Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - 267. Charles Fox

Episode Date: July 8, 2019

Gilbert and Frank welcome one of their favorite composers, Grammy and Emmy winner Charles Fox, who looks back on a six-decade career of writing top 40 hits ("Killing Me Softly with His Song") as well as music and themes for TV shows ("Happy Days," "Wonder Woman") feature films ("Barbarella," "9 to 5") and game shows ("Match Game," "What's My Line?"). Also, Charles teams with Barry Manilow, pens a tune for Burt Reynolds, witnesses the Ed Ames tomahawk incident and remembers friends Neal Hefti, Jerry Goldsmith and Henry Mancini. PLUS: "Love, American Style"! The Charles Fox Singers! The inventiveness of Ernie Kovacs! Gilbert sings the soundtrack from "Zapped!" And the boys pay loving tribute to Paul Williams! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Baseball is finally back. Get in on Major League action and swing for the fences with BetMGM, the king of sportsbooks. Log in or sign up to play along as BetMGM brings the real-time action. Embrace a season's worth of swings with BetMGM, your one-stop shop for all things baseball. BetMGM.com for Ts and Cs. 19 plus to wager.

Ontario only. Gambling problem? Call Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Introducing TD Insurance for Business

with customized coverage options for your business. Because at TD Insurance, we understand that your business is unique, so your business insurance should be too. Contact a licensed

TD Insurance advisor to learn more. Hi, I'm Beverly D'Angelo and you're listening to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing, colossal podcast. On a new road On a new road On a new road On a new road On a new road On a new road On a new road On a new road On a new road

On a new road On a new road On a new road On a new road On a new road On a new road On a new road On a new road

On a new road On a new road On a new road On a new road On a new road On a new road On a new road On a new road On a new road On a new road On a new road Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried, and this is Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast with my co-host, Frank Santopadre, and our engineer, Frank Furtarosa.

Our guest this week is an Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning, and Grammy-winning musician, This week is an Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning and Grammy-winning musician, songwriter, arranger, and conductor, and a composer of some of the most recognizable and admired film and TV scores and TV theme songs of the last six decades. He's created scores and individual songs for over 100 films, including Barbarella, Goodbye Columbus, Victory and Entebbe, Foul Play, 9 Night Football, Watch My Line, Match Game, The Bugaloos, Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, Wonder Woman, The Paper Chase, The Love Boat, co-written with our one-time podcast guest, Paul Williams. With another occasional writing partner, the late Norman Gimbel, he penned the hit song, I Got a Name, Killing Me Softly with his song, I Got a Name, Killing Me Softly with His Song, a number one hit in 1974, and a personal favorite of yours truly, Ready to Take a Chance Again. His songs have been performed by a who's who of popular music, including Roberta Flack, Jim Croce, Johnny Cash, Lena Horne, Johnny Mathis,

Barry Manilow, Olivia Newton-John and the Boston Pops, and even Fred Astaire. He's also composed the music for stage plays, live concerts, and ballets, and conducted symphony orchestras all over the world. And in 2010, he authored a terrific memoir called Killing Me Softly, My Life in Music. Please welcome one of our favorite composers, a member of the national songwriters hall of fame and a man who promised that he would do this podcast on the condition that i didn't sing any of his songs the multi-talented Charles Fox. Wait, I think I said that

in jest. Where did you get that quote from? We assumed you had heard him sing. Hey, so guys, thank you very much. I'm very honored to be here.

Thank you for the lovely introduction. I think I need to take a vacation. I did so much work. You did a lot, Charles. It's dizzying. Now, before our listeners, some of our

crazed listeners, are going to get angry that we left out your most important credit. Which was that? The green slime. Had I known you would put that up, I would have said, could you sing one of my songs instead? Truth be told, I told him the section from the book

where you said the green slime followed you around for decades. It does. It does. I didn't write any music for that at all. It was my first, well, first opportunity to make some extra money, if you want to know the truth, going back years ago. And I took the job. And it turned out that all i had to

do is help them to find existing music and cut into the picture and i took the job and i uh why are we talking about the green sea it was a throwaway joke really yeah let's call this prologue a japanese sci-fi movie anyways a japanese sci-fi and uh Anyway, it was a Japanese sci-fi. And at first I called the producer back, the director, and I said, you know what? I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't spend the next few weeks cutting someone else's music, canned music.

I said, it just goes against me. And I needed the money, to be honest. Going back 100 years of my career, before I did my first picture. And he convinced me. He said, you know, I'm counting on you. Anyway, so I, before I did my first picture. And he convinced me, he said, you know, I'm counting on you. Anyway, so I said, I'll tell you what, I'll do it under one condition,

which took me a week or two. And you know, when you use that kind of canned music, it was like, all right, you go into your audition, some of the music might be right for a scene. And he said, oh, that sounds pretty good. Let me have about a pound and a half of that music, you know, and a quarter of a pound of this kind of music. And he put it into the picture.

I said, I'll do it under one condition, that you don't put my name on the screen. That was my only condition. And he did not live up to that condition. So it came up with the original Japanese composer, who was hard. And whatever I did i you know i took demos and i threw it into the film whatever uh and for years after that i could be someplace

in the film business music business someone say hey i saw your picture last night green slime and they said really why'd you do that picture i said really why'd you watch that picture that's the perfect answer. Had you heard of the green slime before this, Gilbert? Because you know every bad horror movie known to man. He knows them all. Well, don't remind me, okay? Now, years ago, before I even knew you did the music,

years ago, I saw the movie Zapped. Oh. With Scott Baio, Willie Ames, Scatman Crothers, and Heather Thomas, which I thought was going to be, and we'll be discussing this with our next guest. We'll be talking about it later, too. Because this was a TNA teen sex comedy. About telekinesis, right? Yes, yes. It was like kind of a takeoff on Carrie, and it was a terrible movie.

But I swear to you, I like the music. Stayed with him all these years. The set. Really? Well, you know, it's a funny thing, because she started with two of my least favorite prices. Where do we go from here?

But. We're good at that. Practicing scales of hand and channel. No matter what I promise you, we are going to sing some songs from Zapt. You're just getting even with me now. I'll tell you about Zapped. So I wrote a bunch of songs, and two of them became classics in the Philippines.

Wow. Only in the Philippines. You're big in Manila. Tell me which one. I'll sing it right now. Gotta Believe in Magic? Okay. Okay. I'll... All right now. Gotta Believe in Magic? Okay. Okay.

I'll... All right. I'm ready. Be careful, Charles. Be careful. You want to sing it? Yeah. Take me to your heart.

Show me where to start. Let me play the part of your first love. All the stars are bright Let us make a wish tonight my love Pity those who wait Trust in love to fate Finding out too late that they've lost it. Never let it go.

You will never know the ways of love. Got to believe in magic. Show me how two people find each other in a world that's full of strangers. Got to believe in magic. It's stronger than the moon that shines above. Longer than the moon that shines above. Cause it's magic when two people fall in love.

You know what? I'm so amazed. This is, first of all, I haven't played that in 40 or 50 years. And you are still singing that song. Yes. Yes. I'm afraid to tell you the other song that's in the film. Okay. I'm ready. I'm ready. I can't remember. Wait. Don't say that song. Yes. Yes. I'm afraid to tell you the other song that's in the film. Okay. I'm ready.

I'm ready. I bet you. I can't remember. Wait. Don't say another word. Yeah. Is it King and Queen? Yes.

Okay. Okay. Want me to start? Come on. I'm ready. I'm ready. I love this. I don't remember it myself.

Okay. I don't remember it. Fake it. Fake it. Okay. Okay. Sing along. Okay.

Yeah, you do it. We're the King and queen of hearts hold me when the music starts. All my dreams come true when I dance with you. That's great. Oh, wait. Promise me you're mine tonight.

I will wait in line tonight. I with the lights down low. I with the lights down low Never let you go Did you dream that we'd dance together In a night that we'd stay forever In a dream that we thought would never end And it's not my imagination Or a part of the orchestration

This began with the coronation where the king and the queen of hearts I am really amazed. Oh, this is this is the greatest moment.

So, for me it is. I will tell you this. Yeah. It's only famous in the Philippines. Until now. Until now. Until we post it on Facebook. You know, this may be the start of big things for me here, you know.

