Fresh Air - Remembering Broadway Composer Charles Strouse

Episode Date: May 23, 2025

We remember Broadway composer Charles Strouse, who died May 15 at age 96. He wrote the music for the hit musicals Bye Bye Birdie and Annie, which included such songs as "Put On a Happy Face," "A Lot of Livin' to Do," and "Tomorrow." Jay-Z sampled "Hard Knock Life," from Annie, on a Grammy-award-winning rap recording. Strouse understood why: "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." Strouse spoke with Terry Gross in 2002. Also, critic-at-large John Powers reviews Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

These days, there's a lot of news. It can be hard to keep up with what it means for you, your family, and your community. Consider This from NPR is a podcast that helps you make sense of the news. Six days a week, we bring you a deep dive on a story and provide the context, backstory, and analysis you need to understand our rapidly changing world. Listen to the Consider This podcast from NPR. This is Fresh Air. I'm David Bianculli. Today, we're remembering Charles Strauss, the Broadway composer who died last week at age 96.

Collaborating with lyricist Lee Adams, he won Tony Awards for Best Musical for Bye Bye Birdie and Applause. They also wrote the songs for Golden Boy, a musical starring Sammy Davis Jr. Teaming up with lyricist Martin Charnan, he wrote the songs for Golden Boy, a musical starring Sammy Davis Jr. Teaming up with lyricist Martin Charnin, he wrote the songs for Annie. Even those who seldom see a Broadway show are familiar with some of the songs written by Strauss. Grey skies are gonna clear up, put on a happy face Brush off the clouds and cheer up, put on a happy face

Take off the gloomy mask of tragedy, it's not your style It's a hard knock life for us Instead of treated, we get tricked Instead of kisses, we get kicked It's a hard knock life Bye bye, Bar-Head I'm gonna miss you so Bye bye, Birdie Why'd you have to go?

Once upon a time A girl with moonlight in her eyes A girl with moonlight in her eyes Put her hand in mine And said she loved me so But that was once upon a time Very long ago There are chicks Just ripe for some kissin' And I mean to kiss me a few

Man those chicks don't know what they're missin' I got a lot of livin' to do. The sun'll come out tomorrow. Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow they'll be sun. Just thinking about tomorrow clears away the cobwebs and the sorrow, till 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 gotta hang on till tomorrow. Some of the songs written by Charles Strauss.

He started playing the piano at age 10 and graduated from Rochester's Eastman School of Music. He studied classical music with Aaron Copeland and Nadia Boulanger, then met Lee Adams and started writing a more popular style of music. But before hitting it big in 1960 with Bye Bye Birdie, Strauss had a string of very odd jobs. He played piano for dance rehearsals and in strip clubs, and even wrote background music for Fox movie-tone newsreels. He wrote the music for the movies Bonnie and Clyde and The Night They

Raided Minsky's and on the opening credits of the hit 1970s TV series All in the Family, when Jean Stapleton's Edith was seen playing the piano as she and Carol O'Connor's Archie Bunker sang the Those Were the Day's theme song, it actually was Charles Strauss who played the piano with him in 1994. We're going to listen back to two different conversations Terry Gross had with Charles Strauss. She first spoke with him in 1994. When you wrote the songs for Annie and now for Annie Warbucks, did you have to write in a range that you were confident a kid could sing? Well, that's really an interesting question because yes and no The the yes is a part of my my musical background

I know what what kids ranges and sopranos and tenors are the no part is that I wanted to squeeze a little bit more out of them because I you know the the emotional part of of music is when kids sing high, they scream. You know, I did it in Bye Bye Birdie, and in Bye Bye Birdie, they sang notes in the telephone hour that they didn't think they could sing. And actually, I had learned a lot of that. I used to work for Frank Lesser. I was his assistant for two

years. And I remember when Frank was testing people for range, he would often have them sing... From Bushnell and Peck. From Bushnell and Peck. And because he would put it in a key with the pianist, that it would be out of their range. They had to go, but because they were making fun, they could or could not hit it. Had you said, sing that note legitimately in a song, like, I don't know if I loved you or something, they would have said they can't reach it. But when they were playing these characters, they could. So I devised, it's not my own invention, but, or maybe it is, I don't know.

