Back in 1968, Paul McCartney phoned Randy Newman to tell him how much he liked his new album. Though the record received praise from fellow songwriters, musicians, and critics, it proved less than popular among the public. Promo tags like "Once you get used to it, his voice is really something" didn't help. Eventually Reprise redesigned the cover and gave
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the album away to those willing to write for it; sales have still not passed 4500 copies.
Today, with the release of Twelve Songs, Newman remains virtually unknown, save within the recording industry itself, where artists and producers have been aware of his music since 1961, when the Fleetwoods recorded Randy's "They Tell Me It's Summer" as the flip of their smash, "Lovers By Night, Strangers By Day." Since then a strange brew have recorded his material: Blood Sweat & Tears, Judy Collins, Alan Price, the Everly Brothers, Vic Dana, Cilla Black, Eric Burdon, Vicki Carr, Manfred Mann, Dusty Springfield, Three Dog Night, Gene Pitney, Ella Fitzgerald, Fats Domino, Rick Nelson, Trini Lopez, Van Dyke Parks, and Nilsson, whose new album, Nilsson Sings Newman, features ten of Randy's songs with the composer himself on piano.
Since moving from New Orleans at two and a half, Randy has lived in Los Angeles, majoring in music at UCLA, missing out on a degree when he refused to take finals. Cole Porter and Ray Charles mattered to Randy as he developed his music, but the experience of his uncles—Emil, Lionel, and Alfred Newman—in film scoring, conducting, and arranged shaped Randy's career as much as any other factors. Music from supper clubs, Broadway, movies and rhythm and blues led Randy to the point where his influences were fully absorbed; with the possible exception of Van Morrison and Neil Young, no one is writing a more unique and personal music.
Seventy-five musicians were used to augment Randy and his piano on his first album. The strongest cuts, "Love Story" and "Davy, the Fat Boy," open and close the record, fixing the mood of a bitter longing for affection that characterizes the album. Denny Cordell has called Randy "the foremost practitioner of suburban blues," and certainly "Love Story" is the blues of Middle America. The song marks out a simple pattern of life: boy meets girl, gets married, lives in suburbia, has children, dies. Randy moves in on The Dream in an uncommon way: "When our kids are grown/They'll send us away to a little home in Florida/ We'll play checkers all day/Till we pass away."
With "Davy, The Fat Boy," Randy fashioned a strange portrait of a man in a trap. Davy's parents, fearing death, have entrusted their child to his only "friend." The friend, now a caretaker, put Davy on display. Within a sideshow setting that seems surprisingly more real than surreal, Davy's keeper yells out, "You've got to get this fat boy into your life!" Then, with Randy's piano laying the foundation, the orchestra creates the terrible image of
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