Charles Strouse
speaker
86 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Charles Strouse’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Though not those particularly, but all the collaborators along the way, I had the song and I played it for many of them. And they all said, yeah, okay, what else do you have? 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 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.
At that point, every lyricist, yeah.
Oh, thank you, Terry. For me, it's great.
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.
Oh, way up on top.
I was yearning, and I was remembering that period of my life very strongly.
Well, it's really because of the producer, a man by the name of Hillard Elkins, 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 Odess and Sammy Davis did?
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.
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, 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 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 in 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 the song was a very important one for me where they were both finally able to express their passion as two people for each other.
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 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. He was a most complex man.
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 him, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin and that whole bunch.
I think Joey Bishop was there too. We were all naked, which is an odd thing to add to my composer's resume, but there were all kinds of odd incidents like that.
Showing 61–80 of 86 · page 4 of 5
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