These kids would come in and I would just have them sing Happy Birthday. Once they passed the other thing, I would have them sing a song that they didn't have to worry about anything. And so they, they'd have a birthday, happy birthday! See, and very often they found that they could reach notes, which on their resumes,'t reach at all and that was the sound I wanted. So I did write for that and particularly in a song like Hard Knock Life and in Tomorrow, the song Tomorrow. Let me move to the first show that you did that was a real hit, one of the Broadway classics and that's Bye Bye Birdie. I had to tell you I was listening to the album again last night and I hadn't heard The score in a long time and I was just shocked to realize that I remembered words to songs

when I'd completely forgotten the song existed like Normal American boy. I mean I haven't thought about that song in years and I realized god I know all the words to this and I bet so many people have that reaction when they hear songs from Bye Bye Birdie. Yes, fortunately they do. It's a very, very much performed show. At the time, Lee Adams and Mike Stewart and I wrote it. We wrote it because it was offered us, you might say. We would have written, I guess, almost any show who's offered uh... it actually wasn't even in that shape it was just a to be a show about teenagers but had we realized that it would

have that uh... kind of commercial uh... clout that is that high schools and camps and prisons i don't know everybody does it it. It's incredible. And it keeps picking up in performances. I think we would have said, oh, let's do that show. But at the time, it was just, it was actually even a little strange. It was a bit of an embarrassment in a funny way to me and to Mike because, well, to me particularly, because I had been in serious music all my life. I'd studied classical music. I was embarking on a serious music career. And that this would be the first opportunity

that I'd have for a major public hearing. And then that we had this silly name, Bye Bye Birdie. It was not the show that I wanted to write, which taught me something about myself, which is I don't know where the hell I am half the time. Let me ask you about writing the telephone hour from Bye Bye Birdie, and this is a series of phone conversations that the teenagers are having with each other, and it's not a straightforward song. I mean, you're basically setting a series of conversations to music with little interruptions and phones ringing So what were some of your considerations when you were writing the music for that?

Well, you know before I just answer that I have four kids and it's come back to haunt me because I I Have four telephone lines and it's still every second. Everybody's on the phone anyway, beside the point, my considerations were, first of all, that it was rock and of its sort it is rock music, though such an innocent sort that I don't like to listen to it and say I'm Mick Jagger or anybody like that. But it was rock and I paid attention very strongly to the guitar chords you know that all guitarists play on it. A lot of rock music in those days particularly was very, there were certain patterns that

became patterned in a way and I did model it on that, but then I used a lot of changes of time and a lot of interjections, which is into the exact rock beat. But I kept the beat going very much. And then I used just, you know, Lee and I sat and kind of carved it out together high and, you know, the things, did they really get pinned. Well, here's the telephone hour from Bye Bye Birdie music by my guest Charles Stras. Did he pin the pin on? Or was he too shy? Well I heard they got pinned Yeah, yeah

I was hoping they would Uh-huh Never meant that at last Please go Go and send him for good Hello Mr. Hankel, this is Harvey Johnson Can I speak to Penelope and It's you, I bought Kim

Penelope? I just do it somehow How about the drum? I must call her right up. Saturday? I can't talk to you now. Go with Daddy! I know it. Go with Daddy! Crazy man! Go with Daddy! I know it. It won't last. Not at all.

He's too thin. She's too tall. Hello, Mrs. Miller. This is Harvey Johnson. Can I speak to Deborah soon? High as you go. High as you can. But you wanna go back. People I heard they got pinned.

