Look for a production credit on any Warner Brothers' Newman cover, and you'll find Randy's childhood soulmate Lenny Waronker involved somewhere. After starting as a gofer at Liberty for producer Snuff Garrett and doing some promo work for the label, twenty four-year old Lenny joined Warner arm Reprise in 1966 as a junior A&R executive. One of his first tasks was to help produce some artists Warners had aquired from the recently defunct Autumn Records label, among them a band called the Tikis. Waronker intuitively saw this retro-vocal style quintet, renamed Harpers Bizarre, as an ideal vehicle for making some of Randy's unique compositions more accessible to the general public.
Five privileged lads from Santa Cruz (including another future producer, Ted Templeman, of Doobie Brothers and Van Halen fame), Harpers Bizarre were unquestionably (and deliberately) one of the least hip groups of its era -- their take on Simon and Garfunkel's "59th St. Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)" makes the original sound practically hardcore -- but they did succeed at smoothing over Randy's vocals and playing up the songs' catchy hooks (much as vocalist Harry Nilsson achieved on his 1970 LP Nilsson Sings Newman, RCA 4289) for those folks who might have found the real thing too much to take.
Side two of the Harpers' 1967 debut album, Feelin' Groovy (Warner Brothers 1693), featured three previously unreleased Newman songs, "The Debutante's Ball," "Happyland," and "Simon Smith And The Amazing Dancing Bear." Newman considers the latter song his first real movement away from his "trustworthy" narrative voice; its insidiously catchy melody and ironic lyric were covered by enough hamfisted artists that Randy eventually decided to cut a definitive version on his 1972 masterwork, Sail Away.
The two other songs, "The Debutante's Ball" and "Happyland," flow particularly well together both thematically and musically (repeated to a lesser effect on Liza Minelli's self-titled 1968 debut LP, A&M 4141, under Nick DeCaro's lackluster arrangement); they also mark Newman's first real involvement as arranger of his own material.
In "The Debutante's Ball" (where he also plays an appropriately conservatory-like piano coda), Randy snips delicately away at a young upper-class WASP social, keeping an admirable balance between the universal ("Faces full of wonder/As they play the game") and the specific ("All you need is a number/Following your name"), as ballroom music swirls and swells. To the Harpers' credit, ironic asides ("No one gets stoned/It's all chaperoned") emerge intact, despite the homogenized vocals. And to Newman's credit, a merciful signoff: "It just seems to be right/ That there's something to do/For the rich people too." Topnotch. (For Odd Couple addicts only: Tony Randall's one-take cover on Mercury -- check Webster's pronunciation on 'day-bew-tahnts', Tony.)
Where "The Debutante's Ball" came from an exclusionary distance, "Happyland"'s narrative has a personal immediacy: an abandoned amusement park triggers the sights, scents, and sounds of one adult's childhood and a nostalgia for lost innocence. Lyrics that could be cloying in other hands ("And big ol' jars with gumdrops in 'em/And if you guessed it right you'd win 'em") fit the Harpers' soft-pop credentials to a T; a bright melody weaves in and out like a calliope. The jolt comes as the song abruptly veers from gentle escapism ("What a great place to be four or five/ And they left you alone") into Brian Wilson territory ("I was much better off when I was pretending/Everything's far too real") -- to some, it may feel like a cheat. Alan Price has a more coherent later reading on Decca U.K..
Released six months after their LP debut, the Harpers' sophomore effort, Anything Goes (Warner Bros. 1716), continued with the same basic formula of arrangers (Nick DeCaro, Perry Botkin, Jr.) and songwriters (Van Dyke Parks, David Blue, even Cole Porter), while playing up the '30's song stylings; Newman's contributions are reduced to two songs, neither of which he arranges.
In "The Biggest Night Of Her Life," Newman's talent for understatement has rarely been better served: it's the evening of Suzie's sixteenth birthday, as she contemplates a "promise she must keep"; also involved is boyfriend Tom Van Fleet ("Suzie's parents think he's nice/'Cause his hair is always neat"). As with many of Newman's lyrics, the best here work on multiple levels: "Two kids out dancin'/Having fun till the sun comes up/In a high school sweater and a paper hat/ What could be wrong with that?" On the simplest level, conveying images so familiar they define the term cornball; on another, the gentle tweaking of such improbably innocent American images (and songwriting); on a more disturbing level, issues raised by that unspoken promise and closing question: "what could be wrong" with such rites of passage, high school peer pressures, the fully implicit reality of a teenage girl losing her virginity, or (should she break the promise) the hint of date rape. All comfortably wrapped in a bouncy melody that your parents could tap along to. (Equally subversive covers by Alan Price and the Nashville Teens.)
