Limited four vinyl LP set. Nonesuch's Randy Newman Songbook series-comprising solo recordings of songs from throughout Randy Newman's five-decade career-previously included two volumes, released on CD in 2003 and 2011; the box set marks their first release on vinyl. Sixteen additional songs from a newly released third volume, along with five bonus tracks ("Feels Like Home," "A Wedding in Cherokee County," "Family Album: Homage to Alfred, Emil and Lionel Newman," "I'm Dreaming,"and "Wandering Boy"), join those first two volumes in a new, thematic sequencing, to create this new complete Songbook box set. Mitchell Froom produced The Randy Newman Songbook, Vol. 1 and was joined on Vol. 2 and Vol. 3 by Newman's lifelong friend and colleague Lenny Waronker. The New York Times said of the first volume of The Randy Newman Songbook: "The great craftsmanship is more apparent in the stripped-down context," and the Associated Press said, "Few singer-songwriters could inject more new life into solo piano versions of their work than Randy Newman." The UK's Uncut called Vol. 2 "another subtly sublime stroll through the master's back catalog," noting that Newman is "owner of a peerless canon," and that the album "isolates his full range of qualities: the improbable juxtapositions of caustic topicality and heart-wrenching universality, the concise character studies, and singing and piano playing that seem to emanate from the very fabric of America."