I heard something they want. I'm a company boy! And I'm living at last! Are you ready for... Hello, Mrs. Garfin! Is Charity home from school yet? If they really get him, go get him! I'm a company boy! And I'm living at last! She's never getting far gone!

They gotta go! That's the way to go Right now, I'm just a... That's the Telephone Song from the Broadway musical Bye Bye Birdie with lyrics by Lee Adams and music by Charles Strauss. You studied with Nadia Boulanger. Did she give you any advice about pop music versus classical music? Well, oddly enough, she did. This woman was the great musician of our generation in many ways.

And her greatness was that she was a master analyst, not only of music, but a psychoanalyst in her own way. And she used to hear the music of her students, and she was able to isolate it. She was able to shine a spotlight on what was you and what was watered down Stravinsky. And I remember when I worked with her, she asked to hear everything I'd written, and I played her my sonata and my concerto.

She said, well, what else, what else, what else? And I said, well, that's it. She said, well, no, what about, you know, your student pieces? And I played her some of them, and then anything else? And I said, well, I said, there was my parents who were never into serious music at all, though they were very proud of me, I used to come home from college and play them all these pieces that sounded like watered down Bartok really, but it was very serious things. I was really into it. But I remember writing a piece that I considered my party piece, that I could play that they could show off to my aunt.

I wrote this piece, it was really, I look back at it today, kind of saucy or something. It was very lighthearted. And they loved, everybody liked it. So it became my piece. And I played that for her, which I very rarely, I didn't do that for anybody except a couple of relatives. And she said, ah, and she said, well, what else?

And I said, well, I really, oh, I said, well, when my brother, he had been in the Navy, and when he came home from his first tour of duty, or boot camp, whatever, I had written a, I laugh because it was a funny moment in my life, and I said, I wrote this little song for him called Welcome Home, Ablebodied Stephen Strauss. And she said, may I hear that? Oh, I said, I said I could.

Oh, she said, please. And so there with this venerable woman, I played this silly song. She said, I see. She said, anything else? And I said, well, I said, this else? And I said, well, I said, this makes me laugh. I said, I used to go out with a girl,

I really liked her, her name was Janet. And we lived on the Upper West Side of New York. And I wrote this song, it was a joke called Moon Over 83rd Street. She said, play this for me. Here I am in Paris, you know, with an intimate of Stravinsky's and every American composer you could think of having studied with this great woman. So I played Moon Over 83rd Street. And she said, ah, good. Now we go back to this whatever. So we went back to, towards the end of my thing, she said to me something that nobody had ever said to me.

She said, you have a great talent for light music. May I make a request? Sure. Could you sing one of the songs that you played for her? Wait a second. Welcome home, can't sing that one. Oh, moon over 83rd Street with with shrafts right below a moon over 83rd street my heart's all aglow you janet in the lamp light i hear something call i hear something dull you you you that i'm yours body and soul i think that was the last one it was meant partly as a jest i mean i uh you know, I'm yours, body and soul. I think that was the last one. It was meant partly as a jest. I mean, I, you know, but that was it.

There's a first performance for you. So, but it helped you, it helped you find out that that's what you should be doing, is writing pop tunes. That was her genius. That's why I can laugh at it. I can also laugh at it because I've had, you know, some successful shows,

but her genius was really taking a young kid like me. I was quite young when I was there. I was around 18 or so. And I know from my own experience with my own children what it is to be searching for an identity. identity and she in her soft brilliant way was able to contribute to my identifying who I was. I want to close with the story behind one of your most famous songs and this is the the song from Annie Tomorrow. Tell us about writing the song, what you intended when you wrote it and this song has been taken

on a life of its own. The song seems to alternate between major and minor keys, no? Yes, it does. Well, there are a number of feelings I have about the song. The first one always had been and still stays with me. It's the one song in this show of a personal nature in the show that could not have been written in the 30s. I could say the same, perhaps, for Hard Knock Life, but Hard Knock Life was a bit of dramatic music, where I was kind of outside it in a way. But here's a song of a girl during the Depression, and this song definitely could only have been written

