DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli. Today, we're remembering Charles Strouse, the Broadway composer who died last week at age 96. Collaborating with lyricist Lee Adams, he won Tony Awards for best musical for "Bye Bye Birdie" and "Applause." They also wrote the songs for "Golden Boy," a musical starring Sammy Davis Jr. Teaming up with lyricist Martin Charnin, he wrote the songs for "Annie." Even those who seldom see a Broadway show are familiar with some of the songs written by Strouse.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PUT ON A HAPPY FACE")
DICK VAN DYKE: (Singing) Gray skies are going to clear up. Put on a happy face. Brush off the clouds and cheer up. Put on a happy face. Take off the gloomy mask of tragedy. It's not your style.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "IT'S THE HARD-KNOCK LIFE")
ANDREA MCARDLE AND ANNIE ENSEMBLE: (Singing) It's the hard-knock life for us. It's the hard knock life for us. Instead of treated, we get kicked. Instead of kisses, we get kicked. It's the hard-knock life.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "BYE BYE BIRDIE")
ANN-MARGRET OLSSON: (Singing) Bye-bye, Birdie. I'm going to miss you so. Bye-bye, Birdie. Why'd you have to go?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ONCE UPON A TIME")
RAY BOLGER: (Singing) Once upon a time, a girl with moonlight in her eyes put her hand in mine and said she loved me so. But that was once upon a time, very long ago.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "A LOT OF LIVIN' TO DO")
DICK GAUTIER: (Singing) There are chicks just ripe for some kissing, and I mean to kiss me a few. Man, those chicks don't know what they're missing. I got a lot of living to do.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TOMORROW")
ANDREA MCARDLE: (Singing) The sun'll come out tomorrow. Bet your bottom 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 gray and lonely, I just stick out my chin and grin and say, oh, the sun'll come out tomorrow. So you got to hang on till tomorrow.
BIANCULLI: Some of the songs written by Charles Strouse. He started playing the piano at age 10, and graduated from Rochester's Eastman School of Music. He studied classical music with Aaron Copland and Nadia Boulanger, then met Lee Adams and started writing a more popular style of music. But before hitting it big in 1960 with "Bye Bye Birdie," Strouse had a string of very odd jobs. He played piano for dance rehearsals and in strip clubs, and even wrote background music for Fox Movietone newsreels. He wrote the music for the movies "Bonnie and Clyde" and "The Night They Raided Minsky's." And on the opening credits of the hit 1970s TV series "All In The Family," when Jean Stapleton's Edith was seen playing the piano as she and Carroll O'Connor's Archie Bunker sang the "Those Were The Days" theme song, it actually was Charles Strouse who played the piano heard on the soundtrack. And he also wrote the music while his "Bye Bye Birdie" partner, Lee Adams, wrote the nostalgic lyrics.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THOSE WERE THE DAYS")
CARROLL O'CONNOR: (As Archie Bunker, singing) Boy, the way Glenn Miller played...
JEAN STAPLETON: (As Edith Bunker, singing) Songs that made the hit parade.
O'CONNOR: (As Archie Bunker, singing) Guys like me, we had it made.
CARROLL O'CONNOR AND JEAN STAPLETON: (As Archie and Edith Bunker, singing) Those were the days.
O'CONNOR: (As Archie Bunker, singing) Didn't need no welfare state.
STAPLETON: (As Edith Bunker, singing) Everybody pulled his weight.
O'CONNOR AND STAPLETON: (As Archie and Edith Bunker, singing) Gee, our old LaSalle ran great. Those were the days.
STAPLETON: (As Edith Bunker, singing) And you knew where you were then.
(LAUGHTER)
BIANCULLI: We're going to listen back to two different conversations Terry Gross had with Charles Strouse. She first spoke with him in 1994.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
TERRY GROSS: When you wrote the songs for "Annie," and now for "Annie Warbucks," did you have to write in a range that you were confident a kid could sing?
CHARLES STROUSE: Well, that's really an interesting question because I - 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 I - you know, the emotional part of the music is when kids sing high. They scream. You know, I did it in "Bye Bye Birdie." 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 Loesser. I worked - I was...
