final solution in a brutally ironic way. His many place-name songs, which are often archetypal examples of ambivalent Americana, include "I Love L.A.", "Baltimore", "Louisiana 1927", and "Dayton, Ohio – 1903". His first major hit was the song entitled, "Short People", wherein he was thought to have complained about midgets, but is actually complaining metaphorically about racists and bigots. "Short People" was also Newman's highest-rated hit ever. Newman's deceptively simple songs mask complex craftsmanship, and he is a skilled arranger. As a singer, Newman's drawl is reminiscent of that of blues artists like Sonny Boy Williamson and of New Orleans rock-and-roll singers like Chris Kenner. This is most likely caused by the fact that a portion of his childhood was spent in New Orleans.

His film scores include Ragtime and The Natural, and he scored the first four Disney-Pixar films; Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, and Monsters, Inc. He also scored the 1996 film James and the Giant Peach and the 2006 Disney/Pixar film Cars. In the aftermath of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe, Newman's Louisiana 1927, about the inadequate government response to an earlier hurricane-induced flood in the American south, became a sort of spontaneous anthem, played heavily on a wide range of American radio stations in both Newman's original and an Aaron Neville cover version of the song.

Contents

Life

Newman was born in Los Angeles, California, but moved with his Jewish-American family as a newborn to New Orleans, Louisiana, where his mother's family lived. He lived in New Orleans as a small child and spent summers there until he was eleven years old. The paternal side of the family includes uncles Alfred Newman, Lionel Newman and Emil Newman who were noted Hollywood film-score composers, as are his cousins Thomas, David, and Joey.

Newman became a professional songwriter by the time he was seventeen, and landed a contract as a singer with Reprise Records. He was briefly a member of the band The Tikis, who would later on become Harpers Bizarre, best known for their 1967 hit version of the song "Feelin' Groovy". Newman would keep a close musical relationship with Harpers Bizarre, offering them some of his own compositions, including "Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear" (later performed by Scooter and Fozzie the Bear on the very first episode of The Muppet Show) and "Happyland". His 1968 debut album, Randy Newman, never dented the Billboard Top 200. However, many artists, including Alan Price, Judy Collins, the Everly Brothers, Dusty Springfield, Pat Boone and Peggy Lee, covered his songs. In 1970, Harry Nilsson recorded an album of Newman compositions called Nilsson Sings Newman. That album was a success, and it paved the way for Newman's 1970 release, 12 Songs, which abandoned the elaborate arrangements of his first album for a more stripped-down sound that showcased Newman's piano. 12 Songs was critically acclaimed, but Newman's take on racism, sexism, violence and other human follies was not commercially successful in the era of James Taylor and Three Dog Night (who made a huge hit of his "Mama Told Me Not to Come"). The following year, Randy Newman Live cemented his cult following and became his first appearance in the Billboard charts at #191. However, probably because it features no unique songs of note, it has never received the critical acclaim of his studio albums.

1972's Sail Away reached #163 on Billboard, with the title track making its way into the repertoire of Ray Charles. "Burn On" concerned itself with an incident in 1969 in which the pollution on Ohio's Cuyahoga River caught fire, while the fetishistic "You Can Leave Your Hat On" was covered by Joe Cocker and later, by Keb Mo, Tom Jones, and Etta James. Good Old Boys was a set of songs about the American South; "Rednecks" pitted Lester Maddox against a "smart-ass New York Jew" (usually held to be Dick Cavett) in a song that seems to criticize both southern racism and the bigotry of American northeasterners who stereotype all southerners as racist -- as usual it was somewhat difficult to tell with whom Newman's sympathies ultimately lay. This ambiguity was also apparent on "Kingfish" and "Every Man a King", the former a paean to Huey Long (the assassinated former Governor of, and United States Senator for, the State of Louisiana), the other a personal slogan turned into a campaign song written by Long himself. Good Old Boys is, along with 12 Songs, among his most accomplished work, and Newman's following had grown so consistently through touring that Good Old Boys became a commercial breakthrough, peaking at #36 on Billboard and spending 21 weeks in the Top 200. Little Criminals was a lesser effort that saw Newman attempting to blend his symphonic aspirations with more contemporary pop instrumentation, but "Short People" became a surprise hit despite its anti-prejudice message being widely missed. Were it not for Debbie Boone's "You Light Up My Life", the song would have gone all the way to the Number 1 position. Nina Simone did a version of "Baltimore" on her 1978 album of that name. At the end of the 1970s, Born Again was a prescient commentary on the money-worship of the coming era of Reaganomics, especially with its first track It's Money That I Love, and featured a witty song satirically mythologizing the Electric Light Orchestra (and their arranging style) entitled "The Story of a Rock and Roll Band".