in the 70s, the harmonies and the kind of melodic... So I thought, if nothing else, I mean, I didn't think the show was going to be successful, but I certainly felt as though critics were going to say, now wait a second, how could they write this? Everything else was, we'd like to thank you, Herbert Hoover, and I don't need anything with you. They were kind of pastiche using Harry Warren and Cole Porter and those kind of Gershwin composers as my as the filter so to speak. But that song no and it was just out of another era completely. So that was my first thing about it. The second thing about it was that nobody could

sing it because it was it was so rangy. And the third thing about it which is it's just curious I've worked with a number of collaborators though I've worked mostly with Lee Adams but you know I just as I've done a show with Sammy Kahn with Alan Jay Lerner with Richard Malpy I mean there just been a lot of them, Stephen Schwartz in my life, though not those particularly,

but all the collaborators along the way, I had this song and I played it for many of them, and they all said, yeah, no, okay, what else do you have? And Martin and I were looking for a song of hope at that moment, and I played it. Actually, it wasn't a whole song. I had written it 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. 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. So this is a trunk song that every lyricist you work with rejected and it finally went on to be a big success. At that point every lyricist, yeah. Right. Well, let's hear it. And let me say it's been a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you very much for joining us. Oh, thank you, Terri. For me, it's great. Just thinking about tomorrow Clears away the cobwebs and the sorrow Till 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 gotta hang on till tomorrow. Come what may, tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya, tomorrow, you're always a day away. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Dignity Memorial. When your celebration of life is prepaid today, your family is protected tomorrow. Planning ahead is truly one of the best gifts you can give your family. For additional information, visit DignityMemorial.com.

I'm Tonya Mosley, co-host of Fresh Air. At a time of sound bites and short attention spans, our show is all about the deep dive. We do long-form interviews with people behind the best in film, books, TV, music, and journalism. Here our guests open up about their process and their lives in ways you've never heard before. Listen to the Fresh Air podcast from NPR and WHYY. Imagine if you will, a show from NPR that's not like NPR, a show that focuses not on the important but the stupid,

which features stories about people smuggling animals in their pants and competent criminals in ridiculous science studies, and call it Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me because the good names were taken. Listen to NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me. Yes, that is what it is called wherever you get your podcasts. On NPR's Thru Line, witnesses were ending up dead. How the hunt for gangster Al Capone launched the IRS to power. Find NPR's through line wherever you get your podcasts. We're remembering composer Charles Strauss, who died last week at the age of 96.

He wrote the music and won Tony awards for the Broadway hits Bye Bye Birdie, Annie, and Applause. One of his lesser-known works is the 1964 musical Golden Boy. It was based on the 1937 play of the same name by Clifford Odetz, who also wrote the musical adaptation. The 1964 musical starred Sammy Davis Jr. as a man who breaks out of Harlem by becoming a prize fighter. Terry Gross spoke to Charles Strauss again in 2002 when Golden Boy was being revived as part of the City Center Encore series Great American Musicals in concert.

They began with one of the songs from the show called Night Song. The singer is Sammy Davis Jr. and the lyricist is Lee Adams, who previously had collaborated with Strauss on the 1960 musical Bye Bye Birdie. ["Summer's Not a Bit of a Wreck"] Summer, not a bit of breeze Neon signs are shining through the tired trees Lovers walking to and fro Everyone has someone and a place to go Listen, hear the cars go past They don't even see me Flying by so fast They are moving, going who knows where

Only thing I know is I'm not going there. Where do you go when you feel that your brain is on fire? Where do you go when you don't even know what it is you desire. Listen. Charles Strauss, welcome back to Fresh Air. Is there a story behind writing Night Song? 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. Wish you could be where? Oh way up on top. Oh. So you were yearning while writing this song about your... I was yearning and I was remembering that period of my life very strongly. How were you first brought in to do the music for Golden Boy? Well, it's It's really because of the producer man by the name of Hillard Elkins who is a real