I may have a career after this. In the Philippines, I'm considered the next Charlie Chaplin. I want to tell you something. You can go to the Philippines just singing that song, They'll Love You There. I think Dara would like you to go to the Philippines. And we're not going to do it now, but when the show ends, we have to do the ending of

Zap, which is Oh, I won't remember that at all. Ready to get what you got oh I can't go there well fake it that one I love it was performed by Plain Jane was the name

of this imaginary we had two or three different groups but David Pomerantz sang those two songs and here's what happened the movie wasn't a great movie and it was over and done with, right? Years later, about four, five, six, seven years later, I went to see David Pomerantz perform

the show with David Zippel, the great songwriter. A friend of mine who we've collaborated with. Good writer. Wonderful writer. And after the show, David Pomerantz comes up to me and says, you do know that those two songs you wrote for me are big hits in the Philippines. I said, how would I know that? I never saw royalties. No one ever mentioned it. So he sent me a video of him singing. And as soon as they played a little bit of an introduction to Gotta Believe in Magic, about 5,000 girls start screaming

because they know the song. Since that time, because he's become very famous in the Philippines. They've been trying to get me there too for a while. Amazing. But every place that I've gone, whether we were on a cruise last year, we were on a love boat cruise, they got me to play the piano

and sing some of my songs. All the waiters were filipino and if i ever mention i give people the filipino test i know if they're really filipino if they know that song that's hilarious yeah and then they start singing anyway so it was uh what else about my past do you know this is an interesting thing from the book that i was sharing with gilbert tell us it was almost destined that you would be a musician because of something called the music bump well did you explain this to our listeners i don't think i explained that to anyone but i'll tell you the fable story in my family supposedly when i was born i was the middle of

three boys the doctor supposedly looked at the young-born child that I was and said, there's a bump. That's a music bump on the back of his head. Amazing. And it meant what? It meant the doctor was drunk. But there it is. I followed what he said.

And started playing the piano at age nine. I did, yeah. I did. And Frank and I were both interested is that you used to play in the Catskills. Oh, yeah. You put your first band together. You know, that's where we all got started.

I have so many friends who got started in the Catskills. That's where all the great comics started, you know. Could you tell us some of the comics you worked with? You know, I play the piano. And the first place I played, I was 15 years old, had my first band. And we were pretty thrilled to get a job, you know. And there were other hotels.

There were big hotels. There were 450 hotels in the Catskill Mountains. It was a pretty amazing place. How about that? And some of the biggest comedians in the world. But big bands. You know, they were very beautiful places. They were large.

I played a little place. And we didn't have new entertainment that came in. We had two people who came from Yiddish theater. Harry Steinman being one of them. You know too much about him. And Velma Ravel was the other one. Velma Ravel. Did they go back to vaudeville?

They do. And they used to put on skits. Amazing. And Harry Steinman used to actually put lipstick on, like the old vaudeville theater, with pancake makeup. And they would act out plays and stuff. And I would sit there.

You know, just make up things. And I had the Jewish moment, you know. You guys are 15. You probably didn't know what hit you. Well, maybe it's the start of my motion picture career. Anyway, that's where it started for me um uh i'll tell you who i did work with it was shelly shelly berman yes shelly did a show for me uh we went to we did in florida for six weeks and he was a friend what a funny guy yeah he was a

nice man we we wanted to have him on this show but he had taken the turn for the worst by the time we started yeah yeah yeah he would have been great had taken the turn for the worse by the time we started he would have been great but you know it's very romantic in the book because you're talking about not only the cat skills you romanticize it you were 15 and the world was your oyster but also the coming of age in New York

at that time and you're describing hanging out at the Blue Note and going to these jazz clubs and there's a doo-wop group on every corner I was explaining it to Gilbert it must have been great times. It was great times, yeah. It was an innocent time.

So, you know, the truth is those days I really wasn't into pop music, rock and roll. I discovered Latin music, you know, and I loved jazz, and I loved classical music. But I wasn't into rock and roll of the 50s. I didn't get depreciated, honestly, until I got to do Happy Days. And they asked me to, you know, I did a lot of the shows for Gary Marshall, and that was one of them. And that was actually an outgrowth

of Love, America, Stone. When I sat down to write Happy Days, I realized I was not into the 50s. I have to get some background. So I went out and bought 50s records. And, you know, the 50s was a pretty simple time. I was in... Orem. and you know the 50s was a pretty simple time it was either the blues of 1-6-2-5 chord progression

and so the early happy days was 1-6-2-5 chord meant to sound like a 50s song that would somehow come back and be a hit, which it turned out to be.

Big hit. Became a big hit. The thing about Happy Days, too, is, as you mentioned, they started with Rock Around the Clock. Yes. So at what point did Miller and Milkis, those guys, came to you and said, we need an original song for this? Well, first of all, it was in Love American style.

They used to have three episodes a week. Oh, yeah. People forget that it came from Love and the Happy Days. Love and the Happy Days. Yeah. There's always Love American style. And so that was one of the episodes since ABC decided that they would make a pilot. They thought it would be a good idea.

And they decided to shelve it eventually because they thought that the world wasn't ready to revisit the 50s. Yeah, we had Henry here. Told us that. Yeah. So then finally when American Graffiti came out, and that was a big hit, ABC decided to give it a shot and put it on the air. So American Graffiti's theme was Rock Around the Clock.

We wrote, Norma Gimbel and I wrote Happy Days song right away for the pilot but they were they thought well let's hold it for the end title for the main title just wanted to create that 50s sound that everyone knows they use rock around the clock so the show was on for a year and it was doing pretty well not great but great enough they gave it a second year. And they realized somehow after a few episodes that Henry Winkler was fast emerging, the star of the show, even though Ronnie was great, Ron Howard.

And also, Henry was getting a lot of letters. You know, people really, he was fast becoming the star, a star, actually. And the other thing they said is, let's try to, we went from a film show to a four camera live right with an audience and gary marshall was you know like one of the funniest men ever and he would warm up the audience and and they they loved the the people and so they decided well if we're going to give it a new look and a new sound we can do after

the fans at the store. And four cameras, let's use our Happy Days theme song at the beginning. And then it all broke open. You know, we had a top, I don't know, it was number one record in Europe, I know that, but it was top five, I think, around the country. Still one of the most beloved theme songs. And Gilbert and I got a kick out of the fact

that you wrote a Ralph and Patsy, you wrote music for a Ralph and Patsy pilot and a Pinky Tuscadero one. We did, we did. We did spin-offs. They tried to spin it off. Well, Laverne and Shirley was a spin-off. Right. You wrote a Ralph and Patsy? You wrote music for a Ralph and Patsy pilot and a Pinky Tuscadero one? We did. We did. We did spin-offs. They tried to spin it off. Well, Laverne and Shirley was a spin-off.

Right. Yeah. Right. And finally, Mork and Mindy. And you wrote the theme music to Love American Style. Mm-hmm. And also that interstitial music that would play. You know what I did there?

We had little vignettes. Yeah. So on those little vignettes, I treated them like a different classical composer would do that. One time it was Beethoven, one time Chopin, Brahms, and I would just treat them as separate

and different musically than the theme itself. Yeah, those were some of the greatest scores. They were fun. Actually, one other truth, on the 17th, if Arnold Margolin is hearing this, he was a creator. Yeah, I met Arnold at a party a couple years ago. He's a sweet guy.

I'm going to see him at a party in a couple weeks. Oh, good. Please give him my best. They're having a Love America Saw reunion at the Paramount Commissary, which he called me to make sure I'm going to get there. Wow. And so those of us who are around. And Stuart's coming too?

I don't know if Stuart's coming. He's in the Midwest. We had him on the show too. We had Stewart. Stewart's right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's probably the first time I saw the name Charles Fox on my television was Love American style.

It probably was the first time. Yeah. Yeah. I know you had done some composing of, well, Wide World of Sports came before that? It came before that. Well, I did Monday Night Football came before that too. Right. The original before that. Well, I did Monday Night Football. It came before that, too. Right.

The original Monday Night Football one. The original Monday Night Football. Yeah. Oh, and one movie I recommended on this show was a strange film in black and white. Oh, here we go. Another one of these. Oh, no. This is your friend Larry Pierce.

Oh, well, my friend Larry Pierce is, I'm going to see him for dinner. Oh, he's still around. He's a good boy. I like his stuff. Oh, my God. Larry's one of my closest friends. Oh, my God. I'd love to talk to him.

This starred Martin Sheen, Tony Mocente. Everybody. Mocente, yeah. Jack Guilford. Oh, what's his name? Bo Bridges. Bo Bridges, yes. And what's his name? Mike Kellan. Bo Bridges, yes. And what's his name?

Mike Kellen. Yeah. Ed McMahon, Brock Peters. You have a fantastic memory for things. My God. I tell you, this has come up on the show before. Oh, really? We had a whole episode about the incident.

A shorter episode. Yeah, I really like that movie. Well, you should speak to Larry Pierce. We should speak to Larry Pierce. He just came in town, I think, today. We like Goodbye Columbus, too? Well, Larry really is one of my closest friends to this day.

My very first picture in 1967 was of Larry Pierce. And that was the incident. And it was a black and white picture, and it was a very, very fine picture. And it was a picture in black and white of two tough guys, Tony Bizzente and Marty Sheen, terrorizing a subway car.

And it was such a frightening episode. In the 60s, there was a lot of stuff going on in subways. Yeah, sure. And I wrote the score. And it was a hit, but it was also, people were very bothered by it. It wasn't just a sit-back, relaxed picture. It was very intense. My next picture was Barbarella.

