Songs by Randy Newman

Randy Newman’s New Zealand visit in 2020 may have been cancelled, but William Dart looks at some of his songs in versions by Alan Price, Peggy Lee, Nina Simone, Etta James, The Von Trapp Children and others.

This rather greasy specimen of loungey melancholia caught my very crumpled state of mind a few weeks ago on learning that Randy Newman’s much-anticipated New Zealand tour was not going to be.

And it does come from the man himself. This is the opening track of the very first Randy Newman album that came into my hands. Not a collection of his songs but rather his own studio orchestra delivering music he’d written for the television series of Peyton Place. All originals, apart from this wonderfully sleazy wallow in Franz Waxman’s theme for the 1957 movie.

In 1965, when this album was released, Randy Newman had been around LA music circles for the best part of that decade.  And while studio work paid the rent, he was slowly building up a base as a songwriter, penning numbers that would be recorded by the likes of The Fleetwoods, Irma Thomas, Pat Boone and Vic Dana…

I can’t imagine that Randy Newman would have given us that particular number in his New Zealand concerts, were he still coming.  But, judging from other recent live performances, we might have expected a bit of a nostalgia trip, revisiting the songs that made his name.

Including, maybe, this wry account of a special friendship between a boy and his bear, first brought to our attention back in 1967 by Alan Price of The Animals.

Certainly in this country that old Decca 45 fell on responsive ears. The B-side of the disc was a very strange little song, broaching issues that would wait another 50 plus years until David Farrier revealed to some innocent cinema-goers that tickling can be an erotic pastime.

‘Tickle me’, the Randy Newman song, didn’t get so many cover versions at the time, but back in 1967, it was a brave choice for Auckland band The Sounds –  resuscitated by the indefatigable Grant Gillanders for one of his CD slices of NZ pop history.

Randy Newman’s very first solo album, released in March 1968, somehow slipped almost unnoticed into the world. Now it seems like a cluster bomb of standards, from songs like ‘Love Story’ and ‘Living without you’ to ‘Cowboy’ and ‘I think it’s going to rain today’.

But was everyone ready for the expressionist cabaret of ‘Davy the Fat Boy’, his tale of a plump lad, badgered and humiliated on the sideshow circuit, told by a narrator who is, in the words of Newman himself, not a good guy.

The song found Newman working very hard indeed to compete with his own hyper-orchestration, hellbent, it seems, on out-Straussing Richard Strauss. Or, as the singer remembers, a little like building a mountain that you can’t climb.

In presenting this slightly offbeat, compensatory Randy Newman jukebox, I’ve searched out some less expected covers of his songs, and there aren’t so many of that particular one. Dutch cabaret artist Jan Rot may take it on, with the title 'Dikkie de vetklep'. But you need to know Dutch to get the point.

There was one sleeper on that first album, titled ‘The Beehive State’, eventually recorded by the Doobie Brothers of all bands. It’s a song that has unexpected resonance today, when so much of American politics revolves around and is impacted by the country’s hinterland – the many forgotten states between the West and East coasts. A case poignantly put forward by Mollie O’Brien and her family in the pre-Trumpian times of 2016.

‘Linda’, another song from that first album is one of Newman’s first snapshots of a totally desolated human being.  Peggy Lee recorded it in 1969, for the album that takes its name from its Leiber and Stoller centrepiece, ‘Is that all there is’, a number that gets much of its character from Randy Newman’s Kurt Weill-styled string arrangements.

When Peggy Lee takes on ‘Linda’, now with the very Brechtian title of ‘Johnny’, Newman takes the opportunity to extend his Weimar weltscherz for a few more minutes. And the singer, well-known for dispensing the ultimate in vocal cream, with dead-centre pitching, relaxes and throws herself into the world-weary angst of it all.

One song from that very first Randy Newman album would receive perhaps its finest interpretation within months of its initial release.

Nina Simone and Piano is an album that I grew up with, and it stands as one of that singer’s crowning achievements. For some, her conception of ‘I think it’s going to rain today’ will be far, indeed far too far, from Newman’s dispassionate delivery. Don’t expect understated reportage here, as Simone works her way from utter tenderness to full fire and fury, with the singer brandishing her Juilliard keyboard technique as ancillary armament.