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 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 it? 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 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. Let's play a song from the original cast production with Sammy Davis singing. This is a song called I Want to Be with You. Sammy Davis Jr. as the boxer falls in love with a white woman in the 1964 version of Golden Boy. I'd like you to describe the context that the song is performed in in the musical. 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, we, 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 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 where the lovers themselves Allah Romeo and Juliet were really Leaping over a great hurdle They weren't aware of it or they were I mean nobody talks about that kind of thing in one way But they 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 Well, let's hear the first part of this song and this is Sammy Davis jr. From the original cast recording of Golden Boy

Lana of Golden Boy. I wanna be with you I wanna be with you I wanna be with you After all the nights of wanting you, Lying there loving you, hating you, Tonight I'm touching you, holding you, Well, you're gonna see, We'll make out somehow Here's my girl and me They can't hurt us now We're gonna have it all

I'll love you every day Oh, life can be so great for us Here's our chance, it's not too late for us. Grab it fast or life won't wait for us. I wanna be with you. Sammy Davis Jr. from the original cast recording of Golden Boy with music composed by my guest Charles Strauss, lyrics by Lee Adams. Did you get a sense of what it was like for Sammy Davis to be the subject of controversy in real life because he was married to my Brit, a white woman, and to at the same time be the subject of controversy because he was portraying on stage

a black man in love with a white woman. You know, because it was going on in both, you know, his stage life and his real life. 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 US Army where he was He was pummeled and other soldiers urinated on him he was he was he 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. It was a very complex, he was a most complex man. Composer Charles Strauss speaking to Terry Gross in 2002.

He died last week at the age of 96. More after a break, this is Fresh Air. Keeping up with the news can feel like a 24-hour job. Luckily, it is our job. Every hour on the NPR News Now podcast, we take the latest, most important stories happening and we package them into five-minute episodes so you can easily squeeze them in between meetings and on your way to that thing. trackage them into five minute episodes so you can easily squeeze them in between meetings and on your way to that thing, listen to the NPR News Now podcast now.

On the indicator from Planet Money podcast, we're here to help you make sense of the economic news from Trump's tariffs. It's called in game theory, a trigger strategy or sometimes called grim trigger Which sort of has a cowboy s green to it to what exactly a sovereign wealth fund is Insight every weekday listen to NPR's the indicator from Planet Money I'd like to hear what it was like when you had a follow Sammy Davis jr. Around Vegas Playing him demos of your new songs so he could give them his approval. 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 one 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 halls of golf or something, and then we would meet him in the steam room to discuss a scene. And the first time I met 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.

So when you first met Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin and all those guys, naked in a steam room, were you also expected to demo your songs for Sammy Tavis? 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, we all introduced ourselves around.

Believe me, I was not as proud of my physique as they are theirs. And so I was, and he said, this is my composer, Charles Strauss. Oh, hi Charlie, you know, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. 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 Sam, 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 he saw that 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 and, you know, I was

the drop-in guest. Charles Strauss speaking to Terry Gross in 2002. We couldn't end this tribute without considering the impact of perhaps his most enduring musical. In 2010, Terry spoke with the rapper Jay-Z about how one of the songs from Annie inspired his own distinctly different interpretation. Let's talk about another one of your tracks. I want to play Hard Knock Life, which really surprised me when I first heard it because you sample the song Hard Knock Life from the Broadway show Annie which I thought was a real surprise, surprising choice for you. To say the least. Yes, to say the least. So how did you decide to use that? Well what happened was my sister's name is Andrea Carter and we call her Annie for short. So when the TV version of the play came on and it was like this story called Annie, I was immediately drawn to it of course.