That was Dino Laurentiis. Sure. Rajavadim. Yeah, sure. Two characters. Dino, Dino Laurentiis, and Rajavadim. Well, and actually, that was a really nice situation for me because that was Bob Crew.

Yeah. You know, great genius of the record. Of course, Four Seasons. So we wrote a bunch of songs for that, and I did the score, and that was a lot of fun. That was a hit. That was a big hit around the world. And the next picture that I was up for was Good Bye Columbus.

And so when Bob Rilla came out, the people from Paramount came out to see who this young fellow was in New York doing a big film, No One Knew Me, because Bob had got me to do that. So that led to Goodbye Columbus, which was Larry. So I've done a lot of pictures of Larry. But I'll tell you what, in Barbarella, so many memorable things. But I'll tell you what, in Barbarella, so many memorable things. When we were finished with the film, I had to go to France to teach Jane Fonda how to sing the theme of the song. And that was, you know, I was a young composer, and she and Vadim, Raja Vadim, lived in a farmhouse. I spent a couple days out there with him in the farmhouse, in France, and teaching her how to sing the song. And he had a red Ferrari.

He lived a good life. Yeah, he lived a good life. And that was the inspiration for many years later to get a red Ferrari. Really? I always remember that. Were you going to cut a record with her, Jane Fonda? There was some talk of that?

Well, we were supposed to do an album. Bob Crew and I were supposed to go to San Tropez, spend the summer, and do an album for Jane Fonda. Amazing. And she decided that she didn't want to sing, you know. Yeah. Barbarella is another movie that's come up on this show. Did you have any direct interaction with De Laurentiis,

who's a larger-than-life figure? Very little, to be honest with you, very little, yeah. But I worked with Vadim, the director, which, you know, in movies I work mostly with the directors. Television is an odd thing, but mostly with the producers. The interesting thing about the incident, too, and I read in your book, the way people reacted in movie theaters, that people were actually having negative, in some ways, very emotional negative reactions to the movie.

People were tearing up movie theaters. The incident? Yeah, the incident. Going back to this. Yes, because there was such intensity. I wouldn't even want to repeat it on the air on this show. But there was such intensity. These two guys terrorizing couples and individuals.

And it finally got to the point where Bo Bridges, and that was, I spoke to Bo recently about that. It was not his first film but it was Tony Mizzante's first not Tony

it was Tony Mizzante's film also Martin Sheen Martin Sheen it was his first film yeah

everybody's good in it everyone's great very powerful very powerful movie I'll tell you they shot that on a subway set

they built in the Bronx at the I forget the name of the theater but it's where Charlie Chapman used to, and I was on the set, and it was just a subway. The Biograph Theater? Biograph Theater, that was it. And the thing was shaking, and the lights were passing by, so you thought you were moving, and the whole thing was shut right there. It's a wonderful movie, but it's an unsettling movie. And it still holds up all these years later. It was the screening just last year.

That's why we got to talk with Marty Sheen and everyone else was there. And it was honoring Larry, the screening. It was part of the Turner Film Classics episode. Gilbert brought it up on a show. We've done so many of these. We used to just talk about favorite movies. And he brought that up one day and we did a whole show

about it. Yeah, that was one of those movies I just caught on tv years ago yeah and it was like you know it hooks you in the blu-ray just came out the blu-ray just was released they sent me a copy yeah oh well if larry wants to talk to us you know we'd certainly love to unfortunately i don't know the theme song you're in luck i didn. I didn't write that. No, I didn't write it. No, I didn't. But another nice story in the book, too,

is when you first got out to L.A., I think it was your first day in Hollywood, you met Henry Mancini. You know, Hollywood was a dream. Can't even start. Who could have imagined to get out and do big movies in Hollywood? I remember seeing, fantasizing, seeing it in Life magazine with Henry Mancini's story, you know.

And he started off and he was in the Army. He played the piccolo. He played the piano. And he was an arranger and he got to do movies. And, of course, he was the king of Hollywood, you know. And the nicest man in the world, by the way. So my very first day in Hollywood, I came out to Do Good by Columbus.

And Paramount sent a limousine for me and my family. And it was all totally impressive. You know, here we are again, a limousine going to an apartment. The next day I showed up at the studio. And the guard said, go through the studio find left turn right turn in front of the

you'll find your parking space and I pull up to my parking space and to the left of me is Neil Hefty oh we love Neil Hefty and to the right of me is Henry Mancini I thought I had died and gone to heaven between those two guys Neil Hefty was odd couple and

had to murder your wife he was a friend too Batman Between those two guys. How about that? Neil Hefti was Odd Couple and How to Murder Your Wife. Yeah. Lots of good stuff. He was a friend, too. He was a great guy. Oh, Batman. He was great. The TV show.

Wonderful composer, arranger. We love these guys. One thing you have in common with Henry Mancini is you've gotten your pass the green slime, and Henry Mancini, I think, made his living early on with these crappy sci-fi films. I don't know that, but everyone gets started. Of course. He was like this brilliant composer. Totally brilliant, but as nice as he'd be.

He came into the commissary. I was there with the music editor and the head of the music department, kind of entertaining me, a new composer in town my very first day in california and henry comes in he says they wave him over come on over here hank i want you to meet someone so we had lunch together and he turns to me after a few minutes and he and he says uh are you in the motion picture academy i said no i'd love to be out i don't know how it happens he said well you need to have three pictures how many pictures have you done i said well this is my third i'm working on this is good

he said someone has to you have to have two people sign for you to bring you can't apply you have to be invited he said so i'll invite you he said i'm happy to do this so we need new blood in the academy that's great wow. Wow. He said, do you know anyone else? I said, honestly, I don't know anyone. He said, I'll ask Elmer Bernstein. Wow. Oh, my God. So my first day in Hollywood, I get invited to join the Motion Picture Academy.

How about that? Neil Hefti, Elmer Bernstein, and Henry Mancini all at once. And we should give us some context. I mean, you're a kid from New York who used to go to the pier and look out at the ships and hope that one day you would be able to see the world. And dream about doing what I was doing. You bet. And you're living it at this point.

Living the dream. But honestly, I still am. Good for you, Charles. Good perspective. And I've had great parents, you know. They supported this all along. They supported my dream. They didn't think it was in any way crazy, like, what are you going?

I never heard that. No. going? I never heard that. No. No, I never heard that. Oh, nice. And how easy, I mean, look, how many people grew up in the Bronx, a middle-class family, and then want to go to Paris to study music? You know, not a lot of people. But my parents supported that, you know, and my dreams.

How long were you in Paris with the great Nadia? Two years? About two years. Two years. Yeah, and in the book, and people can tell our listeners to pick up the book, which again is called Killing Me Softly, My Life in Music. Thank you, yeah. The stories of you and your teacher, your mentor, Nadia.

Fair to call her that? I call her Mademoiselle Boulanger. You can call her Nadia because you don't know her. Yes. Now, here's the thing. A woman, she was 72 years old when I was 18. Yeah. And I came home when I was 21.

A woman, a French woman of that age should be called madame. Yes. Her mother was madame, so she was mademoiselle. I noticed that in the book. So we all called her mademoiselle, you know. And who else did she teach besides you? We were talking outside. Well, 40 years before me, Aaron Copland was the first.

But people came from around the world and some of the great composers around the world. A. Lee Carter and... Michelle Legrand. Michelle Legrand, yes. Philip Glass. Philip Glass. I once was talking to Michelle Legrand about that. He said. Philip Glass. I once was talking to Michelle LeGrand about that,

and he said, well, I was there with her for six years or something. He was also French. He had a leg up on you. He was there anyway.

But however, wait a second, Michelle LeGrand is one of the great. Oh, of course, we just lost him. Yes,

we did. One of the greatest musicians and composers ever. And Quincy Jones. Quincy's a friend. And you know, when I get to have a Quincy, we talk about it. You do.

That's nice. We speak a little French also sometimes. I was telling Gilbert, you know, part of the fun of reading the book is you're talking about, I'm a kid who kept kosher and suddenly I'm in Paris. And there's food everywhere. And you didn't, you know. I didn't know what to do. Suddenly a new world.

The first day, we hooked up. I think we were on a chartered flight. A bunch of us went to the... For the summer, the summer school Fontainebleau was in the Palace of Fontainebleau. That was Napoleon's summer palace. And built by Francois I. But anyway, I hooked up with some other people

going to Paris, part of the school. And we had a week to spend in Paris before the school started at Fontainebleau. So we all kind of stayed together because no one knew anyone or anything. We walked together. We took a train together. And we went,

we had meals together. And I didn't know anything about food that was, didn't come from my own house, frankly. Right. Corned beef sandwiches, I knew. And every night I would have steak

because I could understand the word steak. All the other things, rabbit, mutton, lamb, I was, cornichon.

Anyway, so after a while, after about a third day, there was steak, ta-ta, and I thought, well, I'll give it a third day, there was steak tartare. And I thought, well, I'll give it a shot. That's probably steak with the sauce.