What might Randy Newman have played us from his second album - 12 Songs from 1970. This was the first of his discs to be released in this country and pretty startling it was to those of us familiar with his debut outing.

Here the lush studio orchestra had been shunted to make way for a tight studio band that included such luminaries as Ry Cooder, Clarence White, Gene Parsons and Milt Holland.

The band Three Dog Night would be quick to pick up the album’s best-known song, ‘Mama told me not to come’, a number that was delivered such delicious bravado by Tom Jones at Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012.

But, in fact, back in 1970, it wasn’t a new song. And maybe the definitive version was that recorded by Eric Burdon and the Animals back in 1967, complete with some red herring harpsichord prettiness in its opening bars.

The 12 songs album had more than its share of ironic grimness – numbers like the desperate plea of ‘Lover’s Prayer’ and the dysfunctional family that we meet in ‘My Old Kentucky Home’, in which a classic Stephen Foster ballad is turned topsy-turvy.

Not so many singers took up the challenges of these two numbers, apart from, of all people, the von Trapp Children, who squeezed the second song into a repertoire that ranges from Mozart’s Magic Flute Overture to generous pickings from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music.

They set off here with wide-eyed and full-voiced enthusiasm but after Newman’s first verse, they seem happier to stick with Stephen Foster rather than meet any more of the family. But even in the Foster refrain, the young folks still roll on the floor. Maybe with laughter.

There aren’t many songs painted in darker shades that ‘Let’s Burn Down the Cornfield’.

When Newman turned 70 in 2015, The Telegraph reminded us that this is one of his very best, and one of Bob Dylan’s personal favourites. So laid-back, Dylan commented, that you forget that he’s saying such important things.

Laid-back, however, is not a word in Etta James’ vocabulary. In 1973 she won Newman’s heart and admiration when she covered his song ‘Sail Away’, and, a year later she directed an almost gospel fervour to till the brooding soil of ‘Let’s Burn Down the Bornfield’. With guitarists Danny Kortchmar and Lowell George in the band, and a line-up of seven horns masterminded by Trevor Lawrence, it produces a fire that chills as much as it sears.

When Randy Newman played the Hollywood Bowl in August 2018 he promised to cover his career with at least one song per album. Which he did, calling on an orchestra conducted by his cousin David Newman, a band that included Mitchell Froom in its personnel, and his own trusted grand piano.

It was the piano that featured in one of the most powerful songs from his last album, 2017’s Dark Matter. 

‘Wandering Boy’ joins Simon Smith, Davy and Johnny as one of Newman’s sharpest character sketches. On the Hollywood Bowl stage, he introduced it as coming from his own Southern childhood, occasioned by his father singling out a boy of potential who, ironically, and tragically, did not achieve that promise. And like so many of Randy Newman’s songs, it goes beyond mere words over notes, however immaculately they might be sculpted.

Music Details

'Song title' (Composer) – Performers
Album title
(Label)

'Theme from Peyton Place' (Waxman) – The Randy Newman Orchestra
Peyton Place (Original Music From the TV Series)
(Sony)

'Looking For Me' (Newman) – Vic Dana
On Vine Street: The Early Songs of Randy Newman
(Ace)

'Simon Smith And His Amazing Bear' (Newman) – Alan Price
Geordie Boy: The Alan Price Anthology
(Sanctuary)

'Tickle Me' (Newman) – The Sounds
The Kiwi Pop Scene 1967
(Frenzy)

'Davy the Fat Boy' (Newman) – Randy Newman
Randy Newman
(Warner)

'The Beehive State' (Newman) – Mollie O'Brien
Daughters
(Remington Road)

'Johnny’ (‘Linda’) (Newman) – Peggy Lee
Is That All There Is
(Capitol)

'I think it's going to rain today' (Newman) – Nina Simone
Nina Simone and Piano!
(RCA)

'Mama Told Me Not To Come' (Newman) – Eric Burdon & The Animals
On Vine Street: The Early Songs of Randy Newman
(Ace)

'My Old Kentucky Home' (Newman) – The Von Trapp Children
The Von Trapp Children Volume II
(Rattlesby)

'Let's Burn Down the Cornfield' (Newman) – Etta James
Come a Little Closer
(Chess)

'Wandering Boy' (Newman) – Randy Newman
Dark Matter
(Nonesuch)