12 Songs (Randy Newman album)

12 Songs
Studio album by Randy Newman
Released	April 1970 (1970-04)
Recorded	mid-1969
Genre	Rock
Length	29:51
Label	Reprise
Producer	Lenny Waronker; with Jack Nitzsche on "Let's Burn Down the Cornfield"
Randy Newman chronology
Randy Newman (1968) 12 Songs (1970) Randy Newman Live (1971)

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic
Robert Christgau	A+
Rolling Stone	favorable

12 Songs is a 1970 album by singer/songwriter Randy Newman. His second album, 12 Songs received much better reviews than his first. On 12 Songs Newman collaborates with Clarence White and Ry Cooder. The album set the stage for Newman's later career with songs sung from the point of view of different characters. Whereas most of his songwriting contemporaries wrote confessional songs, Newman chose a different path, writing first-person character sketches instead. And on this album some of those characters include low-lifes, losers, racists, and drunks. These picaresques were often used by Newman to satirize conventional song lyrics. For instance, on this album he deconstructed the conventions of the love song on tracks like "Have You Seen My Baby?," "Suzanne," and "Lucinda."

Some of the targets of Newman's satire on this album (which he would return to on future albums) include racism ("Yellow Man"), L.A.'s rock scene ("Mama Told Me Not to Come"), and the South ("Old Kentucky Home"). The songs on the album cover a wide range of styles, including rock 'n roll, R & B, folk, jazz, blues and country.

As with all of Newman's early albums, several of its songs had been previously recorded by other artists. In this case, "Mama Told Me Not To Come" had originally been recorded in 1967 by Eric Burdon, and that same year The Beau Brummels released their version of "My Old Kentucky Home". Three other songs originally appeared in versions by other artists just a few months prior to the LP release of 12 Songs: "Yellow Man" by Harry Nilsson on his 1970 album Nilsson Sings Newman; "Have You Seen My Baby" by Fats Domino (as a 1969 single); and "Let's Burn Down The Cornfield" by Lou Rawls (the b-side to his 1970 R&B hit "You've Made Me So Very Happy"). Newman himself played piano on the Nilsson and Domino tracks.

In 2003, the album was ranked number 354 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. In his original review for the album, critic Robert Christgau called it "a perfect album".

Track listing

All songs written by Randy Newman except where noted.

1. "Have You Seen My Baby?" – 2:32
2. "Let's Burn Down the Cornfield" – 3:03
3. "Mama Told Me Not to Come" – 2:12
4. "Suzanne" – 3:15
5. "Lover's Prayer" – 1:55
6. "Lucinda" – 2:40
7. "Underneath the Harlem Moon" (Mack Gordon, Harry Revel) – 1:52
8. "Yellow Man" – 2:19
9. "Old Kentucky Home" – 2:40
10. "Rosemary" – 2:08
11. "If You Need Oil" – 3:00
12. "Uncle Bob's Midnight Blues" – 2:15

Personnel

• Randy Newman – vocals, piano
• Clarence White – guitar
• Ron Elliott – guitar
• Ry Cooder – slide guitar
• Lyle Ritz – bass
• Gene Parsons – drums
• Jim Gordon – drums
• Roy Harte – percussion
• Al McKibbon – bass
• Douglas Botnick – engineer
• Lee Herschberg – engineer
• Milt Holland – percussion
• Lenny Waronker – producer