Yes. Or sauce. So I asked for the steak tartare. Well done. Right. Which they rolled out because steak tartare is raw steak. Right, exactly. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's

amazing, colossal podcast. But first, a word from our sponsor. embrace a season's worth of swings with bet mgm your one-stop shop for all things baseball bet mgm.com for t's and c's 19 plus to wager ontario only gambling problem call connex ontario at 1-866-531-2600 bet mgm operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming ontario spring is here and you can now get almost anything you need for your sunny days delivered with uber eats what do we mean by almost well you can't get a well-groomed lawn delivered but you can get a And we were talking Get almost, almost anything delivered with Uber Eats. Order now. Alcohol in select markets. Product availability may vary by Regency app for details. And we were talking, because we're both fans of Get Smart, that you wrote a song for one of our guests, Barbara Felden.

Was she here? We had Barbara Felden. Oh, really? She lives a few blocks from here. I didn't write the songs. I arranged the write the songs. Yeah, well, you've inducted and arranged that one. I arranged the songs, yes. And that was for David Susskind.

99. Ancient 99. Yeah, we had a song called Ancient 99. Yeah. I found it online. It's on YouTube. Is that so? Yes.

And Dan Melnick. Now, that was his partner. And Dan Melnick, during that recording session, put his arm on my shoulder and said, hey, kid, it sounds like you could do pictures. I was an arranger, and I said, I sure would love to. And then I ended up getting a picture, one of my first pictures for David Susskind.

So that was a turning point, doing this. Yeah. You know what? There have been a lot of turning points, to be honest. People have asked me that question. Sure. I got started, I guess, I got a lot of turning points, I'll be honest. People have asked me that question. Sure. I got started,

I guess, I got a lot of starts. And one of my starts was for Skish Henderson on The Tonight Show. Yeah, tell us about that because there's also a famous Tonight Show episode

that falls into that story. Oh, I was there. Yeah. Yes. There's one of the, when you see like some of the greatest funny moments

for Johnny Carson or television. It's an iconic moment. It's an iconic moment. Ed Ames throwing the tomahawk. And I was with Ed Ames that day. Incredible. And he sang Try to Remember and one other song. And I did the arrangements.

So in the afternoon, show tapes in the afternoon, we did the show. I did rehearse the band. And then he played an Indian on Daniel Boone. He was no more an Indian than you or me. But that was who he played the role. I forgot his character. So they wheel out

this big backboard of a wooden thing with a kind of a carving or cut out of an outline of a sheriff, of a cowboy. And they handed it to Tomahawk. He never threw it, Tomahawk. He said, here, throw it. He said, I don't know how to throw it.

So he just naturally pointed the point of it towards the screen, the backdrop, and threw it. And 10 times in a row, it kept bouncing off. And one of the stagehands came to him and said, here, turn it the other way so that the point is facing you. He threw it once. It stuck in.

And they marked the spot. And so he sang us one or two songs. And then they handed him the tomahawk. He threw it. And he had no idea that he was going to circumcise this cowboy. And he got, you can't see, of course, it's black and white TV. Yeah. He got all red in the face.

Oh, that's a great one. He was so mad. And all he wanted to do was get out and remove this thing. And Johnny, who's a comic genius. Sure. He kept, you watch it, he keeps pulling it back. He tries to make his way over there. He's sharpening the two things.

He's sharpening it, yeah. He's waiting for his line. He milked that joke as much as he can milk it. And he Carson said to him, it's okay, you can't hurt him any worse. First he said, I didn't know you were Jewish. Oh, yes.

Yes! What did you do with Skitch on the Carson show? I used to do, first of all, themes, original themes as the show went on the air and off the air to do, first of all, themes, original themes as the show went on the air and off the air. Band,

not the Tonight Show theme. Right, of course. You know, they play music. I used to write some of those themes. They show on the air,

off the air for the big band with Doc. You know, Doc was the trumpet player. Right, of course. Later on,

I did an album with Doc, actually. A whole album with Doc. And then, every now and then, Sketch would do a separate piano arrangement where he played the piano of the band that i would arrange that for him too

so he really was great now one thing we love on this show and we played it a few times and that's the nairobi trio oh yeah earlier in your career i made a note that you did an arrangement of the nairobi trio piece from Ernie Kovacs. You know, as a young arranger, if you're dreaming about being an arranger, all you want to do is write something and hear it. So you can put the notes on paper, but until the trumpets play it back and the saxophones, you have no idea how it's going to sound. The guy who was the head of the jazz band when I was a freshman, maybe a sophomore in high school, we had a the jazz band. When I was a freshman, maybe a sophomore in high school, we had a fantastic jazz band.

His name was Joel Greenwald, actually. And one day, he was a trumpet player that I knew professionally because he had worked the same place you mentioned, the Catskill Mountains. He had been in that same hotel two years before. And he said to me, well, if you want to write something for the big band, we'll play it. And he said to me, well, if you want to write something for the big band, we'll play it.

And so... That makes Gilbert so happy. We're picturing the chimps. So what I loved about that, there was, if you remember, people who remember, there were three gorillas.ps. So what I loved about that, there was, if you remember, people who remember, there were three gorillas.

Yeah. Oh, they were gorillas. And this, you remember, I'm sure. Yes. Oh, yeah. And while this music was playing, the three gorillas were standing

and one gorilla had a big stack of blocks, which one by one, he would pass to the guy in the middle. And he'd pass block after block. And the third guy just stood. Didn't do anything. That was the whole bit. And then one had like a drumstick or something that he would hit the other one on the head with.

That was Ernie Kovacs, right? Yeah. That was his show. Yeah. He was a comic genius. 100 years this year of Ernie Kovacs, right? Yeah, that was his show. He was a comic genius. 100 years this year of Ernie Kovacs' birth. I would say he would have been 100,

but that's unlikely. I love your career at that point, too, because you're bouncing around and you're doing so many interesting things. You did commercials. You did the Parker Brothers commercials. I did a lot of commercials. And White Owl Cigars. When the values go up, up, up, and the prices go down, down, down, Robin Hall in season will show you the reason.

Low overhead, low overhead. Yay! Oh, man. Hilarious, Charles. I think I'm going to regret this hour. Hilarious, Charles. I'm thinking of regret this hour. Hilarious. Our listeners are going to eat this up. Are there any other famous ones like that?

You remember the White Owl cigars? You know what? I have to confess. Honestly, I didn't write that song. I only arranged it. You arranged it. But I arranged it a hundred different ways. We had the Christmas thing.

I don't know. I did all the commercials. Like, I think Barry Manilow said in an interview. Oh, he did a lot of jingles. Yeah, because he had a history of writing jingles. He did, yeah. And that he said, now I can't write a song that's not catchy. Oh, well, that's true.

Barry's a great writer. Great writer. Another thing you wrote then that Gilbert and I are interested in too is game show music for Goodson and Todman. And I like the story in the book about you, about what a hard sell.

Was it Todman? The other guy. Mark Goodson. No, Todman. Mark Goodson. Todman used to come in to say hello to me. Yeah. They had an office on the Seagram building on the 30th floor.

They had the whole 30th floor. And there was a big conference room. And I got to do the shows, three or four of the shows. Tell the truth you did and match game and what's my life. Match game. And it would always start off with them, Mark coming out, saying hello to me. And then I'd go into this room to play my little theme. You know, now if you do something, you make a demo, you synthesize it, it sounds good.

I would just have this little, and it wasn't even 88 keys. It must have been 66 keys. I don't know why. There was plenty of room for a full piano in that room. And I would sit down, and Mark would assemble all of his staff. No pressure. Including Gene Rayburn. You remember Gene Rayburn? Yes, sure Mark would assemble all of his staff. No pressure. Including Gene Rayburn. You remember Gene Rayburn?

Yes, sure. And he'd bring them all. Come on, let's hear the new theme for the show. And I'd sit down,, and Mark would go around. He used to stand by the piano and lean over this piano, this little upright piano. And his left hand, he had a big cigar and he smoked. And I finished this little theme.

And he turned to each one of the people in the room and say, what'd you think? What'd you think? But no one knew what he thought, so no one wanted to say what they thought. Oh, one of those. So they would say, oh, nice beat, it's nice rhythm, it's catchy, whatever they would say. And finally, Mark would turn to me and say me he said, let's hear it again. I go back. And some along the way, while I was

playing, I would see his foot tapping. And when I see his foot tapping, I knew I had him. You had him. And then I had him. He was a hard sell. I think Dick DiBartolo was probably in that room. Oh, my God. Because he was a writer on Match Game, and he used to punch a clock in that Sebrams building.

And how did Foul Play come about? Well, I did a lot of work for Tom Miller and Eddie Milkus. You know, I did most of their television shows, Happy Days of Vernon and Shirley. And they were good friends and wonderful guys. And Foul Play was their second movie. The first one I didn't do, it was Henry Mancini actually did that one. But Colin Higgins was the writer.

