Charles Strouse
Appearances
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
That was her genius. That's why I can laugh at it. I can also laugh at it because I've had, you know, some successful shows. But her genius was really taking a young kid like me. I was quite young when I was there. I was around 18 or so. And I know from my own experience with my own children what it is to be searching for an identity. And she...
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
in her soft, brilliant way, was able to contribute to my identifying who I was.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
Yes, it does. Well, there are a number of feelings I have about the song. The first one always had been and still stays with me. It's the one song in this show of a personal nature in the show that could not have been written in the 30s. And I could say the same perhaps for Hard Knock Life, but Hard Knock Life was a bit of dramatic music where I was kind of outside it in a way.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
But here's a song of a girl during the Depression, and this song definitely could only have been written in the 70s, the harmonies and the kind of melodic. So I thought... If nothing else, I mean, I didn't think the show was going to be successful, but I certainly felt as though critics were going to say, now wait a second, how could they write this?
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
Everything else was, we'd like to thank you, Herbert Hoover, and I don't need anything but you. They were kind of pastiches using Harry Warren and Cole Porter and those kind of Gershwin composers as the filter, so to speak. But that song, no. And it was just out of another era completely. So that was my first thing about it.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
The second thing about it was that nobody could sing it because it was so rangy. And the third thing about it, which is... It's just curious. I've worked with a number of collaborators... though I've worked mostly with Lee Adams, but, you know, I've done a show with Sammy Kahn, with Alan Jay Lerner, with Richard Maltby. I mean, there have just been a lot of them, Stephen Schwartz in my life.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
Though not those particularly, but all the collaborators along the way, I had the song and I played it for many of them. And they all said, yeah, okay, what else do you have? And Martin and I were looking for a song of hope at that moment. And I played him. Actually, it wasn't a whole song. I had written it for a movie.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
this theme for an industrial film that I did, and I always liked the theme, and Martin picked up on it, and I had no idea. I certainly didn't think it was going to be a big success. I did think that it got an awfully big hand in the theater when Andrea sang it, but I thought it was the set. Martin had made a nice move with the set that had changed.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
She went behind, and then she wasn't there, so I always thought, gee, they're applauding that set.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
A very intimate story, and that is I remember lying on the grass in the park, looking up at the skyline in New York, saying I wish I could be there, and I wish I had some friends.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
I was yearning, and I was remembering that period of my life very strongly.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
Well, it's really because of the producer, a man by the name of Hillard Elkins, who was a real operator. And he somehow got Sammy Davis to agree to do it if Clifford Odets did it. And then he called Clifford and said, would you do it as a musical if Sammy Davis did it? And then he called us. and said, would you do it if Clifford Odess and Sammy Davis did?
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
And we all said, gee, that would be great if, if, if. And he was able to, in the manner of agents and producers, convince everybody that it was going to happen, and it did happen. Sammy also was very, very interested in becoming a serious actor and had the build and the drawing power for this role. It's always been a great star vehicle. Sammy agreed to do it.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
He, because he was such a highly paid star, he did something which is very unusual. I don't know whether I would have accepted it today, but that is he maintained legal approvals of every word and every note of music.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
This particular scene where they sing I Want to Be With You caused us to receive a lot of venomous mail, particularly in Philadelphia, where we opened. As a matter of fact, after the show opened, Lee Adams and I had to have bodyguards actually walk us to the hotel. We didn't think it was anything much. We just thought it was two people.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
I mean, we were aware one was black and one was white, but we didn't think it would arouse people so... And this song... for me and Lee, was a particularly interesting one because I have a serious music background and yet I've played in jazz groups and jazz is part of my nature. I tried very hard in this to combine any depth that I might have as a composer with a feeling for jazz.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
And I felt in a certain way that I had succeeded. I'm very proud of this song. But it was also because it was not only a passionate moment in the play, but I was aware that it was a passionate moment where the lovers themselves, a la Romeo and Juliet, were really leaping over a great hurdle in They weren't aware of it, or they were.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
I mean, nobody talks about that kind of thing in one way, but they leaped this hurdle. And so the song was a very important one for me where they were both finally able to express their passion as two people for each other.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
Sure. I did have a real sense, particularly towards the end of our run after. No, it was before he went to London with the show. We both marched in Selma and I think we were both drunk and we kind of got to know one another. I learned a lot about Sammy and his time in the U.S. Army where he was pummeled and other soldiers urinated on him. He had in him a great, great deal of suffering.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
And he turned whatever hurt or anger into a desire, an intense desire to be loved by everybody. And yet part of him also wanted to be in that white world. He was a most complex man.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
Well, we played the songs, and invariably, Sammy was late. Lee Adams, in particular, was not a late owl. And he would say, I'll meet you after the show at 1 in the morning. And we would be lucky sometimes if he got there at 2.30. And then we would play the songs in front of the chorus girls. He was constantly partying, Sammy. And we would play these songs in that atmosphere all the time.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
