Randy Newman

Songwriter first

Randy Newman was born in Los Angeles in 1943 and spent part of his childhood in New Orleans. Three of his uncles, Alfred, Lionel and Emil Newman, were Hollywood film composers. He was writing professionally at 17. His own first single as a performer, Golden Gridiron Boy in 1962, flopped, so he concentrated on writing and arranging for other people. The British charts noticed first: Cilla Black, Gene Pitney and the Alan Price Set all reached the top 20 with his songs between 1965 and 1967. In 1966 his friend Lenny Waronker became an A&R manager at Warner Bros. Records, and a circle formed around him that included Newman, Leon Russell and Van Dyke Parks.

Randy Newman (1968), his first album, was highly orchestral and never entered the Billboard 200. He said later that he had thought an orchestra could move things along alone, and that drums felt like cheating. Harry Nilsson recorded an entire album of Newman songs in 1970, and 12 Songs, made that year with Ry Cooder on slide guitar, gave him a rootsier sound. Robert Christgau named it the best record of 1970. Three Dog Night had a US number one with Mama Told Me Not to Come, which Newman had written for Eric Burdon.

Sail Away and Good Old Boys

Sail Away (1972), produced by Waronker and Russ Titelman, reached 163 on the Billboard 200. Its title song, sung by a slave trader selling the voyage to his audience, was later recorded by Ray Charles and Etta James. Newman has said he did not want to say only that slavery is awful, because that is too easy. Good Old Boys (1974) began as a concept album about an everyman of the Deep South called Johnny Cutler. Newman wrote Rednecks first and then, he said, felt he had to explain the man, which led to Birmingham and Louisiana 1927. Newman also grew obsessed with the political career of Huey Long.

It was his first major commercial success, reaching 36 on the Billboard 200 and staying 21 weeks. Newman premiered it on 5 October 1974 at Symphony Hall in Atlanta, conducting the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. He remembered being scared and nervous, and called it one of his most memorable shows. Christgau gave it an A, and Pitchfork's 2016 review called it one of the best singer-songwriter albums of the 1970s.

Hits

Little Criminals (1977) went to nine on the Billboard 200, with members of the Eagles playing and singing on it. Short People opened it and reached two on the Hot 100. Newman intended it as a satire on prejudice, and in his words it was the worst kind of hit anyone could have. He re-recorded it in 2016. His next big song was I Love L.A., from Trouble in Paradise (1983). It missed the Hot 100, but Nike used excerpts from its video during the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, and the song is played after home wins by the Dodgers, Lakers, Rams and Kings.

Film work grew from there. Ragtime brought two Oscar nominations in 1981, and Toy Story in 1995 gave him You've Got a Friend in Me. His own albums continued with Land of Dreams (1988), Randy Newman's Faust (1995) and Bad Love (1999).

Since

After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Louisiana 1927 became an anthem on American radio and television, in Newman's original and in Aaron Neville's cover. He recorded three Songbook albums of his own songs at the piano, in 2003, 2011 and 2016. Putin, released in 2016, won a Grammy for arrangement, and Dark Matter in August 2017 was his first studio album in nine years. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013 and sang I Love L.A. at the ceremony with Tom Petty, John Fogerty and Jackson Browne. He has had 22 Academy Award nominations and two wins, both for Best Original Song. Newman said in 2017 that he would never not play You've Got a Friend in Me.