This is my sister's name, like what is this about? So, we get kicked. It immediately resonated with me. So, you know, fast forward, I'm on the Puff Daddy tour, and I'm about to leave stage, and a DJ by the name of Kit Capri plays this track. No rap on it, just instrumental. You know, it stopped me in my tracks. It immediately brought me back to my childhood and that feeling. I knew right then and there that I had to make that record and that people would relate

to the struggle in it and the aspiration in it as well. So, let's hear the song and then we'll talk a little more about it. This is Hard Knock Life, Ghetto Anthem by Jay-Z. For us, it's a hard knock life For us, static read X We get tricked Static read X We get kicked It's a hard knock life From standing on the corners bopping

To driving some of the hottest cars New Yorkers ever seen To driving some of the hottest verses rappers ever heard From the dope spot with the smoke lock cleaning the murder scene You know me well from nightmares of a lonely cell my only hell was since when y'all n****s know me to fail nah, we on my n****s with the rubber grips or shots and if you with me, mind my rubber your th**

and what not I'm from the school of the hard knocks we must not let outsiders violate our blocks and my block is thick of the world and split it 50-50 uh-huh, let's take the dough and stay real cheeky uh-huh, as if the christen That's Hard Knock Life, ghetto anthem by my guest Jay-Z. So you tell a great story in the book about how you got the rights to use that song, to use the song from Annie, Hard Knock Life. Would you tell the story?

Yeah. Well, I mean, we got the rights already, so it was a bit late. Because I exaggerated a touch. You know in typical when you have to clear a song you have to send it a sample song you send it to the original writers and they give grant you permission and you pay a fee for that permission. You know with some writers their art is for them very important so it has to be the right sort of attitude and the right take and the emotion on the record has to fit what was originally intended. So we're having difficulties clearing the sample.

And I wrote a letter about how much it meant to me, what it meant to me growing up and how I went went to a Broadway play, which was an exaggeration. I saw it on TV, and we got the rights. Jay-Z speaking with Terry Gross in 2010 about his Hard Knock Life ghetto anthem. When Terry talked to Charles Strauss back in 2002, she asked him about that version. How did you find out that Hard Knock Life was going to be sampled for a rap record? 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-Z recalls 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 Charnan and I had never gotten together that was that we were all 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, etc. etc. So when he picked up on that, I was very proud of myself for that reason alone. Charles Strauss speaking to Terry Gross in 2002.

The composer of the music for Bye Bye Birdie, Applause and Annie died last week. He was 96 years old. Coming up, critic-at-large John Powers reviews Mission Impossible The Final Reckoning. This is Fresh Air. We've all been there, running around a city, looking for a bathroom, but unable to find one. Hello. Do you have a restroom we could use?

A very simple free market solution is that we could just pay to use a bathroom, but we can't. On the Planet Money podcast, the story of how we once had thousands of pay toilets and why they got banned from Planet Money on NPR, wherever you get your podcasts. Mission Impossible The Final Reckoning is the eighth and reportedly final installment in the action adventure series starring Tom Cruise Cruise who plays the head of a secret government team that does what the CIA cannot do In this latest installment the crew must try to stop rogue AI from wiping out humanity Our critic at large John Powers has seen all seven of the preceding Mission Impossible pictures

Plus the TV series that preceded it. He says this latest effort is a crazily entertaining monument to its star. Pop culture has long had a tendency toward bloat. The catchy two-minute singles of the 1950s gave way to the laborious concept albums of the 60s. The slim, mind-blowing novels of Philip K. Dick and J.G. Ballard led to the doorstops of Stephen King and Neal Stephenson. And then there's Mission Impossible, which began in 1966 as a tautly unpretentious hour-long TV series with a fantastic theme by Lalo Schifrin. In 1996, it became a 110-minute movie with a megastar actor Tom Cruise and an

auteur director Brian De Palma, who larded its silly story with big gaudy action scenes. Now, seven sequels and three decades later, we have Mission Impossible The Final Reckoning, the two-hour and 49-minute conclusion to the nearly-as-long Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning, the two-hour and 49-minute conclusion to the nearly as long Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part 1. Pictures so grandiose they require a colon and an M dash just to write their titles. Predictably, this new movie is overblown, innately plotted, plotted with expository dialogue, and boundlessly self-congratulatory. But, you know, it's also fun to watch. Flaunting its big budget, we zoot from tourist London to Norwegian snowscapes to sun-blasted

