You’ve got a friend in me – Randy Newman (piano solo with sheet music)

Randy Newman

Randall Stuart Newman (Los Angeles, California, November 28, 1943), better known as Randy Newman, is an American composer, arranger, singer and pianist. He is known for his scathing songs and movie soundtracks.

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Born in Los Angeles into an extended family of Hollywood movie composers, Newman began his songwriting career at the age of 17, writing hits for artists including Dusty Springfield, Cilla Black, Jerry Butler, and Alan Price. In 1968, he made his solo debut with the Randy Newman album, produced by Lenny Waronker and Van Dyke Parks, followed by critically acclaimed albums such as 12 Songs (1970), Sail Away (1972), and Good Old Boys (1974).

Since the 1980s, Newman has worked mostly as a film composer. He has scored nine Disney-Pixar animated films, including all four Toy Story films (1995–2019), A Bug’s Life (1998), both Monsters, Inc. films (2001, 2013), and the first and third Cars films (2006, 2017), as well as Disney’s James and the Giant Peach (1996) and The Princess and the Frog (2009).

His other film scores include Cold Turkey (1971), Ragtime (1981), The Natural (1984), Awakenings (1990), Pleasantville (1998), Meet the Parents (2000), Seabiscuit (2003), and Marriage Story (2019).

Randy Newman has received twenty-two Academy Award nominations in the Best Original Score and Best Original Song categories, winning twice in the latter category for the songs ‘If I Didn’t Have You’ and ‘We Belong Together.’ contributing to Newman being among the most Academy Award-nominated extended family, with a total of 92 nominations in various music categories.

He has also won three Emmy Awards, seven Grammy Awards, and The Recording Academy’s Governor’s Award. In 2007, The Walt Disney Company recognized him as a Disney Legend.

Newman has received twenty-two Academy Award nominations in the Best Original Score and Best Original Song categories and has won twice in the latter category, contributing to the Newmans being the most nominated Academy Award extended family, with a collective 92 nominations in various music categories. He has also won three Emmys, seven Grammy Awards and the Governor’s Award from the Recording Academy.

In 2007, he was recognized by the Walt Disney Company as a Disney Legend.

He was inducted into the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame in 2002 and to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013.

Newman’s earliest scoring work was for television, creating background music for a 1962 episode of TV’s The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, and later working briefly on the 1960s TV shows Lost in Space, Peyton Place, and Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea and more extensively on Judd For The Defense.

In 1966, an album of Newman’s Peyton Place music appeared, credited to The Randy Newman Orchestra. The music was not a score from any episode, but incidental library music designed to be heard in contexts where characters turned on a radio station, or were watching TV.

Randy Newman claims to have been unaware of the album’s existence at the time of release, and does not include it in the official “complete discography” on his website. He also co-wrote the title song for the 1970 drama Cover Me Babe. The recording was performed by Bread.

Newman also co-wrote pop songs for films as early as 1964, co-penning “Look At Me” with Bobby Darin for The Lively Set (1964), and “Galaxy-a-Go-Go, or Leave It To Flint” with Jerry Goldsmith for Our Man Flint (1966). However, Newman’s work as a composer of actual film scores began with Norman Lear’s 1971 satire Cold Turkey.

He returned to film work with 1981’s Ragtime, for which he was nominated for two Academy Awards. Newman co-wrote the 1986 film Three Amigos with Steve Martin and Lorne Michaels, wrote three songs for the film, and provided the voice for the singing bush. His orchestral film scores resemble the work of Elmer Bernstein (with whom he worked on Three Amigos) and Maurice Jarre.

Newman has scored nine Disney/Pixar feature films; Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc., Cars, Toy Story 3, Monsters University, Cars 3, and Toy Story 4.

He has earned at least one Academy Award nomination for six of the nine films he has scored for Pixar, winning the award for Monsters, Inc. and Toy Story 3, both times in the category of Best Original Song. Additional scores by Newman include Avalon, Parenthood, James and the Giant Peach, Seabiscuit, Awakenings, The Paper, Meet the Parents, and its sequel, Meet the Fockers. His score for Pleasantville was an Academy Award nominee. He also wrote the songs for Turner’s Cats Don’t Dance.