Sure. Harold and Maude. Harold and Maude. Yeah. He didn't direct that first one. Silver Streak. Right, it was Arthur Hiller. Arthur Hiller, right first one, Silver Streak. Right, it was Arthur Hiller.

Arthur Hiller, right. It was a terrific movie. Henry, of course, always did a great job. The next picture, he wrote a trilogy. The second was Foul Play,

which is a big hit. And the third one never was made. With Billy Barty. Yeah, Billy Barty's in Foul Play. The third one was the one

that never was made. It's called The Man Who Lost Tuesday. Never made it. Oh. And Calvin died not too many years made it. Oh. And Colin died not too many years after that.

Yeah. I work with him again with 9 to 5. And he made Best Little Whorehouse in Texas too. Yes. And actually,

I wrote a song for him for Burt Reynolds which didn't get used by the way. That's in the book. It's in the book. Yeah, Dolly. Dolly upstaged you.

Well, it's okay. Dolly's a great songwriter. Yeah. And she was in the movie. She felt that was a stunt. And no complaints, you know. But so when Colin did his first directing, he asked me to do it, the movie. And then I did the remaining pictures with him.

And now I got to put you on the spot yet again because that's my job. Charles, you're a sport. do i have a choice i want to sing the great song you wrote which one is that ready to take a chance again you do yes i do with you playing oh my god he's like he went to heaven. You remi- Sorry! He'll tell you when to come in. I'm giving you a good introduction. I'm giving you a good introduction. You remind me I live in a shell.

Say from the past, I'm doing okay, but not very well. Me too. Not doing very well. No. No jolts, no surprises. No crisis arises. My life goes along as it should. It's all very nice but not very

good. And I'm ready to take a chance again. Ready to put my love on the line

with you. You're living with nothing to show for it You get what you get when you go for it And I'm ready to take a chance again Ready to take a chance again with you. When she left me in all my despair, I just held on. My hopes were hold gone till I found you there.

And I'm ready to take a chance again. Ready to put my love on the line with you. You're living with nothing to show for it

you get what you get when you go for it and I'm ready to take a chance again ready to take a chance again with

you with to take a chance again with you. With you. Barry Mantle, eat your heart out, right? You know, we used to sing it on the show a cappella, and I said to Dara, now we'll never get Charles Fox.

And now I'm going to say, now we'll never get Barry. Because Charles is here. Barry's a good sport. So you wrote that song. I did. With Norman. Norman Gimbel, yeah.

Great Norman Gimbel. That is a terrific song. Thank you. And that's one of those songs, like a lot of songs that Barry Manilow made famous with hits, is one of those songs where people don't want to say how much they like the song. Yeah. No, there are these songs that you feel like, oh, I want to pick something really, you know, something by Captain Beefheart. You know, there's an episode my grandson watches.

I think it's a cartoon show at night. It's kind of a hip cartoon show, the Americans or something. I don't know what. That they did a whole episode on these four or five guys. They sit around and they said, yeah, I don't want to sing any Barryman. Which shows do you listen to? Which singers? And they said, Barry they said uh yeah i don't want to sing any barry which shows you and which singers and they said barry mann yeah i don't care for his songs oh oh it's family guy family guy yes and uh well how about mandy yeah that's one's not too bad yeah it's just the other songs how about um ready tickets oh i like and they all started singing

of course that's cassettes of barry manow fan, the guy that runs that show. He's got to be. Oh, and then in 10 years. Barry Manilow, I have to say, is one of the nicest men. One of the greatest. If you ever saw his show, you'll never forget it. I've seen his show. I saw him outdoors, Forest Hills.

I saw his show, too. I'm a definite Barry Manilow fan. We're fans. And family guy, then they get like little girls, and they say, oh, we have to see him. And then Barry Mandelow's there singing to Quagmire. Yeah. And he says, you came and you gave without taking, he sings. And Quagmire goes, I would never take from you, Barry.

goes, I would never take from you, Barry. I think when you talk to Seth next again, ask him if he's a Barry Manilow fan. Oh, I'm sure he is. I'm sure he is because it's turned up a lot. I saw him. He would take out. He never took himself seriously in those live shows. He would take out the accordion and play Lady of Spain,

and then he would finish and say, I'd like to see Billy Joel do that. But see, that's What I saw him do. But see, that's what I was talking about. He's one of those guys, people are embarrassed to say they like his songs. But everybody loves his songs. Not the people who come to see his shows. Exactly. Not the people who count.

And not the people who buy records. He's one of the greatest entertainers and one of the most popular successful singers ever. Yeah, I loved his show. Was that a fun film to score because it's a comedy

but it's also a Hitchcock homage You know what, and I've done a few of those kind of things. I've done a number of movies that are they're dramatic

and they're sometimes suspenseful and yet comedy at the same time. Well, like 9 to 5 was a little like that. I did a picture called Trench Code too. Well, like 9 to 5 was a little like that. Sure.

I did a picture called Trench Code, too. Oh, I know that picture. Robert Hayes? Yeah, Robert Hayes. Yeah. But anyway, yes. And so I remember talking with Colin Haggis before the picture was shot. And the end of the movie was Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase make his first movie.

Sure. Trying to get to stop the Pope from being killed. It was going to... Just sort of an homage of the man who knew too much. It was. It was. Definitely. Colin was very quick to say that. He was a real fan of Hitchcock.

And so it's going to start with the beginning of the Mikado. And then we're going to see we're going going to see Goldie and Chevy trying to get to the opera house and stop this murder about to happen. But they kept getting stopped by traffic and a singing cowboy star and all kinds of fun stuff, you know, and two Japanese people in a taxi singing Chop Chop something.

What was the, it was a famous television show, I don't remember. Kojak, Kojak. Kojak Chop Chop, you remember that? Oh, they kept, right, right. Anyways, and we kept, so I do a piece of music, and then we cut to the opera house. And every time we have to have the opera house more in progress. So we listed five or six or seven pieces that the opera would have to sing.

And I went to New York and I recorded the New York City Opera Company doing those numbers. And then when the picture was finished, I wrote the music that led into each operatic moment. So that in the end, the design was at the end of this long 10-minute scene, it would play like one piece of music, mine and then Arthur Sullivan, then mine and then Sullivan, you know? So that was pretty challenging. Yeah, I can imagine. It's a good film.

Oh, it's a great film. It's a good film. And now I'm going to go back and watch it again and just listen to the music. Yeah. I did have a lot of fun. Absolutely. He was another one of our former guests.

Who's that? Chevy Chase. We had Chevy. In fact, he sang one of our former guests. Who's that? Chevy Chase. We had Chevy. In fact, he sang Ready to Take a Chance Again to Chevy. Yeah. So I work with him on the European vacation. Sure. Sure.

Was that Amy Heckerling? I think it was. We had Amy here too. Yes. We're following your career, Charles. What took you so long to get me? We're stalking you. Since you're talking about, this is a fun story too,

since you're talking about how you were pitching in the room to Mark Goodson, the story of you pitching the Love Boat theme to Aaron Spelling. That was unique. I've told that story many times. It's fun. I mean, along the way, when I played new songs for people, sometimes they had some way to hear it in the room, a cassette machine.

Sometimes they had nothing. I had sometimes four or five producers going into my little car, listening to something in my car, and I played themes over the phone for people. Yeah, that's interesting, too. But that particular one, Love Boat, there was a movie called Love Boat. It was a two-hour movie, and I did a few of them.

And then they decided to make it as a series, and I said, it would be great, Aaron, if we got a song. He said, who would you ask? I said, Paul Williams. We just worked together. He's fantastic. He said, great. So we wrote a song, and I made a demo, a proper demo, with singers and band,

and I brought it into Aaron's office for him to hear the demo. And I walked in, he kind of rubbed his two hands together like and sang gleefully, oh boy, where'd you bring me? Because I'd worked with him before. Yeah. I said, I think we have a good song, Aaron. So do you have a tape machine I could play to the demo? And he looked around the room and he said, no, we don't have a tape machine here.

I said, okay. They have a tape machine. I said, no. The television producer's office. I said, no problem. Cassette machine. I brought a cassette. I came prepared. I said, a cassette machine would be fine.

Got on the horn with the secretary. And he said, could you bring in a cassette machine? She said, I'll have to find one. She came back a few minutes later and said, I'm sorry, Mr. Spelling. There's no cassette machine. So I said, look, Aaron, we're on the lot of 20th Century Foxes, pianos all over. I used to go to Mel Brooks' office sometimes to play songs for Goldie Hawn for that movie that I did. Dutchess and the Dirtwater Fox.

Good movie. And I wrote with Sammy Kahn. Yeah. And I said, so there's pianos all over. She said, let me check with my secretary. She came back a few minutes later and said, I'm sorry, Mr. Spelman, there's no pianos available.