GROSS: Oh.
STROUSE: ...His assistant for two years. And I remember, when Frank was testing people for range, he would often have them sing, do, do-do, do-do-do, do, do-do, do-do-do, do, do-do, do-do-do, do. And...
GROSS: From "Bushel And A Peck."
STROUSE: From "Bushel And A Peck." And because it was - he would put it in a key with the pianist that it would be out of their range. They had to go, do, do-do, do-do-do, dee, dee-dee, dee-dee-dee. But because they were making fun, they 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, but - or maybe it is. I don't know. These kids would come in, and I would just have them sing "Happy Birthday." 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 - "Happy Birthday," yeah.
(Singing) Happy birthday.
See? 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. So I did write for that in - particularly in a song like "Hard-Knock Life" and in "Tomorrow," the song "Tomorrow."
GROSS: Let me move to the first show that you did that was a real hit - one of the Broadway classics - and that's "Bye Bye Birdie." I have to tell you - I was listening to the album again last night, and I hadn't heard the score in a long time. And I was just shocked to realize that I remembered words to songs when I'd completely forgotten the song existed, like "Normal American Boy." I mean, I haven't thought about that song in years, and I realized, God, I know all the words to this.
STROUSE: (Laughter).
GROSS: And I bet so many people have that reaction when they hear songs from "Bye Bye Birdie."
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, as 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. But had we realized that it would have that kind of commercial clout, that is that high schools and camps 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 just - it was actually even a little strange. 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" - 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 of the time.
GROSS: (Laughter) Let me ask you about writing "The Telephone Hour" from "Bye Bye Birdie." And this is a series of phone conversations that the teenagers are having with each other, and it's not a straightforward song. I mean, you're basically setting a series of conversations to music with little interruptions and phones...
STROUSE: Right.
GROSS: ...Ringing. So what were some of your considerations when you were writing the music for that?
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. 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 I paid attention very strongly to the guitar chords, you know, that the - 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, and I did model it on that. But then 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, the - Lee and I sat and kind of carved it out together - hi, and, you know, the things - did they really get pinned?
GROSS: Well, here's "The Telephone Hour" from "Bye Bye Birdie," music by my guest, Charles Strouse.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE TELEPHONE HOUR")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As Alice, singing) Hi, Margie.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As Margie, singing) Hi, Alice. What's the story, morning glory?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As Alice, singing) What's the word, hummingbird? Have you heard about Hugo and Kim?
UNIDENTIFIED ENSEMBLE #1: (As girls, singing) Did they really get pinned? Did she kiss him and cry? Did he pin the pin on, or was he too shy? Well, I heard they got pinned.
UNIDENTIFIED ENSEMBLE #2: (As boys, singing) Yeah, yeah.
UNIDENTIFIED ENSEMBLE #1: (As girls, singing) I was hoping they would.
UNIDENTIFIED ENSEMBLE #2: (As boys, singing) Uh-huh.
UNIDENTIFIED ENSEMBLE #1: (As girls, singing) Now they're living at last.
UNIDENTIFIED ENSEMBLE #2: (As boys, singing) He's gone.
UNIDENTIFIED ENSEMBLE #1: (As girls, singing) Going steady for good.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As Harvey, singing) Hello, Mr. Henkel. This is Harvey Johnson. Can I speak to Penelope Ann?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #4: (As Penelope, singing ) Is it true about Kim?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As Harvey, singing) Penelope?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #4: (As Penelope, singing) I just knew it somehow.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As Harvey, singing) About the prom...
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #4: (As Penelope, singing) I must call her right up.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As Harvey, singing) Saturday?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #4: (As Penelope, singing) I can't talk to you now.
UNIDENTIFIED ENSEMBLE #1: (As girls, singing) Going steady.
UNIDENTIFIED ENSEMBLE #2: (As boys, singing) They know it.
UNIDENTIFIED ENSEMBLE #1: (As girls, singing) Going steady.
