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Introduction by Jim Liddane
Charles Strouse is an American composer and lyricist best known for his work on Broadway musicals, film scores, and television theme songs. Born on June 7, 1928, in New York City, Strouse grew up in a Jewish family and developed an early interest in music. Luckily, his parents quickly recognised his talent and enrolled him in piano lessons, which paved the way for his future in composition.
He attended the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, where he studied composition and conducting and after graduating, continued his studies with noted American composers, including Aaron Copland and David Diamond. This classical training helped him build a foundation for his later work in theatre, where he would blend traditional musical forms with popular styles.
Although he scored a major hit in 1958 with "Born Too Late" by the Poni Tails, his real breakthrough came in 1960 when he composed the music for the Broadway musical "Bye Bye Birdie", which was a critical and commercial success. The show, co-written with lyricist Lee Adams and book writer Michael Stewart, satirized the frenzy surrounding rock 'n' roll culture in America, particularly the figure of Elvis Presley. It won four Tony Awards, including Best Musical, and helped cement Strouse's reputation as a leading composer for musical theatre. The score featured hit songs like "Put on a Happy Face" and "The Telephone Hour," and it was later adapted into a successful film in 1963.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Strouse continued to collaborate with Lee Adams on a number of musicals, though none achieved the same level of fame as "Bye Bye Birdie". However, Strouse found major success again with the musical "Applause" (1970), based on the film "All About Eve". This show which starred Lauren Bacall and won the Tony Award for Best Musical, contained songs like "Applause" and "But Alive" which showcased Strouse's ability to write music that captured both dramatic intensity and a sense of fun.
Perhaps the pinnacle of Strouse's career came in 1977 with the musical "Annie". Based on the popular comic strip "Little Orphan Annie", the show featured a score by Strouse with lyrics by Martin Charnin and a book by Thomas Meehan. "Annie" became a massive success, running for nearly six years on Broadway and winning the Tony Award for Best Musical. The show’s most famous song, "Tomorrow," became a standard in musical theatre, and the show has been revived and adapted for film multiple times. "Annie" solidified Strouse's place as one of Broadway's most enduring composers.
Strouse also made significant contributions to film and television. He composed the theme song for the popular 1970s sitcom "All in the Family", titled "Those Were the Days," which became iconic in its own right. He wrote scores for films like "Bonnie and Clyde" (1967), "The Night They Raided Minsky's" (1968), and "The First Monday in October" (1981).
In addition to his work in theatre, Strouse has been an active teacher and mentor to younger generations of composers. He has taught at New York University and served on the board of several musical organisations, helping to shape the future of American music.
Throughout his life, Charles Strouse has remained passionate about the role of music in storytelling. His ability to craft memorable, emotionally resonant songs has made him a beloved figure in both the theatre community and the broader world of American music and he continues to be celebrated for his contributions to the world of musical theatre, while his work remains a testament to the power of music to bring stories to life.
Harvey Rachlin interviewed Charles for the International Songwriters Association's publication "Songwriter Magazine".
Prologue
Composer Charles Strouse obviously has a strong attachment to the songs in his voluminous oeuvre. Name a tune, any tune, and he will instantly recall an intriguing back-story behind it. “Tomorrow,” his buoyant show-stopper from Annie? Oh, that has something to do with a ditty he once wrote for a shirt commercial. The high-voltage “Telephone Hour” from Bye Bye Birdie? Well, just a device to get the story to Sweet Apple, the fictional Ohio town where the action takes place. His affection for his songs is prodigious, and the celebrated composer is likely to accompany an anecdote about a famous tune by humming a few bars.
It’s a cold winter day in Manhattan, and Charles Strouse is sitting in his West Side home talking about his illustrious career. A warm, modest, and gracious man, he provided some of the quintessential soundtrack for culture over the past half century. His “We Love You, Conrad” from Birdie became (with “Beatles” substituted for “Conrad”) the mantra for adoring fans of the Liverpool Four when the group exploded onto the worldwide pop scene.
His nostalgic opening song “Those Were the Days” for the landmark series All in the Family became one of the most memorable TV themes in broadcasting history. His “Tomorrow” ballad from Annie became a grade-school national anthem and a standard audition song for young thespian hopefuls from tots to teens.