South Africa, this souped-up thriller offers the irresponsible escape that most of us want from Hollywood blockbusters. As the action begins, the world is being threatened by the Entity, a nasty piece of AI that's going to annihilate humanity in four days' time. Naturally, our hero Ethan Hunt, that's Cruz, wants to stop both the Entity and the velvety villain Gabriel, played by Isai Morales, who seeks to control it. Ethan enlists his impossible mission team. There's Tech Whiz Luther, that's Ving Rhames,

Simon Pegg's jokey field agent Benji, and the recent addition Grace, a one-time thief played by Hayley Atwell, who joins the stream of talented B-list actresses that Cruise seems comfortable with. The story is mainly racing around, the stream of talented B-list actresses that Cruise seems comfortable with. The story is mainly racing around, toward a gizmo hidden in a submarine, away from the CIA, which foolishly wants to stop Ethan. Still, there's plenty of time for bombastic dialogue. Here the righteous Luther reassures Ethan that he's doing good work. Our lives are the sum of our choices.

This is your calling, your destiny. I have no regrets. Neither should you. Not that Ethan needs reassuring. Reporting directly to President Angela Bassett, he's confident as ever. I need you to trust me one last time. Because this is purportedly the last installment, unless it makes a fortune of course, the final reckoning works hard to make the whole series cohere and give it emotional heft. We see flashbacks to stunts from earlier movies,

crews look so young, and callbacks to deaths of characters who've been lost along the way. Yet because Mission Impossible storylines have always been unabashedly harebrained, such stabs at depth ring hollow. This isn't like the second season of Andor, in which we feel the weight of characters dying because they're sacrificing themselves for a cause. Nor does the Mission Impossible series possess any perceptible cultural resonance. James Bond was an icon of both the British Empire and a certain dated brand of masculinity. He helped shape our culture. Not so Ethan. Although Bond had no real inner life, sorry Daniel Craig, compared to Ethan he's positively Dostoevskyan.

We at least knew 007's snobberies, cruelties, and pleasures. Gambling in Monaco, drinking martini shaken not stirred, sleeping with women, then killing them. What Cruise and therefore Ethan lives for is eye-popping stunts, and it's been so since the first Mission Impossible had him clinging to the outside of a high-speed train roaring through the tunnel from England to France. The final reckoning boasts two gigantic action sequences. An underwater bit that could have been spectacular, where Christopher McQuarrie, a better director, and a genuinely bravura climax that finds

Cruise holding onto the wing of a biplane as it buzzes through and above the Blide River Canyon in South Africa. It's this scene that everyone will remember. And of course, they'll talk about Cruise doing this stunt himself. Cruise has been on top for over 40 years, as long as John Wayne, longer than Cary Grant. He's not a great actor, but he is a terrific movie star. Though starting to look his age at 62, he still possesses the boyish energy and commitment of his younger self. Whether sprinting past Big Ben, diving into icy waters without a wetsuit, or simply letting the movie idolize him, Cruise is playing hero ball.

And you know what? He's really good at it. John Powers Reviewed Mission Impossible The Final Reckoning John Powers reviewed Mission Impossible The Final Reckoning. On Monday's show, we feature our interview about the life and legacy of Sly Stone. Questlove talks about his documentary Sly Lives, aka The Burden of Black Genius on Hulu. Questlove won the Oscar for another of his music documentaries, Summer of Soul. Hope you can join us. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm David Dean Coogler.