UNIDENTIFIED ENSEMBLE #2: (As boys, singing) It's crazy, man.
UNIDENTIFIED ENSEMBLE #1: (As girls, singing) Going steady.
UNIDENTIFIED ENSEMBLE #2: (As boys, singing) They know it.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #5: (As character, singing) It won't last.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #6: (As character, singing) Not at all.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #7: (As character, singing) He's too thin.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #8: (As character, singing) She's too tall.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As Harvey, singing) Hello, Mrs. Miller. This is Harvey Johnson. Can I speak to Debra Sue?
UNIDENTIFIED ENSEMBLE #2: (As boys, singing) Hiya, Hugo. Hiya, stupid. What you want to go get pinned for?
UNIDENTIFIED ENSEMBLE #1: (As girls, singing) Well, I heard they got pinned.
UNIDENTIFIED ENSEMBLE #2: (As boys, singing) Hey, you meathead.
UNIDENTIFIED ENSEMBLE #1: (As girls, singing) I was hoping they would.
UNIDENTIFIED ENSEMBLE #2: (As boys, singing) Lost your marbles?
UNIDENTIFIED ENSEMBLE #1: (As girls, singing) Now they're living at last.
UNIDENTIFIED ENSEMBLE #2: (As boys, singing) Are you nutty?
UNIDENTIFIED ENSEMBLE #1: (As girls, singing) Going steady for...
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As Harvey, singing) Hello, Mrs. Garfein. Is Charity home from school yet?
UNIDENTIFIED ENSEMBLE #1: (As girls, singing) Did they really get pinned?
(As girls, singing) Going steady.
UNIDENTIFIED ENSEMBLE #2: (As boys, singing) She saw him.
UNIDENTIFIED ENSEMBLE #1: (As girls, singing) I was hoping they would.
(As girls, singing) Going steady.
UNIDENTIFIED ENSEMBLE #2: (As boys, singing) She got him.
UNIDENTIFIED ENSEMBLE #1: (As girls, singing) Now they're living at last.
(As girls, singing) Going steady.
UNIDENTIFIED ENSEMBLE #2: (As boys, singing) She nailed him.
UNIDENTIFIED ENSEMBLE #1: (As girls, singing) Going steady for good.
UNIDENTIFIED ENSEMBLE #2: (As boys, singing) If they got to go, that's the way to go.
BIANCULLI: That's "The Telephone Song" from the Broadway musical "Bye Bye Birdie," with lyrics by Lee Adams and music by Charles Strouse. We'll hear more of Terry's 1994 interview with Strouse after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's 1994 interview with composer Charles Strouse. The man who wrote the music for "Bye Bye Birdie," "Applause" and "Annie" died last week at age 96.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
GROSS: You studied with Nadia Boulanger. Did she give you any advice about pop music versus classical music?
STROUSE: Well, oddly enough, she did. She was - this woman was the great musician of our generation in many ways. And her greatness was that she was a master 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 - she was able to isolate it. She was able to shine a spotlight on what was you and what was watered-down Stravinsky. 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, no, what about, you know, your student pieces? And I played her some of them, and then she, anything else? 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 Bartok, really, but very serious kind of things. I was really, you know, into it. 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 light-hearted. And they loved - everybody liked it. So it became my piece, and 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 - or 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 a (laughter) - I laugh because it was a funny moment in my life. I said I wrote this little song for him called "Welcome Home Able-Bodied Seamen Strouse," see? And she said, may I hear that? Oh, I said, I couldn't. No, she said, please (laughter). And so there this venerable woman, I played this silly song. She said, I see. She said, anything else? And I said - well, I said, I used (laughter) - this makes me laugh. I said I used to go out with a girl. I really liked her. Her name was Janet (ph).
And we lived on the Upper West Side of New York. And I wrote this song, but it was as a joke called "Moon Over 83rd Street." She said, play this for me (laughter). Here I am in Paris, you know, with an intimate of Stravinsky's and every American composer that you can think of having studied with this great woman. So I played "Moon Over 83rd Street." And she said, ah, good. 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 that you - she said, you have a great talent for light music.
