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
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 things, you know, we all introduced ourselves around. Believe me, I was not as proud of my physique as they of theirs.
And so I was, and he said, this is my composer, Charles Strauss. 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? 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, you know, I was the drop-in guest.
I found it out just through hearing it at 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 recorded the song of yours. 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. 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.
Showing 81–86 of 86 · page 5 of 5
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