Female Speaker: We're going to do it all over.
Charles Strouse: Hello, hello, hello. You're a new face?
Jeffrey Masters: I am Jeffrey at [unintelligible 00:00:04]
Male Speaker: A little while ago, our producer, Jeffrey Masters, went over to spend some time with the Broadway composer Charles Strouse. Strouse wrote Broadway shows like Applause and Bye Bye Birdie.
[music]
Dick Van Dyke: [sings] Gray skies are gonna clear up,
Put on a happy face
Brush off the clouds and cheer up,
Put on a happy face
Male Speaker: He wrote the score for Bonnie and Clyde and music for lots of television, but Charles Strouse is best known for the musical Annie.
Annie: [sings] The sun'll come out tomorrow
Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow
There'll be sun
Just thinking about tomorrow
Male Speaker: Even now, hundreds and hundreds of productions of Annie take place every year. It's like the gateway drug for Broadway for generations of kids.
Female Speaker: Are you sleeping? What? Charles. Hey.
Charles: Hey.
Jeffrey: He was not sleeping, but he is 94 years old. If he was, I don't think I can really blame him. I'mma now record, if that's okay?
Charles: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. [chuckles] Well, I'm going to suck my Flanagan.
Jeffrey: The scene in his apartment, it was a lot. It was chaotic. He's currently going through his archives, just the boxes and boxes completely covering the floors. He's doing this in order to donate them to the Library of Congress.
Charles: I guess the Library of Congress, which collects life itself, they asked me. I wouldn't ask to do this.
Jeffrey: In this box, here, to your tummy. We found-- Oh my God, sorry. There's the record from All in the Family.
Charles: I wrote it.
Jeffrey: All right, the theme song for the show?
Charles: Norman Lear wanted to have a theme, but he couldn't afford a big orchestra. I brought up the fact that when I was a kid, we all used to sit around and my mother used to play, and so that's how I wrote it.
[sings] Boy, the tunes Glenn Miller played
Songs that made the hit parade
Guys like us, we had it made,
Those were the days.
[sings] And you knew who you were then-- That, she made that herself.
[sings] Girls were girls and men were men
Mister, we could use a man
Like Herbert Hoover again.
The song itself, as did the program, became very successful.
Jeffrey: There's this huge framed picture of Jay-Z. The frame, the CD, and cassette tape from the album, it says Vol. 2... Hard Knock Life. Oh, it says it's from 1998.
[music]
Backup Singers: [sings] It's the hard knock life
Jay-Z: [sings] From standin' on the corners boppin'
To drivin' some of the hottest cars New York has ever seen
For droppin' some of the hottest verses rap has ever heard
From the dope spot, with the smoke glock
Fleein' the murder scene, you know me well
Charles: I've mostly liked working with Jay-Z. There he is, he was surrounded by bodyguards and then all kinds of people. There was finally one point in my life where we got together and sat and talked.
Jeffrey: Oh, because he also produced the most recent Annie movie remake from 2014.
Charles: I do remember I won his heart in a way when I said, "You got to bring your wife with you." I was being very snotty and he must have told her that.
Jeffrey: Beyonce?
Charles: Yes. It was a nice relationship, but most of the time, he was beyond such a small person as me.
Jeffrey: In one of the boxes, we found a letter from Stephen Sondheim and there's a funny part to it. Do you mind if I read it? Yes? Okay. This is dated July 22nd, 2008. He says, "Congratulations on your memoir that was just published." Then, he says, "I bought a copy yesterday, and naturally, immediately looked up references to myself."
Charles: [laughs]
Jeffrey: [chuckles] Then, he supplies two corrections for you in case there are any future reprintings, he says. Was that kind of thing in character for him?
Charles: Stephen and I were friendly enemies. He didn't like me much. I did like him less. On the other hand, I respected him a lot. Stephen and I knew each other so long that I stood danger of invading his territory, but even that was not-- We came into two different worlds, but we were very old friends. He was my oldest friend in the theater.
Annie: [sings] Maybe far away
Or maybe real nearby
Jeffrey: Right now, Annie is like surrounding us. There's posters on walls and pillows, but, also, in this box, it's Annie stationery and letterheads. Also, there's the Annie cookie jar on a shelf, there's Annie piggybank. With her big song, Tomorrow, you actually wrote it. Did you think that you'd struck gold?
Charles: I didn't think. I thought that was a disposable item that we needed necessary to keep the curtain up or down, but so many songs in musicals go through that motion. If a guy is a good theater composer, he learns to think with two voices, so to speak. One is, [sings] I love you, my darling. The other is I love you, my darling, but keep on going with that song because we have to bring in the detective soon.
I would say Tomorrow falls into that category. I needed some time. It's usually always that way when you're writing for the theater. It's a book writer most usually says he needs a song there or do it yourself rather than "Here's my symphony to the stars."
Jeffrey: You recently thought that that song was disposable, as you said. In hindsight now, what do you think it is that makes that song so great?
Charles: I don't know. Maybe I do know. Maybe I'm being modest. I do think I'm talented. I think I'd write a song and I wanted to please the audience. I didn't know that it was going to be so big and so I'm very proud if it made its mark.
Jeffrey: I think that Tomorrow whether there's this beautiful simplicity to it where you can hear it and then most like to sing along with it during each reprise.
Charles: That's what a popular song should do. It should sound as though it was always there, but it never was until you thought of it. I think Tomorrow came to me that way. [hums] Ba-da-bi-dip-bip my-pa-ram. Bip-pa-ram-pa-ba-pa-pa-ba-pa-ram, de-re-pam. It's complicated melody. I'm looking at posters, and there're a lot of songs I've written that have not been classics like that.
Jeffrey: I think that fortunately and unfortunately when a song that's as big as Tomorrow has gotten and has remained, it gets bigger than you. Your name, in many ways, is no longer associated with it. Has it bothered you in your career?
Charles: Not if I hear the song. No, not really. I never got what [unintelligible 00:08:39] did, Irving Berlin did. No, I never had that luxury "And here's another Charles Strouse song." No, I never had that kind of reputation. It's a funny thing about composing. It comes from your heart in a way, but it really comes from nowhere. It's God-given. I would think that's a God-given gift that I've been fortunate enough to get. I'm getting old, look I'm on a walker. I don't play too well now.
[piano plays]
Charles: [sings] 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
'Til 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 will come out tomorrow
So you got to hang on until tomorrow
Come what may
Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love you tomorrow
You're always a day away
Male Speaker: What a great composer, Charles Strouse. He's sending much of his archive to the Library of Congress and he spoke with Jeffrey Masters who's one of our producers.
[music]
Charles: [laughs] I mastered that pretty well.
Jeffrey: That was so good. Yes, that was fantastic.
[laughs]
Jeffrey: Thank you.
[00:11:14] [END OF AUDIO]
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