And I must tell you, at that point in our lives, we were very timid, particularly me. And I was the one that was playing it and singing them. So we did that. He would go out and play eight, nine holes of golf or something. And then we would meet him in the steam room to discuss a scene. And the first time I met him, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin and that whole bunch.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
I think Joey Bishop was there too. We were all naked, which is an odd thing to add to my composer's resume, but there were all kinds of odd incidents like that.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
No, no. That was a – this would be a part of Sammy that's typical of him and probably partially meaningless to anybody else. He brought me down there. He said he wanted to see me for a conference. And I remember one of the things, you know, we all introduced ourselves around. Believe me, I was not as proud of my physique as they of theirs.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
And so I was, and he said, this is my composer, Charles Strauss. Oh, hi, Charlie, you know, da-da-da-da-da. And it was basically, in my opinion, looking back, that he wanted to show them that he had a composer, a Broadway composer, who had written Bye Bye Birdie, That was his composer. And I remember asking him later, why do you... I don't say this is my actor, Sammy.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
Why do you say this is my composer? That was one of the times that he didn't argue the point with me, but I think he saw the emptiness of having me down there. Although, by the way, it's always made an amusing story, and a true one. But it was basically a kind of... His day in the sauna with the guys, you know, I was the drop-in guest.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
I found it out just through hearing it at my publisher. But I'll tell you something. He said something. I never met Jay-Z. Or as Andrew Lloyd Webber said in a phone call to me, he said, Jay Zed recorded the song of yours. I thought that was wonderful. And I dropped in Andrew's name too. He said something in the liner notes that it was gritty.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
He said it was gritty and he felt that that was the way black people felt in the ghetto. And the fact is when we were working on Annie, it was the first song that I had written the music for. Martin and I had never gotten, Martin Charnin and I had never gotten together. We were old friends, but that was the first song we wrote. And I wanted that song to be gritty. I didn't want it to be a fake.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
I wanted it to show these desperate times and these maltreated girls, et cetera, et cetera. So when he picked up on that, I was very proud of myself for that reason alone.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
Well, that's really an interesting question because yes and no. The yes is a part of my musical background. I know what kids' ranges and sopranos and tenors are. The no part is that I wanted to squeeze a little bit more out of them because the emotional part of the music is when kids sing... Hi, they scream. You know, I did it in Bye Bye Birdie.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
And in Bye Bye Birdie, they sang notes in the telephone hour that they didn't think they could sing. And actually, I had learned a lot of that. I used to work for Frank Lesser. I was his assistant for two years. And I remember when Frank was testing people for range, he would often have them sing dissonances. From Bushel and a Peck. From Bushel and a Peck.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
And because he would put it in a key with the pianist, that it would be out of their range.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
Could or could not hit it. Had you said sing that note legitimately in a song like, I don't know, If I Loved You or something, they would have said they can't reach it. But when they were playing these characters, they could. So I devised, it's not my own invention, or maybe it is, I don't know. These kids would come in, and I would just have them sing Happy Birthday.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
Once they passed the other thing, I would have them sing a song that they didn't have to worry about anything. And so they would say, Happy Birthday. Happy Birthday! And very often, they found that they could reach notes which, on their resumes, they couldn't reach at all. And that was the sound I wanted.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
So I did write for that, particularly in a song like Hard Knock Life and in Tomorrow, the song Tomorrow.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
Yes, fortunately they do. It's a very, very much performed show. At the time, Lee Adams and Mike Stewart and I wrote it. We wrote it because it was offered us, you might say. We would have written, I guess, almost any show that was offered us. It actually wasn't even in that shape. It was just to be a show about teenagers.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
But had we realized that it would have that kind of commercial clout, that is, that high schools and camps and... And prisons. I don't know. Everybody does it. It's incredible. And it keeps picking up in performances. I think we would have said, oh, let's do that show. But at the time, it was actually even a little strange.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
It was a bit of an embarrassment in a funny way to me and to Mike because... Well, to me particularly, because I'd been in serious music all my life. I'd studied classical music. I was embarking on a serious music career. And that this would be the first opportunity that I'd have for a major public hearing. And then that we had this silly name, Bye Bye Birdie.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
It was not the show that I wanted to write, which taught me something about myself, which is... I don't know where the hell I am half the time.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
Well, you know, before I just answer that, I have four kids and it's come back to haunt me because I have four telephone lines and it's still every second everybody's on the phone. Anyway, beside the point, my considerations were, first of all, that it was rock and of its sort.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
It is rock music, though such an innocent sort that, you know, I don't like to listen to it and say I'm Mick Jagger or anybody like that. but it was rock and, and, and, uh, I paid attention very strongly to the guitar chords, you know, that all guitarists play on it. You know, a lot of rock music in those days particularly was very... There were certain patterns. It became patterned in a way.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
And I did model it on that. But then I used a lot of... I used a lot of changes of time and a lot of interjections, which is into the exact rock beat. But I kept the beat going very much. And then I used just, you know... Lee and I sat and kind of carved it out together. Hi, and, you know, the things, did they really get pinned?