So I look at him and I kind of shrug my shoulder. Where do we go now? And he looked at me and I said, all right said alright Aaron here goes love exciting and do come aboard we all welcome you

the love boat and that's how I sang the song he just sang it to him right there snapping my fingers and you sold it with no music

and you know what he said I like it I think he owed you that? What? I like it. I think he owed you that at that point. I like it. That was a unique story. That never happened to me. So talk about working with Paul.

Paul's been on this show. We all adore him. We were talking about him outside. You did One on One first, the Robbie Benson movie. We did a bunch of songs for One on One. Paul's wonderful.

I love Paul. He's a gent. I love him as a creative person. I told you, I think, before, I was a fan of his before we ever got to work together. We're good friends, and I love him, and we have fun working together. And actually, I just got to tomorrow. Tomorrow, not literally, but we have written a new song together for a movie coming out. It'll be out in October.

It's an HBO picture. Exciting. But it'll be in theaters first. And it's a documentary picture called The Bronx, USA. And we wrote a song called The Bronx. And Robert Klein

sang it. Oh, great. He sang it. He's in the picture. Interviews a lot of people from the Bronx, including me. Including Colin Powell, by the way, from the Bronx, including me, including Colin Powell, by the way, from the Bronx and other people. And then we needed, Paul wrote a rap lyric

that I asked him to do and it was great. And we got Donald Webber Jr. who was, who right now is playing Burr in Hamilton.

But he actually, he was Hamilton on Broadway here for a while. And then I said, I also need a background group like the, like the Four Seasons, Frankie Valli's group.

And anyway, we ended up with the cast of Hamilton. No. Jersey Boys. I said, I need a group like the Jersey Boys. Right. I was still on Hamilton. So we got the four guys from Jersey Boys. So they sang.

So that's this record that we have. So then they went out to the streets of New York on the east side, the Bronx, and they shot all the people and the singers and everything on the streets of the Bronx. And it's a lot of fun. So that's the opening of the movie. And the end of the movie, the song we wrote, Da Bronx, we had everyone, the whole cast on stage, with the band, with myself and the piano,

playing this as an end title. So Paul and I are very excited about that. Great that you guys are working together. Yeah. When he was on the show, I was singing his songs to him in his voice. In his voice? Yes.

Why are there so many songs about rainbows? He's doing a Paul impression to Paul. I love those songs. I mean, not only we've only just begun, but even some of the lesser known ones, like Won't Last a Day Without You. I don't know how lesser known that is. It's a big hit song.

Yeah, but... We had a hit. It's a big hit song. Yeah, but. And, oh, and. We had a hit together called My Fair Share. Yes. Seals and Crofts. Seals and Crofts. The one I always liked of his, and I sang it to him there, was Nice to Be Around.

Nice to Be Around from Cinderella Liberty. Yeah. That was a beautiful song. That was John Williams' music. Yeah. Beautiful song. But we started to work together. We've been friends ever since, and we. He's great. Yeah. Beautiful song. But we started to work together. We've been friends ever since.

And he's great. He's a giant. Yeah. He really is. Not only that, but he's been the president of ASCAP. Yep. And he does a lot for songwriters. We should point that out.

And very nice. He's done a lot for songwriters for music. Absolutely. He came to the screening of my documentary, and afterwards, he threw his arms around me and said, I love you even more now. And he took us to a nice lunch. Yes. You, me, and Dara. Terrific guy. Let's talk about Norman, your collaborations with Norman Gimbel and these three wonderful songs that charted.

The Croce song, I Got a a name and also killing me softly which we have to talk about jim croce's song um we did a picture called the last american hero with jeff bridges yeah i know the picture and we wrote the song and uh we were kind of late in getting the song going with the film and we so over the phone we called jim croce which is kind of unusual usually send a demo we called him and he heard the the song over the phone and said he would sing it. So I got his key. I still hadn't met him. I got his key by listening to his record.

He had a new song coming up on the charts called Operator. Sure. And he was a new, really not that well-known singer yet, you know, before any of his hits. Operator just coming up on the charts. And we thought his voice not only matched our song, but matched the character, Jeff Bridges' character in the film.

So I got his key by just listening to some of his records. I made a big record, orchestral background, strings and everything, at 20th Century Fox Soundstage in Hollywood. And I brought it with me to work with Jim. And when I got to meet him for the first time in his producer's office, he said, let me hear that song.

I only heard it on the phone. I knew I'd have to sing it. So I played the song and I sang it for him. And he was touched. And he said he knew he'd have to do the song because he knew it reminded him of his father who died before fulfilling his own dreams uh and then he said can i play a song for you i said sure so he played a new song he had just written called i have to say i love you in a song love that one

so that's i always look back on that relationship two songwriters yeah it's nice song for each other many years later i'll tell you another story many years later um lena horn was doing her broadway show lena horn broadway and alan bergman one day said to me a great songwriter and a friend he said if you want to hear a great version of that song i got a name he says go to new york and see lena well i couldn't do that but then she came out to California I saw her there and she came out

and she started singing her you know Stormy Weather her signature number and she sang about a minute of that

and then she went right into I got her name and she did her own interpretation her own style and it was fantastic and she started

talking about her father in the song and about him. It just got it all revved up, and the audience reacted to her by cheering her. They got up and cheering in the middle of the second night, myself included. So I didn't know Lena Horne then, so I didn't go backstage and plan to do that. But the next day, I sent her a bouquet of flowers. And I said, from a grateful composer. Oh, nice. And she sent me back a letter, which I can pretty well quote,

because I have it framed. It's in the book. It's in the book, yeah. Actually, I think it's in the book. And it basically says to the composer, my favorite song. Thank you for writing my favorite song. You don't know how much meaning it has for me, because every time I sing it, I think of my father.

Isn't that something? So that's the interest. And actually... People connected to it that way. It's interesting, yes. And a lot of people did, yeah. Connected through it. And I've seen him many times since.

Croce was a big talent and, of course, left us early. Yeah, he died way, way, way too young. He was such a... I love those songs. Rapid Roy, The Star... We talk about how people don't write story songs anymore. He wrote a lot of story songs. Rapid Roy, that stock car boy.

Of course, you don't mess around with Jim. Bad, bad Leroy Brown. Yeah. And the love songs that he wrote. Time in a Bottle doesn't get any more beautiful. Great, I have to say I love you in a song. It's beautiful. And Frank and I were talking about how Roberta Flack came to sing that.

She was flying from Los Angeles to New York. And, you know, in those days, 1972, 73, people didn't carry Walkman, didn't have their own music CDs and MP3s that we have now. So we had this record that was programmed on American Airlines. And Roberta was with that song. And she was flying from Los Angeles. She had just done a concert with Quincy Jones. She was flying home.

And she heard that song. And she's a real musician, Roberta. She took a pencil and paper and started to write notes and the lyrics. And she got to New York. She said she listened to it a few times. She called Quincy Jones and said, Quincy, how do I meet Charles Fox? So Quincy called me. No, she called me, actually.

And Quincy gave him numbers of mine, where to reach me. And one day I was walking through the Paramount Music Library, and someone handed me a telephone and said, here, this is for you. And I can still remember it in my ear because Roberta Slack said, she had just won the Grammy Award for best record, best song. Oh, first time ever I saw your face.

And she said, hi, this is Roberta Slack. We haven't met, but I'm going to sing your songs. And I had to take this phone away from me or look at the phone. Am I really hearing this right? Anyway, so we met in Quincy Jones' office when she came out to California and that was the start of it.

Yeah. And it's fun. Beautiful piece of work. They used the song in About a Boy and it was funny. The way they used it gets back to what we were talking about before. Like the whole thing is, no, he can't sing that.

It'll be embarrassing. They'll beat him up. They'll laugh at him. And then when he's singing it, it looks like, oh, this is pathetic. And then when Hugh Grant joins him and does the backup, you go, wow, this is really nice. You know, it was a fun performance. We've had probably about 2,000 people record this one. How about that?

I was reading an interview with the director of that movie, and he said he chose the song because they needed a song that was so nakedly vulnerable or so emotionally open that kids could make fun of him for singing it. But it also had to be a song that when you really listened to it, it was cool. It had to... So speaking about that, Quentin Tarantino made a movie that he used,

I got to name it a couple of years ago. I can't think of the name. Was it Cowboy Picture? Was it Django Unchained? Django Unchained. And there's a whole moment, like a two-minute where Django meets the other guy, I forget the situation,

and the two go riding off together to be partners and he scored the whole scene with Jim Croce singing that song and I didn't know and no one called me to tell me that

they don't call you I was going to ask you they don't call you to get the permission sometimes they do with some songs Kill Me Softly yes

so I saw Quentin Tarantino at the Oscars that year and I went over to say hello and to introduce myself because I never met him. And I thanked him for doing it. I said, I love the way he used my song.

He said, oh, that's your song. He said, you know, I found that song listening on YouTube with you singing. Oh, that's right. That clip's online. So I said, well, you made a smart move by getting Jim Croce and not me. But here's the nice thing. I said, well, you made a smart move by getting Jim Croce. But here's the nice thing.

