Newman follows own path

Randy Newman doesn't spend all of his time composing and singing songs destined for Pixar and Disney movies.

He also does scores for other films and even writes songs that may never end up in a film.

The singer-songwriter-pianist-composer occasionally even finds time to make a jaunt out of Southern California and into the places he hasn't visited in a while, or ever. He finds himself coming to central Arkansas (Conway) for the first time, and to Arkansas itself for the second time, after making his Natural State debut in Eureka Springs at a solo piano show in 2007.

Someday, he concedes, he might even get to Little Rock. He seems comforted to know there's no rush now, since Robinson Center Music Hall is undergoing renovation and the city's showplace venue should be just about right for him whenever it is completed.

"I enjoy doing occasional shows with orchestras," Newman says. "It gives me a chance to do some of the movie scores, including the arrangements and to talk about them.

"I think Little Rock is one of the bigger cities I've never done a show in," he muses, as a caller reminds him that at least the city might inspire a song that could rank with some of his other place-inspired titles, including "Louisiana 1927," "Baltimore," "Birmingham," "Miami," "New Orleans Wins the War," "Dayton, Ohio -- 1903" and "I Love L.A."

What about "I Love L.R." one wonders? Newman doesn't hear the question, or pretends not to.

Newman can be seen in a YouTube video made at a recent cultural milestone, playing piano on "We'll Meet Again," during Stephen Colbert's final night on Comedy Central's The Colbert Report in December. Newman accompanied Colbert, as numerous celebrities and politicos joined in for a mass sing-along.

"It was really kind of a spectacular, strange time," Newman says, "with all those folks from all spectrums, from Willie Nelson, Big Bird, Keith Olbermann, Toby Keith, Ken Burns, Cyndi Lauper, James Franco to Henry Kissinger. I didn't get a chance to talk to him, however, but I had the chance to speak to a lot more fans of mine that were all in one place. As you get older, the more unusual a thing is, the more I like it."

All successful musicians can recall the moment when their dreams began to become reality. For Newman, it came when The Fleetwoods, an early 1960s trio, chose his song, "They Tell Me It's Summer," as the B-side for their hit, "Lovers by Night, Strangers by Day." From there, his songs were recorded by artists including Dusty Springfield, Jerry Butler, Gene Pitney, Alan Price, The Everly Brothers and Three Dog Night, whose version of Newman's "Mama Told Me Not to Come" was a No. 1 hit.

Harry Nilsson recorded an entire album of Newman songs in 1970 and the album was perhaps the first "tribute" project, at least of a then-not-well-known artist. Soon Newman began getting acclaim -- or at least attention -- for his own recordings, which included "Short People," songs about the South ("Rednecks"), slavery ("Sail Away"), and other ventures into satire ("A Few Words in Defense of Our Country") that sometimes found him at odds with fans and the music industry.

Forays into film music began in 1970 with a song in a Mick Jagger movie, Performance, and in 1971 with a Norman Lear satire, Cold Turkey, but another decade passed before Ragtime got Newman a pair of Academy Award nominations. He began a string of 15 nominations without a win, until 2001, when he finally broke through with a best original song Oscar for "If I Didn't Have You" from Monsters, Inc., winning again in 2011 for "We Belong Together" from Toy Story 3.

His track record with Grammy Awards has proved better, with six wins for scores or songs, beginning in 1985 with The Natural, and continuing with A Bug's Life in 2000, Toy Story 2 ("When She Loved Me") in 2001, Monsters, Inc. ("If I Didn't Have You") in 2003, Cars ("Our Town") in 2007 and Toy Story 3 in 2011.

He's at work on music for the next installments of Toy Story and Monsters, which will be Toy Story 4 and, perhaps, Monsters: Graduate School (since the second film in the series was Monsters University, a "prequel" to the first. Or maybe it will be Monsters: The Buyout or The Merger).

Newman isn't concerned about the ultimate names of the movies for which he writes songs and scores, especially since he has other irons in his musical fire: "I'll have the third installment of my Songbook series coming out soon and a new studio album next year."

Style on 01/20/2015