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
Well, oddly enough, she did. This woman was the great musician of our generation in many ways. And her greatness was that she was a master musician. analyst, not only of music, but a psychoanalyst in her own way. And she used to hear the music of her students, and she was able to isolate it. She was able to shine a spotlight on what was you and what was watered-down Stravinsky.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
and I remember when I worked with her, she asked to hear everything I'd written, and I played her my sonata and my concerto, and she said, well, what else, what else, what else? And I said, well, that's it. She said, well, no, what about, you know, your student pieces? And I played her some of them, and then she, anything else?
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
And I said, well, I said, there was, my parents, who were never into serious music at all, though they were very proud of me, I used to come home from college and play them all these pieces that sounded like watered-down bar talk, really, but they were very serious kind of things. I was really, you know, into it.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
But I remember writing a piece that I considered my party piece that I could play that they could show off to my aunt. I wrote this piece, and it was really, you know, I look back at it today, kind of saucy or something. It was very lighthearted. And they loved it. Everybody liked it. So it became my piece. And, uh...
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
I played that for her, which I very rarely... I didn't do that for anybody except, you know, a couple of relatives. And she said, ah. And she said, well, what else? And I said, well, I really... Oh, I said, well, when my brother, he had been in the Navy, and when he came home from his first tour of duty or his boot camp, whatever, I had written... I laugh because it was a funny moment in my life.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
I said, I wrote this little song for him called Welcome Home, Able-Bodied Steven Strauss. And she said, may I hear that? Oh, I said, I could. Oh, she said, please. And so there this venerable woman, I played this silly song. She said, I see. She said, anything else? And I said... I, well, I said, I used, this makes me laugh. I said, I used to go out with a, uh, a girl. I really liked her.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
Her name was Janet. And we lived on the Upper West Side of New York. And I wrote this song, but it was a joke, uh, called Moon Over 83rd Street. She said, play this for me. Here I am in Paris, you know, with an intimate of Stravinsky's and, uh, every American composer that you could think of having studied with this great woman. So I played Moon over 83rd Street. And she said, ah, good.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
Now we go back to this whatever. So we went back to... Towards the end of my thing, she said to me something that nobody had ever said to me. She said, you have a great talent for light music.