Newman had the dubious distinction of receiving the most Oscar nominations (15) without a single win. His losing streak was broken when he received the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 2002, for the Monsters, Inc. song “If I Didn’t Have You”, beating Sting, Enya and Paul McCartney. After receiving a standing ovation, a bemused but emotional Newman began his acceptance speech with, “I don’t want your pity!” When the orchestra began playing the underscore signifying that the speaker’s time on stage is concluding, Newman ordered them to stop before thanking “all these musicians, many of whom have worked for me several times and may not again.”

Besides writing songs for films, he also writes songs for television series, such as the Emmy Award-winning theme song of Monk, “It’s a Jungle Out There”. Newman also composed the Emmy Award-winning song “When I’m Gone” for the final episode.

Newman wrote the music for Walt Disney Animation Studios’ The Princess and the Frog. During Disney’s annual shareholder meeting in March 2007, Newman performed a new song written for the movie. He was accompanied by the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. The New Orleans setting of the film played to Newman’s musical strengths, and his songs contained elements of Cajun music, zydeco, blues and Dixieland jazz. Two of the songs, “Almost There” and “Down in New Orleans”, were nominated for Oscars.

In total, Newman has received 22 Academy Award nominations with two wins, both for Best Original Song. While accepting the award for “We Belong Together” in 2011, he joked, “my percentages aren’t great.”

Musical theatre

A review of Newman’s songs, titled Maybe I’m Doing It Wrong, was performed at the Astor Place Theatre in New York City in 1982, and later at other theaters around the country. The New York cast featured Mark Linn-Baker and Deborah Rush, and at one point included Treat Williams.

In the 1990s, Newman adapted Goethe’s Faust into a concept album and musical, Randy Newman’s Faust. After a 1995 staging at the La Jolla Playhouse, he retained David Mamet to help rework the book before its relaunch on the Chicago Goodman Theatre main stage in 1996. Newman’s Faust had a one-time performance at the City Center in New York City on July 1, 2014.

In 2000, South Coast Repertory (SCR) produced The Miseducation of Randy Newman, a musical theater piece that recreates the life of a songwriter who bears some resemblance to the actual Newman. Set in New Orleans and Los Angeles, it was modeled on the American autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams.

In 2010, the Center Theatre Group staged Harps and Angels, a musical revue of the Randy Newman songbook, interspersed with narratives reflecting on Newman’s inspirations. The revue premiered at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles and included among other songs “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today”, “Sail Away”, “Marie”, “Louisiana 1927”, “Feels Like Home”, “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” and “I Love L.A”. The revue was directed by Jerry Zaks and featured Ryder Bach, Storm Large, Adriane Lenox, Michael McKean, Katey Sagal and Matthew Saldivar.

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Film scores

• Cold Turkey (1971)
• Ragtime (1981)
• The Natural (1984)
• Parenthood (1989)
• Major League (1989)
• Avalon (1990)
• Awakenings (1990)
• The Paper (1994)
• Maverick (1994)
• Toy Story (1995)
• James and the Giant Peach (1996)
• Michael (1996)
• A Bug’s Life (1998)
• Pleasantville (1998)
• Toy Story 2 (1999)
• Meet the Parents (2000)
• Monsters, Inc. (2001)
• Seabiscuit (2003)
• Meet the Fockers (2004)
• Cars (2006)
• Leatherheads (2008)
• The Princess and the Frog (2009)
• Toy Story 3 (2010)
• Monsters University (2013)
• Cars 3 (2017)
• The Meyerowitz Stories (2017)
• Toy Story 4 (2019)
• Marriage Story (2019)

Studio albums

• Randy Newman (1968)
• 12 Songs (1970)
• Sail Away (1972)
• Good Old Boys (1974)
• Little Criminals (1977)
• Born Again (1979)
• Trouble in Paradise (1983)
• Land of Dreams (1988)
• Randy Newman’s Faust (1995)
• Bad Love (1999)
• Harps and Angels (2008)
• Dark Matter (2017)

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