Randy Newman's early albums flopped while other singers turned his songs into hits
Before he wrote You've Got a Friend in Me for Toy Story, Randy Newman was the songwriter's songwriter: critics adored his records, shops barely sold them, and stars from Nina Simone to Three Dog Night scored with his material. His first live album scraped into the charts at No. 191.
Newman was born in Los Angeles on November 28, 1943, the same day his father, an internist, turned thirty. Film music ran in the family: three uncles, Alfred, Lionel and Emil, scored Hollywood pictures, and several cousins followed them. He spent early childhood summers in New Orleans, loved Ray Charles to excess, and was writing songs professionally at 17. He left UCLA one semester short of a degree and finally completed it in June 2021.
His own debut single, in 1962, went nowhere, so he concentrated on writing and arranging for others. Britain proved especially receptive: Gene Pitney took Nobody Needs Your Love to No. 2 in 1966, and the keyboardist Alan Price put seven of his songs on a single 1967 album. Back home, a childhood friend, Lenny Waronker, joined Warner Bros. Records in 1966 and drew Newman, Leon Russell and Van Dyke Parks into a circle that helped make the label a rock powerhouse.
Warner released Newman's first solo album in 1968. It won praise and never entered the Billboard Top 200. Harry Nilsson recorded a whole album of Newman compositions in 1970, and the same year Newman's stripped-back 12 Songs, later ranked by critic Robert Christgau among the best records of the decade, again sold poorly even as Three Dog Night made Mama Told Me Not to Come a smash. His trademark was the unreliable narrator: songs sung in the voice of characters whose views the listener is meant to question, delivered in a drawling, Southern-tinged accent.
A striking childhood story shaped his outlook. Raised by non-religious Jewish parents, he was disinvited from a country club dance because Jews were barred, and had to ask his father what the word meant. Since the 1990s he has worked mostly on film scores, largely for Pixar and Disney, winning two Academy Awards from 22 nominations and entering the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013.
Source: Randy Newman
