Randy Newman

Randall Stuart Newman (born November 28, 1943) is an American singer-songwriter, pianist, composer, and arranger. Born in Los Angeles to an extended family of Hollywood film composers, he is known for his Americana-inspired songs, non-rhotic Southern-accented singing, and lyrics that are often mordant or satirical and delivered by an unreliable narrator. Since the 1990s, he has worked mainly in film scoring, most popularly for Disney and Pixar.

Newman began his professional career in the early 1960s composing incidental music for television and later penning UK hits for acts such as Cilla Black, Gene Pitney, and the Alan Price Set. After he formed part of a creative circle at Warner Bros. Records in 1966, the company released his first solo album, Randy Newman (1968). Other artists subsequently enjoyed chart success with recordings of his songs "Mama Told Me Not to Come" (1967), "I Think It's Going to Rain Today" (1968), and "You Can Leave Your Hat On" (1972). His own hits as a recording artist include "Short People" (1977), "I Love L.A." (1983), and "You've Got a Friend in Me" (1995). Three of his eleven studio albums have charted in the U.S. top 40: Good Old Boys (1974), Little Criminals (1977), and Harps and Angels (2008).

Newman has received numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards (out of 22 nominations), three Emmys, seven Grammy Awards as well as nominations for a BAFTA Award and seven Golden Globe Awards. His award-winning film work includes Ragtime (1981), The Natural (1984), Toy Story (1995), A Bug's Life (1998), Pleasantville (1998), Monsters, Inc. (2001), Cars (2006), The Princess and the Frog (2009), Toy Story 3 (2010), and Marriage Story (2019). He was honored with the Recording Academy's Governors Award in 2003, a Disney Legend award in 2007, and inductions into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2002 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013.

Newman was born to a Jewish family on November 28, 1943, his father's 30th birthday, in Los Angeles, California. He is the son of Adele "Dixie" (née Fuchs/Fox; August 30, 1916 – October 4, 1988), a secretary, and Irving George Newman (November 28, 1913 – February 1, 1990), an internist. He lived in New Orleans, Louisiana, as a young child and spent summers there until he was 11 years old, when his family returned to Los Angeles. The paternal side of his family includes grandparents Luba (née Koskoff) (July 21, 1883 – March 3, 1954) and Michael Newman (Nemorofsky) (1874–1948), and three uncles who were Hollywood film-score composers: Alfred Newman, Lionel Newman, and Emil Newman. Newman's cousins, Thomas, Maria, David, and Joey, are also composers for motion pictures. He graduated from University High School in Los Angeles. He studied music at the University of California, Los Angeles, but dropped out one semester shy of a B.A. In June 2021, he finally completed his degree at UCLA.

Newman's parents were non-observant Jews: Newman himself is an atheist. He has said that religion or any sense of religious identity was completely absent in his childhood. To illustrate this, he has often recounted in interviews an antisemitic incident that occurred when he was young: he was invited by a classmate to be her date to a cotillion at her Los Angeles country club, the Riviera Country Club. He accepted the invitation but was subsequently disinvited by the girl's father, who told Newman that his daughter should never have invited him because Jews were not allowed at the club. Newman hung up the phone, then went to ask his own father what a "Jew" was.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.