Randy Newman

For their expanded 2002 reissue of Randy Newman's classic Sail Away album, Rhino/Reprise unearthed five previously unissued gems. Of these, arguably the most notable is the studio version of "Maybe I'm Doing It Wrong," originally released on the stop-gap Randy Newman Live album; it was left off the album because Newman and his producers felt that he didn't capture the song but, decades later, this sounds every bit as good, if not better, than the issued live version. Of the remaining four bonus tracks, only "Let It Shine" isn't an alternate version or demo, and while it's not quite up to the high standards of the other songs on Sail Away, it's still quite strong. If the early version of "Dayton, Ohio – 1903" isn't radically different, the early version of "Sail Away" is – bouncy and bluesy, its humor more apparent. Finally, the demo of "You Can Leave Your Hat On" is a little rawer than the album version and wholly welcome. Though these five bonus tracks are the main attraction for Randy Newman fans, the remastered sound, the liner notes by David Wild, introduction by Randy, and rare photos make this another wonderful reissue in Rhino's line of Newman expanded editions.

Early in his career, Randy Newman used to regularly puzzle over his lack of commercial success, seemingly unaware that his trademark combination of New Orleans piano and wildly unreliable narrators was hardly a sure path to the Hit Parade. Decades later, Newman has found a side door to fame and wealth as a composer of film scores and likeable theme tunes for Pixar features. As a consequence, the man who created dark masterpieces like 12 Songs, Sail Away, and Good Old Boys is too busy to make the same sort of albums he released when he was a mere cult figure. 2017's Dark Matter comes nine years after 2008's Harps and Angels (which in turn arrived nine years after 1999's Bad Love), but for fans of Newman's work, the consolation prize for his non-prolific nature is that his albums have been free of filler, and Dark Matter ranks with his best work of the '70s and '80s…

Randy Newman was the nephew of film composers Alfred, Emil, and Lionel Newman, which would suggest at least some familiarity with the field, even though he had only scored one minor movie (Cold Turkey). And in his songs, heard on his series of solo albums, he displayed far more knowledge of popular music styles of the early 20th century than any of his singer/songwriter peers. Listening to his records, you could always tell that he knew his way around Scott Joplin's rags. Who better, therefore, than Newman to make his debut as a big-budget film composer by scoring an adaptation of E.L. Doctorow's novel Ragtime? So must movie producer Dino DeLaurentiis have reasoned in giving Newman the assignment. And the result worked out quite well. Newman naturally re-created much of the cakewalking Tin Pan Alley style of the turn-of-the-century era depicted in the film, but he actually had a more challenging assignment than might have appeared, since the story moves from one social stratum to another and ranges in tone from the comic to the melodramatic to the tragic.