While Randy Newman might not quite be a household name, a lot more people are familiar with his music than they realize. Newman has made quite the career since the 1980's as a film composer, and his credits include some blockbusters: all three Toy Story movies, the first and third Cars movies, and both Monsters (Inc. and University) movies, as well as some non-kids fare like The Natural, Seabiscuit, and Meet the Parents. But Newman cut his chops as a pop songwriter (though his biggest hits were more novelty songs--"Short People" and "I Love L.A.") and had a critically acclaimed if not hugely commercially successful run through the seventies. Throughout his career (not counting soundtracks) Newman has released 11 albums, won seven Grammy Awards, three Emmy Awards, and two Academy Awards (both for best song, though he's been nominated twenty times, mostly for film scores). Newman has also been inducted into the Songwriting Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And in a personal aside, Norah Jones' cover of Newman's "I Think It's Going to Rain Today" would easily make my top five cover versions of all-time. My reflections aside, though, Newman has had a hell of a career.
Fun Fact: Newman's "Sigmund Freud's Impersonation of Albert Einstein in America" (Newman's songwriting is nothing if not quirky) contains the lines "America, America/Step out into the light/You're the best dream man has ever dreamed"...which observant readers (both of you) will note emaycee has borrowed a time or two (or three) in various incarnations for regular blog posts over the years...
"Jolly Coppers on Parade" was released in 1977 on Newman's Little Criminals LP. While "Jolly Coppers on Parade" was not released as a single (though it should have been), Little Criminals was the highest charting album of Newman's career, reaching #9 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard 200. And in another personal aside that's worth about two cents (if that), Little Criminals would easily be one of my ten favorite albums from the 70's--it's a stellar piece of work.
"Jolly Coppers on Parade" tells the tale of a young boy watching police officers march down the street as part of a parade--and while it's from a different time in America's history (when the media wasn't quite as quick to show black Americans being gunned down in the street or twelve-year-olds carrying fishing rods shot forty-two times by their local police force), Newman does an exceptional job of capturing the boy's fascination as the men in blue strut down the street. No one is ever going to confuse Randy Newman's vocals with Rod Stewart, but he does a nice job of capturing the boy's
exhilaration. There's some nice guitar from Waddy Wachtel (one of the great names in rock and roll history) and a smooth rhythm section, but the it's Newman's piano which gives the song a majesty and infuses it with a young boy's joy at watching the scene unfold before him. As I noted in the intro, it won't make Newman's greatest hits LP, but it's a great album track from a great album.
Lyric Sheet: "Oh, Mama/That's the life for me/When I'm grown/That's what I want to be..."
Enjoy:
Fuck Donald Trump,
emaycee
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