The Randy Newman Songbook CD Set Announced by Nonesuch

Nonesuch Records will release the three-CD box set The Randy Newman Songbook on December 9, 2016, following its recent release on vinyl. The Randy Newman Songbook series—comprising solo recordings of songs from throughout Newman's five-decade career

—previously included two volumes, released on CD in 2003 and 2011. Sixteen additional songs from a newly released third volume, along with five bonus tracks ("Feels Like Home," "A Wedding in Cherokee County," "Family Album: Homage to Alfred, Emil and Lionel Newman," "A Few Words in Defense of Our Country," and "I'm Dreaming"), join those first two volumes to create this new complete Songbook box set.

Mitchell Froom produced The Randy Newman Songbook, Vol. 1 (which has been remastered for this box set) and was joined on Vol. 2 and Vol. 3 by Newman's lifelong friend and colleague Lenny Waronker. Listen to the track "Guilty," below.

The New York Times said of the first volume of The Randy Newman Songbook: "The great craftsmanship is more apparent in the stripped-down context," and the Associated Press said, "Few singer-songwriters could inject more new life into solo piano versions of their work than Randy Newman." The UK's Uncut called Vol. 2 "another subtly sublime stroll through the master's back catalogue," noting that Newman is "owner of a peerless canon," and that the album "isolates his full range of qualities: the improbable juxtapositions of caustic topicality and heart-wrenching universality, the concise character studies, and singing and piano playing that seem to emanate from the very fabric of America."