GROSS: May I make a request?
STROUSE: Sure.
GROSS: Could you sing one of the songs that you played for her?
STROUSE: (Laughter) Wait a second. Welcome home, able-bodied seaman Strouse. (Vocalizing). No, I can't sing that one.
GROSS: (Laughter).
STROUSE: Moon over eight - oh, moon (laughter) - this is the funniest interview I've ever done.
(Singing) Moon over 83rd Street with (laughter) Schrafts right below. Moon over 80 Street - 83rd Street, my heart's all aglow.
GROSS: (Laughter).
STROUSE: (Singing) You, Janet, in the lamplight, I hear something call.
I hear something dull. You - da, da, da, da, da. I'm yours, body and soul. I think that was the last one. It was meant partly as a jest. I mean, I - you know? But that was it.
GROSS: (Laughter).
STROUSE: There's a first performance for you.
GROSS: So but it helped you find out that that's what you should be doing, is writing pop tunes.
STROUSE: That was her genius. That's why I can laugh at it. I can also laugh at it 'cause 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, in her soft, brilliant way, was able to contribute to my identifying who I was.
GROSS: I want to close with the story behind one of your most famous songs, and this is the - this song from "Annie: Tomorrow." Tell us about writing this song, what you intended when you wrote it. And this song's really taken on a life of its own. This song seems to alternate between major and minor keys, no?
STROUSE: Yes, it does. It's - 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. 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. But here's a song of a girl during the Depression. And this song is - definitely could have only 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? 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 my - 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.
The second thing about it was that nobody could sing it because it was so range-y. 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 just - I've done a show with Sammy Cahn, with Allen J. Lerner, with Richard Maltby. I mean, there's just been a lot of them - Stephen Schwartz - in my life. Though not those, particularly, but all the collaborators along the way, I had this song, and I played it for many of them, and they all said, yeah, no, OK, what else do you have?
GROSS: (Laughter).
STROUSE: 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, 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...
GROSS: Right.
STROUSE: ...When Andrea sang it, but I thought it was the set. Martin had made a nice move with the set that had changed. She went behind, and then she wasn't there. So I always thought, gee, they're applauding that set.
GROSS: So, this is a trunk song that every lyricist you worked with rejected, and it finally went on to be a big success?
STROUSE: At that point, every lyricist, yeah.
GROSS: Right. Well, let's hear it. And let me say it's been a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you very much for joining us.
STROUSE: Oh, thank you, Terry. It's - for me, it's great.
(SOUNDBITE OF ANDREA MCARDLE SONG, "TOMORROW (FROM 'ANNIE'")
MCARDLE: (Singing) The sun will come out tomorrow, bet your bottom 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 gray and lonely, I just stick up my chin and grin and say, oh, the sun will come out tomorrow, so you gotta hang on till tomorrow. Come what may. Tomorrow, tomorrow. I love y'all tomorrow. You're always a day away.
BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli, professor of television studies at Rowan University. We're remembering composer Charles Strouse, who died last week at the age of 96. He wrote the music and won Tony Awards for the Broadway hits "Bye Bye Birdie," "Annie" and "Applause." One of his lesser-known works is the 1964 musical "Golden Boy." It was based on the 1937 play of the same name by Clifford Odets, who also wrote the musical adaptation. The 1964 musical starred Sammy Davis Jr. as a man who breaks out of Harlem by becoming a prizefighter.
Terry Gross spoke to Charles Strouse again in 2002, when "Golden Boy" was being revived as part of the City Center Encores! series, Great American Musicals in Concert. They began with one of the songs from the show called "Night Song." The singer is Sammy Davis Jr., and the lyricist is Lee Adams, who previously had collaborated with Strouse on the 1960 musical "Bye Bye Birdie."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "NIGHT SONG")
SAMMY DAVIS JR: (As Joe Wellington, singing) Summer, not a bit of breeze. Neon signs are shining through the tired trees. Lovers walking to and fro. Everyone has someone and a place to go. Listen, hear the cars go past. They don't even see me flying by so fast. They are moving, going who knows where. Only thing I know is I'm not going there. Where do you go when you feel that your brain is on fire? Where do you go when you don't even know what it is you desire? Listen, laughter everywhere...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
GROSS: Charles Strouse, welcome back to FRESH AIR. Is there a story behind writing "Night Song"?