With a dozen Broadway shows to his credit, three of which received Tony Awards for Best Musical on Broadway, Charles Strouse belongs to that rare club of legendary show tunesmiths whose ranks include Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, and Richard Rodgers. His shows and songs have leapt from the stage to movies, television, and concert halls, and into the greatest medium of all - the public mind. The Charles Strouse Songbook, a boatload of tunes festooned with evergreens, is indeed part and parcel of the Great American Songbook.
Charles Strouse was born in New York City in 1928. It was an auspicious time to enter the world for a musician. The Jazz Age was still churning out a kaleidoscope of hot music; just the year before, the first talking motion picture, The Jazz Singer, starring Al Jolson, had come out and Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II’s landmark musical Show Boat premiered on Broadway; the Big Band era was just around the corner.
Of course, Herbert Hoover was about to step into the White House, and with him would come the Great Depression, followed by FDR’s New Deal. (Hmm…could this be fodder for a Broadway show and great songs? Check Annie and its delectable song score.) .
With his mother a talented piano player, music was in Strouse’s genes, and he assiduously followed his biological markers. While just in his midteens, he became a student at the prestigious Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York.
His music education would continue with brilliant mentors including Aaron Copland at the Tanglewood Music Center and Nadia Boulanger, arguably the twentieth century’s most renowned composition teacher, whose students included composers and arrangers such as Robert Russell Bennett, Philip Glass, Walter Piston, Virgil Thomson, Richard Franko Goldman, Paul Bowles, Hugo Friedhofer, Quincy Jones, and Copland. Strouse would go on to work at various music jobs, including composing for movie newsreels, but he aspired to score musicals, and in the 1950s teamed up with journalist Lee Adams and lyricist-librettist Michael Stewart to write revues.
Occasionally, he’d even aim for the charts. In the summer of 1958 he erupted onto the pop music scene when his “Born Too Late” (written with Fred Tobias), in a recording by the Poni-Tails, became an international smash hit.
Less than two years later, on April 14, 1960, the Elvis Presley-inspired musical Bye Bye Birdie with music, lyrics, and book by the triumvirate of Strouse, Adams, and Stewart opened on Broadway. With a cast that featured Chita Rivera, Dick Van Dyke, Paul Lynde, and Susan Watson, Birdie ran for over 600 performances and won the 1961 Tony Award for Best Musical, following in the footsteps of such venerable shows as Kiss Me Kate (with music by Cole Porter), South Pacific (Richard Rodgers), Guys and Dolls (Frank Loesser), My Fair Lady (Frederick Loewe), and The Sound of Music (Rodgers).
After Birdie, Strouse stormed Broadway like a musical conquistador. He launched three new shows over the next six years: All-American in 1962, starring Ray Bolger; Golden Boy in 1964, with Sammy Davis, Jr.; and It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Superman in 1966, featuring Jack Cassidy. He scored 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde, starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, and 1968's The Night They Raided Minsky's, starring Britt Ekland and Jason Robards, as well as other motion pictures. He then returned to Broadway with Applause (another Tony Award winner for Best Musical, starring Lauren Bacall and Len Cariou) in 1970.
When the soon-to-be-number-one television show All in the Family premiered in January 1971, it featured the opening Archie and Edith Bunker piano duet written by Strouse and Adams. Strouse's I and Albert opened in London in 1972, and in 1977 Annie (with lyrics by Martin Charnin and a book by Thomas Meehan) debuted on the Great White Way and became Strouse’s third show to win a Tony for Best Musical. It also ran on Broadway for an astounding five years and eight months and almost 2,400 performances!
Not one to rest on his laurels, the indefatigable Strouse turned out a bevy of musicals after his megasuccess with Annie. The year after Annie, his Broadway Musical premiered, with lyrics by Adams and book by George Brown (who wrote the book for The Wiz, a Tony Award-winner for Best Musical). Then came more shows, including Charlie and Algernon (the 1980 Broadway premiere followed a London version called Flowers for Algernon, starring Michael Crawford); Bring Back Birdie (1981), starring Donald O'Connor and Chita Rivera; Dance a Little Closer (1983), written with Alan Jay Lerner (Brigadoon, My Fair Lady, Gigi); Mayor (1985), an off-Broadway show written with Side Man Tony Award-winning playwright Warren Leight; Rags (1986), written with Stephen Schwartz (Pippin, Wicked); Nick and Nora (1991), with a book by Arthur Laurents (West Side Story, Gypsy); Annie Warbucks (1993), starring Donna McKechnie and Harve Presnell; and Minsky's (2009), written with lyricist Susan Birkenhead (Working, Jelly's Last Jam).