I said, you know what? I was going to send you a note to tell you how much I liked you using my song in that picture. He said, if you send me the note still, I'll keep it. How about that? I wrote him a little letter, yeah. How about that? Yeah. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast after this.

That's the sound of fried chicken with a spicy history. Thornton Prince was a ladies' man. To get revenge, his girlfriend hid spices in his fried chicken. He loved it so much, he opened Prince's Hot Chicken. Hot chicken in the window. This is one of many sounds in Tennessee with a story to tell. To hear them in person, plan your trip at tnvacation.com. Tennessee sounds perfect.

We all have the power to shape the world. We're connected to the world we share, to each other. I am future. I wait in the world of Echo. Discover the extraordinary with Echo, the spectacular new show by Cirque du Soleil. Now playing under the big top at Toronto Lakeshore Boulevard West. The world is yours to create. Tickets at CirqueDuSoleil.com. Echo thanks its presenting partners Sun Life and its official partners Air Canada and MasterCard.

I got a quick question about, and we jump all over the place, but the Charles Fox singers, since we were talking about Love American Style, it started out with the Cow Sills. Started with the Cow Sills. They sang Love American Style for me. Right. The second year Paramount asked me to replace them because of business arrangements,

whatever that was. Those days, it was the Henry Mancini singers. Right, so you decided they were the... So,

someone said, well, I wasn't going to decide it. Someone said, what should we call the group? You know, you can call them

tomorrow. I don't know. Right. So, I said, we need a name. He said, well,

you had the councils. Give it a name. Give it your. Right. So I said, we need a name. He said, well, you had the counselors. Give it a name. Give it your name. So I said, okay, Charles Fox Singers. But the truth is, there was no Charles Fox Singers. Were they the Ron Hicklin Singers? Well, Ron Hicklin and his group, his group of guys. Okay.

They did most of my shows. They did a little digging. Yeah, and never take anything away from anyone. Ron is great. His singers are great. They did most of my shows, Wonder Woman, all those things. Sure. Laverne and Shirley.

No, Laverne and Shirley, they didn't do that. That was Cindy Greco. Cindy Greco. See, I promise I won't sing these songs. It's too late for that promise. We're way beyond that now. If we could hear a snippet of some of these great

like Love American style. Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love,

love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love,

love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, red and blue Love, American style

That's me and you And then Sunday, Monday Happy days Tuesday, Wednesday Happy days Thursday, Friday Happy days Saturday, what a day

Rockin' all week with you Give us any chance, we'll take it Read us any rule, we'll take it. Read us any rule, we'll break it. We're going to make our dreams come true. Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman. The love boat.

Anyway. Oh, my God. I love the way they just go right, flow right into each other. Well, I just did that. It doesn't usually, you know. Actually, I didn't sing the love, I just said the word, but anyway. Fantastic. That was great.

You know, I got a question here. Charles, I asked a couple of musicians, friends of mine. I said, do you have questions for Charles Fox? And my friend Shark, who's a musician in Los Angeles, said, ask him, please ask him if he ever was rushed and wrote something five minutes before he had to play it for the producer or a creator of a show. Most of them went that way. You know what?

Just come up right on the spot, under honestly um hollywood works that way you know you don't get a whole lot of extra time to do things um not quite not quite that but but the truth is you always you always get up and have to do the work and show it off and um present it in a nice light and all that and to tell tell you the truth, with all my movies, I always like to play the whole score for people at the piano. And the director comes to my house, and I played the entire, I did a movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger, the only movie he ever directed.

Oh, Christmas in Connecticut. Connecticut. Yeah. And when I went to work with him, when I met him the first time, I went to his office, and he said, you know, I'm not going to imitate his voice. You all know how he sounds. He said, you know, I never work with music. I don't know how to work with music. I said, that's great. I said, let's talk about the picture. Let me worry about the notes. So that made it easier for

him. Then he came to my house, and I played the score for him at the piano, and he got it, and he became real astute. He was really smart in terms of hearing things and knowing where music, where it would help, where it wouldn't. But I mean, there's always a challenge, but it's simply what I do. I've heard you say one of the thrills of your career is sitting in the theater for the first time

and hearing the score or the music come up full and watching everything. Well, not even full. You know, I went to the dubbing sessions of every one of my movies because it wasn't just enough to write the music. I had to get it into the picture at the right level. Could have been loud,

could have been as soft as anything. It's a matter of enhancing the moment of the undercut of the story to what you're trying to bring out, the emotional qualities, the dramatic qualities even. And I always felt that if, and directors expected me to do that, so I used to go and sit right next to the music mixer on the dubbing stage, and very often I'd move the dials myself, you know, the faders.

And so then when it's finally finished, by the way, I didn't always get my way. Sometimes the director wanted a lot of sound effects that would wipe out the music. But I mean, it's a collaborative business, and the director has the final say. It's just that simple. So you work with the director. Of course. And when I sit in the theater, I hear everything's just to the right level, whether it had to be full screened or it's a little oboe behind a delicate moment.

Yes, it's very satisfying for me. And I'm going to ask you, who are your favorite? We talked about Neil Hefty, Henry Mancini. You were friends with the great Jerry Goldsmith. Who were your favorite composers? Well, Jerry was certainly one of my favorites. He was a fantastic composer and a good friend of mine. We love those scores.

Omen, Jerry was. Night of the Apes. So I will tell you that when Jerry was sick near the end, when he was still functioning, but he was ill, and he had two concerts. I conducted for him from time to time, not on his recording sessions, but in concerts. He asked me to do a concert for him.

One time I was busy finishing one of my ballets, my Zorro ballet, and he called me and he said he had two concerts coming up, one in England and one in Japan. He loved working at the London Symphony, LSO. And he said he didn't think he could do both that and Japanese concerts.

Would I do the Japanese concert for him? So I couldn't say no to Jerry. So I said, of course I would. So in the daytime, I was writing my music, orchestrating my music at that point. In the evening, I was studying his scores. So when I stand in front of a 100-piece orchestra, I know what the music is. So we actually did the first time ever episode, a suite of the Omen. I had a 100-voice chorus.

Wow. And it was the first time it was ever put together, and I conducted it in Japan with the Kanagawa Philharmonic in Tokyo and Yokohama. So he would certainly be on the short list of your favorite film composers. I think he's one of the greatest composers ever. And I always say about Jerry, he's a great film composer, but more than great,

he was a great American composer who devoted his life to film. John Williams is a fantastic composer. There are a lot of... Michael Cicchino, a youngikino with young composers on this show has he yes he has he's a nice he's a good friend yes he's and the charming guy and he's uh there's a lot of time i told him you were coming on did you yes i did one thing i always think about whenever there's a composer is it's the sign of a bad composer and a bad director, for that matter, when music comes on

and I find myself going, okay, I'm supposed to be sad now. I'm supposed to be invigorated. Do you find yourself going, okay, I've got to work against certain... Sometimes you do. Sometimes you play against what's on the scene. Sure,

there can be a happy scene between two people talking, but really what she's thinking about is something else, a little bit underneath the skin. She's thinking about a moment they had. So you have that control as a composer. You certainly want to play a design. You have a design for how you're going to treat the music,

and you usually go through it with the director, and it's a very collaborative thing. But there are certainly times that you want to play against the film. If it's a happy moment, you may play sad. If it's a sad moment, you may play it up. It's all a matter of what you're trying to let the audience understand and feel at that moment is part of the grand design of the film. And, I mean, I did a film, a television film once

with a great director, Lamont Johnson. And it was about a woman who had 200 names, 200 alter egos. And she had suffered horribly as a child and didn't know that she was, it was called 100, 200 Voices or something like that. A thousand voices, something. It's a true story. And the director said to me, now, you know, I want to be very simple

because this woman has these noises in her head. And so just not much music and very sparse, very simple. And I went ahead and I wrote the most busy score I've ever written in my whole life. And he came over to my house, and I think I did most of it in the synthesizer, in my studio. And he came over to my house, and I think I did most of it in the synthesizer, in my studio. And he came to my house, and I said,

Lamont, I wrote some of the busiest music I ever wrote. I said, but when I played, I played what is in her head. So I wasn't playing what the audience reaction was. I played what this woman was hearing in her head. And he loved it. So you have to take a chance. Of course. Do what you think is right, you know. I also found it. So you have to take a chance. Of course. Do what you think is right, you know. I also found it interesting that you don't like TV theme songs that explain the

show. You prefer something that sets a tone. Right. Or creates a context. Right. So I did a show called The Paper Chase. Sure. With John Houseman. Yeah. And when I went to do the show with him, John Houseman said, so I'm going to start the show with narration. It was like the movie, The Paper Chase. I'm going to start with narration where I talk about the kids coming to school and they're going to learn this, they're going to learn that, and they come from different countries, different parts of the United States, and I'm going to make a lawyer out of you. I said, what do you think about putting music behind that? I said, for the main title, you absolutely should lawyer out of you. I said, what do you think about putting music behind that? I said, the main title, you absolutely should have music behind it.

