OST ~ "Ragtime" (1981)

Sobrinho de Alfred Newman (1900-1970), um compositor reconhecido em Hollywood pelas muitas bandas-sonoras que compôs para o cinema, Randy Newman ficará na história da música mais por causa dos seus discos de música popular do que propriamente pela meia-dúzia de vezes que se aventurou por trilhos cinemáticos. “Ragtime” é a excepção que confirma a regra: uma banda-sonora arrebatadora que confere ao filme (1981) de Milos Forman (1932-2018) uma força enorme. Valeu-lhe a nomeação para dois óscares de Hollywood (música e canção, "One More Hour"), mas perderia para Vangelis (“Chariots of Fire”) e Burt Bacharach (“Arthur’s Theme”), respectivamente.

12 Songs From Randy

Original released on LP Reprise RS 6373

(US, April 1970)

This LP can be considered an integral example of the early development of what is now called “Americana”.  (Of course, Americana was always there, but it was originally called folk, blues, country, and so on).  The compositions – all but one (“Underneath the Harlem Moon”) by Newman – display a fully developed, mature style that draws heavily on late 19th/early 20th century genres such as ragtime, Tin Pan Alley, and minstrel-show music, as well as early jazz and blues, and on a couple of tracks, country. Lyrically, this is a typical Randy Newman album, with a generous helping of his trademark dark humor, typically focused on certain, shall we say, atavistic tendencies in the American psyche… many of the tracks are personality sketches of diverse unsavory characters, primarily of the rural Southern male variety (judging by the dialect and accent). For example, the pedal-steel-soaked “Old Kentucky Home” is sung by a stereotypical inbred hillbilly; Uncle Bob of “Uncle Bob’s Midnight Blues” is the kind of guy you hear muttering curses under his breath as you walk past him sitting on the front porch; and the protagonist of “Suzanne” sounds like a stalker, although more pathetic than scary… it’s pretty obvious this guy doesn’t get a lot. The theme of frustrated lust crops up on a number of other tracks, such as “Rosemary”; “Have You Seen My Baby” (the most rocking track on the album); “Lover’s Prayer”, in which the singer is humorously particular about the kind of girl he wants God to provide; and the gas station attendant’s plea, “If You Need Oil”.  Another theme – the offhand racism that pervaded popular culture up until sometime in the 1960s – appears in two songs:  “Underneath the Harlem Moon” from 1932, and Newman’s own “Yellow Man”. Instrumentally the album is gorgeous; the slide guitar of Ry Cooder (another significant early practitioner of Americana) really stands out, especially on the sparse and eerie “Let’s Burn Down the Cornfield”, but other musicians include guitarists Clarence White (Byrds) and Ron Elliott (Beau Brummels), prominent studio percussionists Milt Holland and Jim Gordon, and drummer Gene Parsons (Byrds). There are some nice old-fashioned horn arrangements too (on “Yellow Man” and “Rosemary”).  It’s just a shame that Newman’s voice (none too clear under the best of conditions) is buried so deep in the mix on some cuts that you have to strain to get any idea at all of what he’s singing.  Thank goodness for the lyric sheet. (in RateYourMusic)

RANDY NEWMAN Debut Album

Original released on LP Reprise RS 6286

(US, June 1968)

Have so many good songs been so ruthlessly butchered by a performer? Probably hundreds of times. But here the songwriter and the butcher are the same person. It is difficult to describe Newman's singing on this album: painful is an obvious word but it seems inadequate. Often he wobbles around the tune but never quite manages to get it, instead he pushes it through a meat grinder. And there he is on the back of the sleeve, looking like an insurance salesman - but in his turtle neck sweater he looks like an insurance salesman trying to look hip, but in his attempt he just underlines that he is as square as a breeze block. But then listen to the songs: they are Randy Newman at his best, neither hip nor square, just unique. They are not the easy cynical smuggery he was later to lapse into, they are suggestions for short stories that call for mixed and contrasting responses. "Bet No One Ever Hurt This Bad" has one of Newman's favourite subjects, the jilted lover, but here the abandoned lover sentimentalizes his failure, bragging about his emotional pain - typically we are called to feel for the singer's sense of loss, while being amused by his self-aggrandizement, while perhaps recognizing the sentimentalizing in our own behaviour. "Living Without You" is a sincere and touching response to the same predicament - perhaps all the more touching when contrasted to the previous song. "Linda" is yet another response to the same situation, but here Newman responds in a slightly hackneyed way: is he just being corny or is he pointing to the corniness of the situation? I presume the latter, but that doesn't stop me from finding the song touching. Newman sings to an often lush orchestra and the orchestrations are clever and crafty and ambitious (vastly more interesting than his later use of violins on, for instance, "Good Old Boys"). And it is worth pondering where Newman comes from: he is obviously not rock and roll, and he doesn't come out of the folky traditions that most of the interesting North American singer-songwriters of his generation came from - he is closer to older traditions, the Hollywood scores of his uncles or the pre-rock and roll song: but he has transformed then into something new. These songs had a big impact on me when I was a teenager and after hardly listening to them for years I've spent the weekend listening to the album time after time (it is less than 30 minutes long - Newman is concise) - I don't think I'm suffering from nostalgia, they just seem remarkable songs. And I'm even getting used to his singing again. (And I haven't even mentioned the unsettling "I Think It's Going to Rain Today", one of Newman's finest songs and one of the great songs from his generation of American songwriters.) (in RateYourMusic)