Many films have been made of Strouse's musicals, their casts comprising some of the biggest stars of motion pictures and television. Needless to say, his songs have likewise been covered by many of the leading names in the music industry.
His biggest selling song? Try Jay-Z's "Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)" from the 1998 album Vol. 2...Hard Knock Life. The single, which was a chart-topper in many countries, was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America and the album, according to the online site Wikipedia, has sold nearly eight million copies around the world.
Charles Strouse is a Merchant of Melody. This is not meant in any mercantile sense, of course; it’s just that he has an extraordinary natural gift for creating can’t-get-it-out-of-your-head melodies that appeal to people of all ages, places, and backgrounds. Many of his tunes have become part of the public consciousness: you mention a title to anyone on the street, and the person instantly knows the song.
Students of Strouse 101 may recognise some common denominators in his work. Take Bye Bye Birdie and Annie, his two most iconic shows, for instance, and we see some common themes. There are songs that are uplifting (“Put On a Happy Face” from Birdie, “You’re Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile” from Annie); cynical (“Kids,” Birdie; “Easy Street,” Annie); hopeful (“A Lot of Livin’ to Do,” Birdie; “Tomorrow,” Annie).
Indeed, these songs are such an indelible part of the tapestry of music culture that they may be considered anthems: “Put On a Happy Face” for how to face the world when you’re feeling gloomy; “Kids” for the perennial complaints of adults who don’t understand the younger generation; “Tomorrow” for the promise of a better day soon. And on and on. One of the special elements of his songs is that you can take them out of his shows and they have universal and timeless meaning.
Strouse's other film-scoring credits include Ishtar and the animated feature All Dogs Go to Heaven. In addition to musicals, film scores, TV themes, and pop songs, Strouse also composes serious musical works. He has written several chamber and orchestral pieces.
In 2008 Strouse published his autobiography, Put On a Happy Face. It’s a candid, funny, self-effacing, riveting work. He writes in a friendly, earthy tone that makes you feel like a fly on the wall as he recounts his life’s experiences. He talks in detail about his family and chosen profession—growing up, getting married, having children, and his both poignant and zany behind-the scenes experiences in show business as he carves out his career.
He lays it all out—how he met his collaborators, how they came to write shows and the obstacles they faced in mounting them; sometimes the ride is hilarious, with stories about major stars that you’ve surely never heard before. Strouse is refreshingly candid in revealing family history and his innermost thoughts, and he’s so accessible that you come away feeling he’s not just a star composer but your famous next-door neighbour. It’s ultimately triumphant, of course, and after reading it all you can’t help but think there’s a genuine human being behind all those immortal tunes.
Charles Strouse is happy to engage in conversation, but one must remember he is a very busy man. In his studio people are rehearsing for a new launch of It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Superman. His wife, director and choreographer Barbara Siman, is arriving home tonight from out of town, and he’s constantly in touch with his four beloved children.
There are endless demands on his time, as his oeuvre is essentially a golden music empire: Broadway revivals of previous productions; new cover recordings; requests to use his songs in movies, television shows, and commercials; new road tours of his shows; endless school, stock, and dinner theatre productions; new print editions of his works and latest hits; requests for media interviews and speaking engagements. Of course, he's always got a new show up his sleeve, and music is always going in his head. One of his favourite spots is behind the piano in his home creating new compositions for the world to hear.
Oh, they’re calling him now from the studio. And so our conversation comes to a sudden end. How best to bid adieu to this living legend?
Perhaps our appreciation for making the world a brighter, more tuneful place would best be expressed by quoting from one of the maestro’s own works:
We love you, Charles, oh, yes we do…
After writing songs for stage revues, how did you come to write the pop tune “Born Too Late,” which became a hit in 1958?
We were getting ready to write Bye Bye Birdie, and I was researching it as I would research any serious project. I would listen to recordings of Fats Domino and Presley, “Rock Around the Clock,” all of that kind of stuff, and I was very much under the influence of a guy by the name of Dick Shawn, a wonderful comedian who did a wonderful Elvis impersonation. Lee [Adams] and I wrote some material for him. So one night I was with a friend, and we were going to play poker, but nobody showed up. He was a lyricist, and I started fooling around at the piano and he started fooling around with words, and together we wrote “Born Too Late.” We submitted it to a publisher whom I didn’t know too well and who put it on the bottom of a pile. Somebody chose to record it on what they used to call the B side, and it took off. Some [radio] guy turned it over, and it just became a number-one song.