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.
GROSS: Wish you could be where?
STROUSE: Oh, way up on top.
GROSS: Oh. So you were yearning while writing this song about yearning.
STROUSE: I was yearning, and I was remembering that period of my life very strongly.
GROSS: How were you first brought in to do the music for "Golden Boy"?
STROUSE: Well, it's really because of the producer, a man by the name of Hillard Elkins, who is a real - 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 Odets and Sammy Davis did it? 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. 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.
GROSS: Let's play a song from the original cast production with Sammy Davis singing. And this is a song called "I Want To Be With You." Sammy Davis Jr., as the boxer, falls in love with a white woman in the 1964 version of "Golden Boy." I'd like you to describe the context that this song is performed in, in the musical.
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, we - 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. 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. And I felt on a certain - 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. They weren't aware of it, or they were. I mean, nobody talks about that kind of thing in one way, but they leaped this hurdle. And so this song was a very important one for me where they were both finally able to express their passion, as two people, for each other.
GROSS: Well, let's hear the first part of this song. And this is Sammy Davis Jr. from the original cast recording of "Golden Boy."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I WANT TO BE WITH YOU")
DAVIS: (As Joe Wellington, singing) Lorna, Lorna and Joe, somehow it sounds so right. Somehow you feel what I feel, too. I want to be with you. I want to be with you. I want to be with you. After all the nights of wanting you, lying there loving you, hating you, tonight I'm touching you, holding you. World, you're going to see we'll make out somehow. Here's my girl and me. They can't hurt us now. We're going to have it all. I'll love you every day. Lorna, life can be so great for us. Here's our chance. It's not too late for us. Grab it fast, or life won't wait for us. I want to be with you.
GROSS: Sammy Davis Jr. from the original cast recording of "Golden Boy," with music composed by my guest Charles Strouse, lyrics by Lee Adams.
Did you get a sense of what it was like for Sammy Davis to be the subject of controversy in real life because he was married to May Britt, a white woman, and to, at the same time, be the subject of controversy because he was portraying onstage a Black man in love with a white woman? You know, 'cause it was going on in both, you know, his stage life and his real life.
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 was - he had in him a great, great deal of suffering. 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. It's - it was a very - he was a most complex man.
BIANCULLI: Composer Charles Strouse speaking to Terry Gross in 2002. He died last week at the age of 96. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's 2002 interview with Charles Strouse, who composed the music for "Bye Bye Birdie" and "Annie." He also composed the music for the 1964 musical "Golden Boy," starring Sammy Davis Jr. Strouse and his lyricist Lee Adams had to get Davis' approval for the music.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
GROSS: I'd like to hear what it was like when you had to follow Sammy Davis Jr. around Vegas playing him demos of your new song so he could give them his approval.
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. 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 Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin and that whole bunch - I think Joey Bishop was there, too - we were all naked...
GROSS: (Laughter).
STROUSE: ...Which is an odd thing to add to my composer's resume.
GROSS: (Laughter).
STROUSE: But there were all kinds of odd incidents like that.
GROSS: So when you first met Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin and all those guys, naked in a steam room, were you also expected to demo your songs for Sammy Davis?
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 thing - you know, we all introduced ourselves around. Believe me, I was not as proud of my physique as they of theirs.
GROSS: (Laughter).
STROUSE: And so I was - and he said, this is my composer, Charles Strouse. 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. Why do you say this is my composer? And 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, and, you know, I was the drop-in guest.
BIANCULLI: Charles Strouse speaking to Terry Gross in 2002.