Fresh Air
Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse
Wait a second. No, I can't sing that one. This is the funniest interview I've ever done. Moon over 83rd Street, with shrafts right below. Moon over 83rd Street, my heart's all aglow. You, Janet, in the lamplight, I hear something cold. I hear something dull. I'm yours, body and soul. I think that was the last one. It was meant partly as a jest. I mean, you know, but that was it.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
You know, in one of the boxes, where is it? We found a letter from Stephen Sondheim. And there's a funny part to it. Do you mind if I read it? Yeah? Okay. So this is dated July 22nd, 2008. And he says, congratulations on your memoir that was just published. And then he says, quote, I bought a copy yesterday and naturally immediately looked up references to myself.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
And then he supplies two corrections for you in case there are any future reprintings, he says. Was that kind of thing in character for him?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
Stephen and I were friendly enemies. He didn't like me much. I didn't like him less. But on the other hand... I respected him a lot. Stephen and I knew each other so long that I stood danger of invading his territory. But even that was not... We came into two different worlds. But we were very old friends. He was my oldest friend in the theatre industry.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
I mean, right now, Annie is surrounding us, right? There's posters on the walls and pillows, but also in this box, it's Annie stationary and letterheads. Also, there's the Annie cookie jar on the shelf and this Annie piggy bank. With her big, big song, Tomorrow, when you originally wrote it, did you think that you'd struck gold?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
I didn't think. I thought that was a disposable item that we needed, necessary to keep the curtain up or down. But so many songs in musicals, go through that emotion. If a guy is a good theater composer, he learns to kind of think with two voices, so to speak. I love you, my darling.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
The other is, I love you, my darling, but keep it going, this song, because we have to bring in the detective soon. I would say Tomorrow falls into that category. I needed some time. It's usually always that way when you're writing for the theater. The book writer most usually says, says he needs a song there, or you yourself, rather than here's my symphony to the stars.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
And so you originally thought that that song was disposable, as you said. Now, in hindsight now, what do you think it is that makes that song so great?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
I don't know. I mean, maybe I do know. Maybe I'm being modest here. I do think I'm talented. I think I write a song and I wanted to please the audience. I didn't know that it was going to be so big. And so I'm very proud if it made its mark.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
I think that tomorrow, with it, there's this beautiful simplicity to it. where you can hear it and then, you know, almost like sing along with it during each reprise.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
That's what a popular song should do. It should sound as though it was always there, but it never was until you thought of it. And I think Tomorrow came to me that way. Ba-da-ba-dee-bee, ba-ba-da. It's a complicated melody. I'm looking at posters on my, and there's a lot of songs I've written that have not been classics like that.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
I mean, I think that like fortunately and unfortunately, when a song gets as big as Tomorrow's gotten and has remained, it gets bigger than you, right? Your name in many ways is no longer associated with it. Has that bothered you in your career?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
Not if I hear this song. No, not really. I mean, I never got what Lenny himself did. Irving Berlin did. No, I never had that luxury. And here's another Charles Strauss song. I never had that kind of reputation. It's a funny thing about composing. It comes from your heart in a way, but it really comes from nowhere. It's God-given.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
I would think that's a God-given gift that I've been fortunate enough to get. I'm getting old, you know. Look how I'm walking. I don't play too well now. The sun will come out tomorrow Bet you bought a dollar That tomorrow There'll be sun Just thinking about Tomorrow Clears away the cobwebs and the sorrow. Till there's none. When I'm stuck with a day that's great and lonely.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
I just stick out my chin and grin. And say, whoa, the sun will come down tomorrow. So you've got to hang on till tomorrow. Come what may. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
I mastered that pretty well.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
That's fantastic.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
Thank you.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
I have so much to say on this subject.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
At Radiolab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
Radiolab, adventures on the edge of what we think we know.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
I'm going to record if that's okay. Well, I'm going to suck my stomach in. The scene in his apartment, you know, it was a lot. It was chaotic. He's currently going through his archives, just the boxes and boxes completely covering the floors. And he's doing this in order to donate them to the Library of Congress.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
Yeah, I guess the Library of Congress, which collects life itself. Yeah, they asked me. I mean, I wasn't asked to do this.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
But in this box, here, tell me, we found... Oh, my God, it's so heavy. But there's this record from All in the Family. I wrote it. Oh, right, the theme song for the show.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
Norman Lear... wanted to have a theme, but he couldn't afford a big orchestra. And I brought up the fact that when I was a kid, we all used to sit around and my mother used to play. And so that's how I wrote it. But boy, the tunes Glenn Miller played, songs that made the hit parade. Guys like us, we had it made. Those were the days, and you knew where you were going. That she made up herself.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
Girls were girls and men were men. Mister, we could use the Herbert Hooper again. But the song itself, as did the program, became very successful.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
Yeah. You know, there's this huge framed picture of Jay-Z and the framed CD and cassette tape from the album that says, Volume 2, Hard Knock Life. Oh, it says from 1998. It's the hard knock life.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
Well, what was it like working with Jay-Z? There he is. He was surrounded by... Bodyguards and all kinds of people. There was finally one point in my life where we got together and sat and talked.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
Oh, because he also produced the most recent Annie movie remake from 2014.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Louisa Thomas on a Ballplayer’s Epic Final Game; Plus, Remembering the Composer of “Annie”
I do remember I kind of won his heart. in a way, when I said, you've got to bring your wife with you. You know, I was being kind of snotty, and he must have told her that. Beyonce? Yeah, it was a nice relationship. But most of the time, he was... He was beyond such a small person as me.