Were you surprised?
I was surprised and delighted. I was also in the hospital when it took off. I had a motor scooter, and I had only one accident on it, and that was it. I fractured my hip. But it was thrilling. I used to just flip the dial and there it was. [Singing] “Born too late for you to...”
When you write songs, do you have any kind of feeling as to whether they’re going to become successful?
I’m really frankly surprised if anything becomes successful. I think Tony Bennett recorded “Put On a Happy Face,” but he recorded it because he was a friend of our publisher, and the publisher played him some stuff and he liked it. After that, it got performed a lot.
Do you write at home or at an office?
Well, right now, or for the last ten years, my home is my office. I have four children—two of them in California, one in Canada, and one in Connecticut—so we have a nice apartment, and I work at home.
Do you compose at the piano?
I do.
I’m interested in the process or craft of how you write songs.
It’s hard to explain. My background is a musical one and an academic one. My mother played stride piano. And I went to music school and had a lot of good teachers who ran the gamut, so to speak, although they would not have been interested in “Put On a Happy Face,” nor was I at that point in my life. But there was a thing most of them imbued me with, which is hard to [describe], but basically it was to dream something, to let something go. If you feel a line is going a certain way, encourage that dream quality. That’s the only thing I can call it. It’s not inspiration and it’s not craft, although craft has a great deal to do with it. It’s kind of realising, when your head is empty, that there are a lot of notes, a lot of things to choose from. And after that, I dare say that it’s talent. If you ask, “Do I think I have talent?” I’ve got to say, “Yes, I think I have talent.” But I also find myself half the time doubting that, so I think I’m like everybody else.
When you sit down to write a song, do you follow a chord progression or pick out notes or have any other kind of technique?
In a sense I think it’s what many composers ask themselves and what they most shy away from. That is, I think good composers don’t want to fall into one groove, and that’s changed a great deal, particularly with rock music. But I respond very much to words. I’ve worked with very fine lyricists in my life, and they encourage me, as I them. So the B goes to the D, and my hands take over a little bit. But there’s another part of me, the academic part, that kind of wants to let my mind wander and see what happens if the B goes to the D but then goes back to the B-flat instead of something else. At first it was kind of an abstract stretch, but then I learned to trust that doing that could lead to something else that was good. And as I say, I’ve had a lot of wonderful music teachers in my life, and I am very indebted to them. The one [piece of advice] I think they all had in common was to keep writing. You know, if you do twenty measures a week, great. If you do ten measures a week, great. But do it, and it can be a very liberating thing. I work all the time, but I think if you’re a musician it’s not work, it’s a lot of fun.
Let me throw out some song titles and please share any recollections you may have about how you came to write the songs. “Tomorrow” from Annie.
I was the music director of a big advertising firm. I wrote music for a film…I think it was for Arrow Shirts, a big shirt company that was going for youth. They wanted to change the picture of a stuffy guy who wears starched collars, so to speak, and in it I used a small vocal group for background. And I gave them a thing to sing that I thought would sound groovy, which, as I recall, was something like [sings the opening notes of “Tomorrow” with some variation] with silly words, which I wrote also. It went through the picture, but as the music director, I had the rights to all this. And when we were doing [Annie] and wanted a song of hope, that one part of it [sings the first few notes] stayed with me, don’t ask me why. And I was encouraged by my lyricist, Martin [Charnin]. He said, “I like that,” and then I just [sings the notes that are part of the final song]…I don’t know where it came from....I have no realisation why [it became a hit]. I thought people applauded it because it was a very clever scene change that Martin had done. He directed it. He had directed this moment where a wooden fence with posters on it slid out, and we were suddenly back in the orphanage and…actually we wrote it because we needed an extra two minutes to make that change.... It’s all part craft, it’s all part talent, it’s all part opportunity, of course, and that turned out to be a very fortuitous one.
So the seeds to that song basically had been written before you started working on Annie?
Well, the very first four notes, let’s say. It was for a vocal group, a commercial group, you know, a studio thing.
“Those Were the Days” from All in the Family.
That was a commission to do the opening song forAll in the Family, and Lee and I simply came up with that one. Not a title song, we didn’t write something called “All in the Family.”
Of course, you were very successful at that time. So did the producer come to you?