He said, okay. I said, as a matter of fact, I have an idea. Since it's the same narration over and over, I don't want to tell him it's boring, but since it's the same narration over and over, it's the same story every week. I said, why don't we start with the narration, and then we'll go into a song explaining just those feelings about, with the feelings of doing something new in your life,

something frightening, something exhilarating, what it's like to be a first-year law student. And then we'll cut, we'll see the kids get on buses and trains coming to Harvard, and when they go into the huge auditorium where you're speaking, we'll cut back to you and your narration. And he waited a beat, and he said where you're speaking, we'll cut back to you and your narration. And he waited a beat, and he said, you want to cut out my narration? I said, well, you know, the song would really work better. Anyway, we ended up with a song as I wrote it. And actually, of all my shows, it was the only one that got a lot of awards and nominations, myself included.

But it lasted one year it didn't yeah but then it went to syndication and he took over and he went back to his narration oh he changed it in syndication i was thinking and for one of our short episodes we should do all the shows that hit had theme songs telling the story. All the Sherwood Schwartz theme songs. I didn't want to say that, but that's true. Yeah, they all explain the show. Every Miller Boyette was also like that. There were a handful of them.

Well, I work with Tom Miller. Those guys are great. I did a song, a show with the Hogan family. Yeah, sure. And I wrote a song that Roberta Flack sang for me. Right. Yeah.

That's a good one. I'll tell you a song I love is the one from The Other Side of the Mountain. Richard's Window. Richard's Window. Beautiful. Thank you. We were nominated for this. Beautiful piece of music.

Yeah. And a good film. It was a very good film. Well, again, Larry Pierce directed it. And my good friend Ed Feldman was the producer. People should see it. I'll tell you a couple of things, if I may, if you want to know about that. Please do.

Yes. So I did one of the most, I do a lot of varied things, as you know. One of the things I did that was very exciting to me recently, I started off my career in Latin music, you may know that. I played my- You're Carlos Zorro. I will call it i want to really honestly i want to get accepted by the land we got a kick out of that

so i i found out they thought i was okay anyway i didn't have to take the spanish name but i did go by that for a while i but i played the tito puente yes rey barretto and people like that so last year i decided after 50 years of not playing Latin music, I want to make another Latin record. Fantastic. So I was going to record some of the great musicians in New York and L.A. and maybe Puerto Rico and Cuba. And a friend of mine who's Edesio Alejandro is a great Cuban composer. And I told him about that.

He mentioned it to the Minister of Culture of Cuba. And I was invited, the Cuban Minister of Culture invited me to come over to Havana to do concerts. So last summer, I did two concerts at the Opera House with all the fantastic Cuban musicians. Omar Portanto,

you know from the Buena Vista Sarsour Cup. Yeah, I love that movie. She sang with me in my concert. And we had 2,000 people each night, and I was back in my happy place just playing Latin music, all my songs. And actually, it's being made into a film. It's being cut into a motion picture,

a documentary film, this trip to Cuba. Wow, you've got a lot going on. It's something I'm really happy about and proud about. What else do you want to plug? The Fulfillment Fund and Songs of Our Lives? Are you still involved with that? Fulfillment Fund is a fantastic organization, mostly in California.

A good friend of mine, Gary Gittnick, started about 33, 34 years ago. And it's an organization that helps about 2,500 young students a year from the most disadvantaged parts of Los Angeles and some other places too. It gives them an opportunity

to help them through high school into colleges with all kinds of support, scholarships. So about 10 years ago, Gary asked me if, oh, I know what, my wife Joan became a co-president of the Friends of the Fulfillment Fund, a sub-auxiliary group, ancillary group.

And she asked me if I would do a concert in someone's house when I just play some of my songs and maybe they'd raise some money. So we did, where it's quite a bit of money, right? $100,000 something in someone's house, people promising money. And Gary Gittnick was not a musician, but he didn't waste a beat and say,

what can we do next year? So I started doing concerts of friends who were songwriters. It's an impressive list. We had everyone. I'm telling you. What I wouldn't have given to see some of those concerts. I'll tell you, here's where we had the very first year. First of all, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil.

We had Libra and Stoller. Oh, man. Melissa Manchester, Bill Withers, Steve Terrell singing. Sadaka did it, didn't he? Hal David singing. Yeah. And Alan Bergman. This is only the first concert.

Amazing. So we've done 10 years where I had back rack and I'll speak. I saw the list today. Staggering. Yeah, we did. And of course,

we raised a lot of money for this group. So Charles Fox, give us the website too so people can go there and look at your stuff. Well, it's Charles Fox Music. Charlesfoxmusic.com.

You've got this HBO thing happening. You won't see yet, but a show that I've just completed, we're working on now with Norman Steinberg, your friend. We love Norman. Yeah, I do too. We did a musical based on an 18th century place called School for Scandal. And we're just now taking meetings. We've completed it with Arthur Hamilton,

who was my collaborator, who wrote Cry Me a River. And we're here to begin getting to theaters. We hope to move it to Broadway. That's great. You're busy. I'm busy, yeah. And we want to thank, I just want to thank two people too. Chris DeRose, who helped with the research, and our friend Jared O'Connell, who set up this wonderful keyboard.

Well, thank you. It was fun to play, and I see all your notes. It was very impressive. This is your whole career in about 12 cards. And believe me, I'll never forget you singing my songs.

That was a touch of me. And you're not off the hook yet. Not yet? Because this is the end of the show. Yeah. Why don't we let Charles do one by himself?

Oh! Song? Yeah! Yes! Yes! Yeah, surprise us. Amen. Gjørens fjell Thank you. Beautiful. Thank you. What a special treat this episode was.

This was amazing. This may be my new favorite episode out of 250, Charles. This was amazing. Look at your grateful audience here. Well, first of all, thank you guys. You know too much about me. It's just that simple. Well, listen.

But I appreciate it. You guys are great. I had a good time myself. There's plenty. We didn't even get to. We didn't get to Marcel Marceau and Fred Astaire. You have to come back. You'll have to come back.

We'll come back. Invite me back again. I'll come back. Come back with Norman. And I got to put you on the spot again. Yeah. At the end of Zach they have

a song ready to get what you got don't ask me to play that I can't remember that for the life of me you can fake it I know it's sorts of bum bum bum bum bum bum

someone's playing tricks on me where is that quiet kid I used to be not long

ago you could cut this Gilbert one I used to know you are amazing isn't he something else I don't remember that

I honestly don't remember that you know it's funny one night we were in the theater years ago and there was an Albert Brooks movie I think it was Albert Brooks and he was with the girl

and he went back to her house or she went back to his house and they find that they're both into theme songs and he said really I love theme songs and he said what's your favorite

and he starts to play The Bugaloos it was a Sid and Marty Kraft show of course I forgot that I wrote that honestly oh wow and I starts to play the bugaloos. It was a Sid and Marty Croft show. Of course. I forgot that I wrote that, honestly. And I turned to my wife

and they're singing the bugaloos on the air and everywhere. And I turned to my wife and I said, I think I wrote that. That's great. And then on the screen credit I saw. Oh my God. I've written a lot of stuff. Usually I don't forget it.

We got somebody else we got to get on the show, so we're going to bid Charles a fond farewell. Here I am. Take a look at me. I'm Isaac Heisner. I'm twice as free like a dream. That was meant to be. This time, I'm fine, and I'm ready to get what you got

if you're ready or not. Ready to get what you got if you're ready or not. You're gonna come back. You're gonna memorize that song. And you're gonna learn that song. Thanks for reviving it anyway.

Gilbert, you gotta go straight to the Philippines with that. Yes, yes. Guys, I had a lot of fun. Thank you, Charles. This was a real treat for us. This has been terrific. Terrific. And, okay, this has been Gilbert Gottfried's amazing, colossal podcast

with my co-host, Frank Santopadre, and a guy who composed pretty much everything. Pretty much. Charlie Fox. Thank you, guys. A great pleasure. Thanks for inviting me back again. I had a great time.

Oh, we will. We will. You bet. And I carry it with me like my daddy did But I'm living the dream that he kept here. Moving me down the highway. Rolling me down the highway. Moving ahead so light won't pass me by.

Like a north wind whistling down the sky. I've got a song. I've got a song. Like a whirlpool and the beavers cry, I've got a me and I sing it loud If it gets me nowhere, I go there proud Moving me down the highway Rolling me down the highway Moving the hell so I won't pass the by It's a lot more past the five guitar solo And I'm gonna go there free Like a fool I am and I'll always be

I've got a dream I've got a dream They can change their minds but they can't change me I've got a dream They can change their minds but they can't change me I've got a dream I've got a dream I know I could share it if you want me to If you're going my way I'll go with you

Bend me down the highway I'll go with you. on the highway moving ahead so life won't pass me by Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast is produced by Dara Gottfried and Frank Santopadre Thank you. by John Beach. Special thanks to John Fodiatis, John Murray, and Paul Rayburn.