Newman's work as a film composer began in 1971, with his work on the Bud Yorkin satire Cold Turkey. He returned to film work with 1981's Ragtime, for which he was nominated for two Academy Awards. His 1983 album Trouble in Paradise received greater critical acclaim than some of his previous work, and included the hit single "I Love L.A.". This song is a good example of Newman's ambivalence toward what might be termed the American Dream, and demonstrates why those who dub him an ironist often miss the genuine affection Newman seems to have for his subjects. As he explained in a 2001 interview, "There's some kind of ignorance L.A. has that I'm proud of. The open car and the redhead, the Beach Boys... that sounds really good to me." 1988's Land of Dreams, largely an evocation of his youth in New Orleans, was also well received by critics.

In the 1990s, Newman adapted Goethe's Faust into a concept album and musical, Randy Newman's Faust. The original 1995 stage version at La Jolla Playhouse was unsuccessful so he retained David Mamet to help rework the book before its relaunch on the Chicago Goodman Theatre mainstage in 1996. Newman's Faust project had been many years in the making, and it suffered for it; a central joke was Newman's depiction of Faust as a shallow heavy metal music fan in thrall to Satan, and this had to be modified (unsuccessfully) to accomodate the less-than-devil obsessed age of grunge rock that was in high dudgeon by 1995. The Mamet rewrite of Randy Newman's Faust also failed, but the project contains enough first-rate music (including the stunning slice of American '"Gainesville" and the lullaby "Sandman's Coming", both beautifully sung by guest vocalist Linda Ronstadt on Newman's concept album) to be deserving of another attempt at revision and production for the stage.

Newman was again nominated for an Academy Award for his work on "You've Got a Friend in Me" for Toy Story (1995). Also, his 1972 tune "Political Science", became part of the soundtrack of the 1999 romantic comedy Blast from the Past, starring Brendan Fraser, Alicia Silverstone, Christopher Walken, and Sissy Spacek.

Newman had the dubious distinction of receiving the most Oscar nominations without a single win (15). His streak was broken when he received the Oscar for Best Song, awarded in 2001 for the Monsters Inc. song "If I Didn't Have You", beating the likes of Enya and Paul McCartney. He began his acceptance speech with, simply: "I don't want your pity!" ( http://www.anecdotage.com/index.php?aid=16554 )

Randy Newman was inducted into the Songwriters' Hall of Fame in 2002

Randy Newman parodied in Queer Duck
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Randy Newman parodied in Queer Duck

Randy Newman was parodied in the television show Family Guy in the episode "Da Boom", where he is portrayed as a senile man at a piano singing about everything he sees. Newman was parodied by Will Sasso, who was reprising the character from a recurring MadTV sketch. He reappeared in for a fake advertisement for a Disney movie singing about a bear and a bunny travelling through the forest "or something like that." Another parody of Newman appeared in episode 13 of Queer Duck, where he played his Oscar-nominated song, "This One Sounds Like All The Others" [link].

Selected discography

Trivia

References

  1. ['Randy Newman', Internet Movie Database]. Retrieved July 2 2005.
  2. [RandyNewman.com]
  3. Randy Newman: American Dreams, Kevin Courrier (2005) ISBN 1550226908

External links

 

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