Newman, Randy

▪ 2001

      Although he had been called the greatest living American songwriter, by his own reckoning Randy Newman had only 40,000 fans. As a recording artist, he had always been more popular with critics than with consumers, and his greatest success had come from writing scores and songs for motion pictures, which had brought him 13 Academy Award nominations, including three in 1999 and one in 2000, for Toy Story II.

      The son of a doctor with a roster of celebrity patients, Randall Stuart Newman was born on Nov. 28, 1943, in Los Angeles and was part of a remarkable musical family. He began music lessons early, not only formally but also at the studios of Liberty Records, owned by the father of his lifelong friend Lenny Waronker, and on movie soundstages with his uncle Alfred Newman, one of Hollywood's most honoured composers. (Two other uncles, Lionel and Emil Newman, were also film composers, as were his cousins Thomas and David.) In 1960, encouraged by Waronker (later his producer), Newman began writing for Liberty's publishing arm, and he continued churning out pop songs after abandoning his musical studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. During this period Newman's songs included “I Think It's Going to Rain Today,” recorded by Judy Collins, and “Momma Told Me Not to Come,” which became a hit single for Three Dog Night.

      His debut album as a performer, Randy Newman (1968), however, sold fewer than 5,000 copies. The follow-up, 12 Songs (1970), again sold poorly but was critically acclaimed, as were Randy Newman Live (1971), Sail Away (1972), and Good Old Boys (1974), the last a meditation on the American South that sprang from his childhood memories of New Orleans. In 1977 Newman released his most commercially successful album, Little Criminals, with the hit song “Short People,” a frequently misunderstood indictment of bigotry. Born Again followed in 1979; Trouble in Paradise (1983) sold better and featured “I Love L.A.” (one of Newman's many odes to American cities), a jaded take on Los Angeles that was nonetheless embraced as a boosterist anthem for the city. Increasingly, Newman focused on his more lucrative contributions to films, including Oscar-nominated compositions for Ragtime (1981), The Natural (1984), Parenthood (1989), and Toy Story (1995). In 1999 he received three nominations—for A Bug's Life, Babe: Pig in the City, and Pleasantville.

      A gifted pianist, Newman was equally influenced by the shuffles of Fats Domino and the orchestral music of George Gershwin and Aaron Copland, a fact that was evident both in his film scores and in his arrangements. In Newman's songs plainspoken lyrics belie layers of subversive meaning, while misanthropic cynicism and dark humour mask a well of compassion and pain due partly to his severely crossed eyes, which required several childhood operations, and partly to his perceived outsider status as a (nonpracticing) Jew. In 1988 Newman released the uncharacteristically autobiographical Land of Dreams; that work was followed by a reworking of Faust (1995), which was later staged as a musical, and another more personal album, Bad Love (1999). Despite his legendary procrastination—and his lack of an Oscar—in 2000 Newman continued to turn out classic American music.

Jeff Wallenfeldt

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▪ American musician

in full  Randall Stuart Newman 

born November 28, 1943, Los Angeles, California, U.S.

      American composer, songwriter, singer, and pianist whose character-driven, ironic, and often humorous compositions won him a cult audience and praise from critics but were atypical of the singer-songwriter (singer-songwriters) movement of the 1970s that gave him his start as a performer.

      Born in Los Angeles but taken to New Orleans, Louisiana, as an infant, Newman was still a young boy when his family returned to Los Angeles, where his uncle Emil Newman was a conductor and his uncles Lionel and Alfred Newman composed scores for motion pictures. He studied musical composition at the University of California at Los Angeles and worked as a staff songwriter for a publishing company. His first releases as a performer, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, sold poorly but prompted cover versions by artists such as Three Dog Night (who topped the charts with “Mama Told Me Not to Come”) and Harry Nilsson. Bringing his love for the New Orleans piano-oriented rhythm and blues of Fats Domino (Domino, Fats) and Professor Longhair to the pop music tradition of George Gershwin (Gershwin, George), Newman released Sail Away (1972) and Good Old Boys (1974), with sardonic songs whose underlying humaneness and sense of social justice were often misinterpreted by listeners but much praised by critics. The tongue-in-cheek quality of Newman's biggest hits, “Short People” from Little Criminals (1977) and “I Love L.A.” from Trouble in Paradise (1983), was lost on many listeners. Land of Dreams (1988) was Newman's most personal album; in 1995 he released Faust, a concept album based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von)'s Faust. The boxed-set Guilty: 30 Years of Randy Newman appeared in 1998 and was followed by Bad Love (1999), his first album of new songs in 11 years.

      Newman also had a successful parallel career as the composer of scores and songs for motion pictures, most notably Ragtime (1981), The Natural (1984), and Toy Story (1995). After receiving 16 Academy Award nominations, he won his first Oscar in 2002 for "If I Didn't Have You" from the animated film Monsters, Inc.

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