We couldn't end this tribute without considering the impact of perhaps his most enduring musical. In 2010, Terry spoke with the rapper Jay-Z about how one of the songs from "Annie" inspired his own distinctly different interpretation.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
GROSS: Let's talk about another one of your tracks. I want to play "Hard Knock Life," which really surprised me when I first heard it because you sample the song "Hard Knock Life" from the Broadway show "Annie," which I thought was a real surprising choice...
JAY-Z: To say the least.
GROSS: ...For you. Yes, to say the least. So how did you decide to use that?
JAY-Z: Well, what happened was my sister's name is Andrea Carter and we call her Annie, for short. So, when the TV version of the play, you know, it came on, and it was like a story called "Annie." I was immediately drawn to it, of course. It's my sister's name. Like, what is this about? So, I mean, I watched it, and I was - you know, I was immediately drawn to that story, and, you know, those words, instead of treated, we get tricked. Instead of kisses, we get kicked. It immediately resonated with me. So, you know, fast-forward, I'm on the Puff Daddy tour, and I'm about to leave stage, and a DJ by the name of Kid Capri plays this track, no rap on it, just instrumental. You know, it stopped me in my tracks. It immediately brought me back to my childhood and that feeling. And I knew right then and there that I had to make that record and that, you know, people would relate to the struggle in it and the aspiration in it, as well.
GROSS: So let's hear the song, and then we'll talk some more about it. So this is "Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)" by Jay-Z.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HARD KNOCK LIFE (GHETTO ANTHEM)")
JAY-Z: Take the bass line out. Yeah. Let it bump though.
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL GROUP: (Singing) It's the hard knock life for us. It's the hard knock life for us. Instead of treated, we get tricked. Instead of kisses, we get kicked. It's the hard knock life.
JAY-Z: (Rapping) From standing on the corners bopping to driving some of the hottest cars New York has ever seen. For dropping some of the hottest verses rap has ever heard. From the dope spot, with the smoke Glock fleeing the murder scene. You know me well. From nightmares of a lonely cell. My only hell. But since when y'all know me to fail? No. Where all my n****s with the rubber grips, bust shots? And if you with me, Mom, I rub on your - and whatnot. I'm from the school of the hard knocks. We must not let outsiders violate our blocks. And my plot - let's stick up the world and split it 50-50. Let's take the dough and stay real jiggy. And sip the Cris' and get pissy-pissy. Flow infinitely like the memory of my n**** Biggie, baby. You know it's hell when I come through. The life and times of Shawn Carter, n****, Volume 2.
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL GROUP: (Singing) It's a hard knock life.
GROSS: That's "Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)" by my guest Jay-Z.
So, you tell a great story in the book about how you got the rights to use that song - to use the song from "Annie," "Hard Knock Life." Would you tell the story?
JAY-Z: Yeah. Well, I mean, we got the rights already, so it was a bit late. So, 'cause I exaggerated a touch. You know, and it's typical when you have to clear a song, you have to send it - a sampled song, you send it to the original writers and they give - grant you permission, and you pay a fee for that permission. You know, but some writers, their art is, for them, very important. So it has to be the right sort of attitude and the right take and the emotion on the record has to fit, you know, what was originally intended. So we were having difficulties clearing the sample, and I wrote a letter about how much it meant to me, you know, what it meant to me growing up, and how I went to, like, a Broadway play, which was an exaggeration. I saw it on TV, and, you know, we got the rights.
BIANCULLI: Jay-Z speaking with Terry Gross in 2010 about his "Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)." When Terry talked to Charles Strouse back in 2002, she asked him about that version.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
GROSS: How did you find out that "Hard Knock Life" was going to be sampled for a rap record?
STROUSE: I found it out just through hearing it and 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 (ph) recorded a song of yours.
GROSS: (Laughter).
STROUSE: I thought that was wonderful. And I dropped in Andrew's name, too. He said something in the liner notes that it was gritty. 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. That was - 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. 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.
BIANCULLI: Charles Strouse speaking to Terry Gross in 2002. The composer of the music for "Bye Bye Birdie," "Applause" and "Annie" died last week. He was 96 years old. Coming up, critic-at-large John Powers reviews "Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning." This is FRESH AIR. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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