I knew him, Norman Lear, because I had written the score for Bonnie and Clyde, and he liked it. He was doing a film called The Night They Raided Minsky’s and asked me to do that. I wrote the background score for it, and after that we became pals.
So you got the commission. How long did it take you to write it?
That’s one of those questions a lot of people ask me… “And what came first?” I don’t know. I really don’t know. Lee and I were working together. I think it was like, “Do you remember this little tune I was fooling around with once? What do you think?” and he may have said “Yeah.” I don’t remember.
“The Telephone Hour” from Bye Bye Birdie.
Well, “The Telephone Hour” was a musical device that we needed. Mike Stewart, a brilliant librettist, wrote us into a bit of a closet, so to speak. He was very quick, he got all the exposition out of the way in the first ten minutes of the show [sings “He's going in the Army / It's the best thing he could do...”] But we had to get to Sweet Apple fast, and the phone was busy, and that was our way of getting to it. Most people think it’s the opening of the show. It’s not.
“It’s the Hard-Knock Life” from Annie.
That was the first song we wrote, and I have a very vivid memory of that, which actually Jay-Z brought to mind in his liner notes when he did that [song]—which, by the way, is the biggest-selling record I ever had. He said that when he heard that song, the first thing that struck him was the terror of working in the ghetto, the terror that kids have. And that was what I wanted to get at when we first started the show. I remember that was the first song that Martin and I ever wrote together, and the only song where he ever gave me a lyric. He used to like to write to a tune…he always did write to a tune. But he wrote this whole lyric. I didn’t even know what “hard-knock life” meant. I swear I didn’t. He said it was an expression they used during the Depression, and I tried to write something that had terror in it. And then Jay-Z heard it and used that term. I took it as a great compliment.
How did you come to write with Lee Adams?
We met at a party and hit it off. We love one another. We split up because he’s a country boy, by his own admission. He doesn’t want to live in New York, whereas I’m a workaholic, and I don’t even consider it work. I can’t wait to get up in the morning and start something. And so our schedules and timing became very different. But we remain good friends. While we were writing Birdie, he was a newspaper editor, and then he did weather reports for NBC. We come from similar backgrounds, but he’s from Ohio and I’m from New York, and therein lies a big difference.
You’ve written many great shows. How are you so prolific?
I don’t know. I work very hard. There’s a company of Superman that is going to go on tour. Lee and I rewrote some of the songs. There’s a new script that I think is terrific, by the way. So I have a little studio up here. They’re working in there on that. My wife, Barbara, who is a director also, is directing a show that I wrote based on An American Tragedy, and so I am finishing up a finale for that now, and I’m as happy as a clam. I love doing it. I guess I don’t have that many friends that I want to go and have a drink with. I love staying at home writing.
Could you talk about your early influences?
My very earliest influence was my mother, who, as I said, played stride piano. Then I studied at the Eastman School with composers like Burrill Phillips and Wayne Barlow. Their names aren’t well known, but they were good academic teachers. I worked for three years, actually more, with Copland. I started with him in Tanglewood. I worked with Nadia Boulanger. I worked very fruitfully, I think, with a man named David Diamond, and also Arthur Berger. My influences are like everybody else, you know, Stravinsky and Bartók and, to a degree, Hindemith. I have a fair background, but not great, in Bach and Mozart. I say fair because I don’t do that much listening. But it was part of learning music that we would try to write a sort of Mozart sonatina or something like that.
What do you feel have been the highlights of your life?
I’m going to get sentimental on this one, because the most important one was meeting my wife, who did a great deal to make me a man more accepting of myself. Certainly working with Copland, working with Nadia Boulanger. There was a theory teacher—I’m sure not many people would remember her—working at Eastman by the name of Elvera Wonderlich, who treated notes as if they were diamonds. I got a great deal of feeling of the importance of the relative value of notes with each other from her.
What is a day in the life of Charles Strouse like?
You don’t want to know [laughs]. Basically, it depends on whether my wife is home. We have breakfast, and then I go to the piano. I’m not easy to live with [laughs]. I’ll be there till around 1:30 or 2 and then have lunch.
Will you go back to it later?
For a while. My wife is away now. I go in and listen to Superman as they’re learning it. I have a very wonderful life except [I have my days]. You know, I say, “I’m not doing it right. There are other notes and I can’t hear them.” So there are days…I think it comes with the territory.
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