"Snow," the album's other Newman tune, has a cheerfully morose "day after it's over" lyric ("Gone/ It's all over and you're gone/But the memories live on/Although/Our dreams/Lie buried/ In the snow") set to a pleasant descending melody line. Though the Johhny Mann Singers' timeless muzak version may rate higher on the Saccharinometer, the hands-down winner of Most Irresistable Cover must go to Andy Williams' ex-wife, the lovely French-born Claudine Longet, for her cheerful mangling of lyrics throughout: "..Sum-times de win' bwoehs/Thwu the twees/I sink I heah you/Colleen me.." Contrary to optimists' beliefs, it is who you know in the business. (RCA Archivists note: the song was also recorded by the late Harry Nilsson during the Nilsson Sings Newman LP sessions, but remains unreleased to date.)
Following the departure of Eddie James, the now-quartet Harpers put out The Secret Life Of Harpers Bizarre (Warner Bros. 1739) in 1968 to little fanfare, and increasingly little Newman input: his song "Vine Street" is roped into a "medley" with an unrelated Templeman/Scoppettone tune, "Bye, Bye, Bye." It is a missed opportunity; the reading is flat, bloodless. As it turned out, the definitive cover had already appeared, on Van Dyke Parks' unique 1967 debut LP, Song Cycle (Warner Bros. 1727).
One of Newman's truly original compositions, "Vine Street" strings together a trick intro, barbershop harmonics, split-second key changes, multiple bridges, and sudden fade-outs, all set to semi-autobiographical lyrics about starting out in the music business. While Parks (who produced Newman's self-titled 1968 debut album with Waronker) has fielded critical flak for obtuse lyrics and like-'em-or-leave-'em vocals, his true genius lies in his arrangements; here, he generously hands full orchestral reign over to Newman (who also plays piano on the cut). Newman doesn't disappoint: the arrangement is fully realized, down to the smallest syncopated details -- for some fans, the only thing missing was Randy's vocal.
Curiously, Parks replaces the standard sheet music intro to the song with a 50-second snippet of a Van Dyke Parks and Steve Young recording of an old standard in the Smokey Mountains entitled, "Black Jack Davy." Harry Nilsson's wonderful take on "Vine Street" kicks off his Nilsson Sings Newman LP, complete with the original intro, a perfectly inept demo parody titled "Anita" -- "My baby left this morning/With everything I had/ She didn't give me no warning/And that's why I feel so bad"); with just Newman at the piano and four backup singers on harmonies, it sounds like an inspired demo session. And it was. Another cover worth checking out: Lulu, on her album Vanity Fair (Atco 33-330) -- American hits and myths, as seen by a British female.
One of Waronker's true labors of love as a producer was a little-heard 1968 "comeback" album for the Everly Brothers, Roots (Warner Bros. 1752, recently reissued on CD). The album was constructed from 1952 radio show tapes, traditional hillbilly songs, and experimental electric reworkings of classic early Everly songs; it is a masterpiece. Every song coheres, from classic Merle Haggard and Jimmie Rodgers numbers to new compositions by Glen Campbell, Ron Elliott and other Warner Mafia members. That Newman's "Illinois" (on which Randy plays a quick- fingered piano) fits in perfectly is tribute enough. Impressionistic lyrics pay tribute to harvesting, railroads, and Chicago, "Heart of the nation/The start of the west." Later attempts by Susan Carter (Epic 26510) and Swallow (Warner Bros 2606) fall short of the Everlys' definitive cover.
Another ex-Autumn Records group under Waronker's guidance was the Beau Brummels, who recorded an exclusive Newman cover on their almost entirely acoustic Nashville-sessions LP from 1968, Bradley's Barn (Warner Bros. 1760). "Bless You California" is pure Newman, from its early West Coast love/hate themes to the spontaneous and complex changes in tempos and keys throughout; its lyrics rambling from addled verse ("Tried to find my mind but my head is hollow/ It's hard to speak your piece when nothing's there/So if I try to leave please don't follow/ 'Cause I ain't really goin' anywhere") to some breathlessly quick alliteration and imagery ("Every little person with his little radio/Waitin' for somebody to tell him where to go/What you sing is entering the world he thinks in/And when it sinks in/You bring him into the fold"). While probably falling short of an acid trip, this may qualify as Newman's catchiest free-association ditty on record.
For Warner's Sinatra-powered arm, Reprise, Ella Fitzgerald covered an obscure Newman song, "I Wonder Why", on her Richard Perry-produced album Ella (Reprise 6354). One of his semi-inspired quickies, the song began life as a 1968 demo titled "On A Day Like Today" (lyric: "I wonder why/There's no clouds in the sky/And no tears in my eye/On a day like today"). Set to a pounding chord progression, with a breezily existential bridge ("I know there must be some answers to the questions I am asking/But I don't know where/I don't care"), the final third of the cover highlights Ella's gospel/scat outro. On the album's flip: a surprisingly comfortable take on Newman's alluring poke at racism, "Yellow Man."