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The composer Charles Strouse, a three-time Tony award-winner whose hits included Annie, has died at the age of 96. His death at home in New York on Thursday was announced by his four children.
Over the course of a long and illustrious career, Strouse composed music for the Broadway shows Bye Bye Birdie, Golden Boy, Applause, Rags and Nick & Nora. But he was perhaps best known for his score for Annie which opened in New York in 1977 and ran for almost six years. The story of the plucky red-headed orphan featured evergreen songs (with lyrics by Martin Charnin) including Tomorrow, You’re Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile and It’s the Hard-Knock Life, which was sampled by Jay-Z in a 1998 single. Annie received seven Tony awards, including best musical and best original score, and won the Grammy for best cast show album. It was adapted as a film in 1982.
Strouse’s other Tony award-winners were the 1960 comedy Bye Bye Birdie and 1970’s Applause (based on the film All About Eve); both shows had lyrics by his regular collaborator Lee Adams. In 1996, the pair won a Primetime Emmy for outstanding original music and lyrics for the song Let’s Settle Down from a TV film adaptation of Bye Bye Birdie, which follows a rock’n’roll singer drafted into the army. Strouse was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1985. He also worked in film, incorporating banjos into the score for Bonnie and Clyde, and television, writing the theme music for the long-running sitcom All in the Family. Pop songs (including the hit Born Too Late written with Fred Tobias), revues, opera, chamber music and a range of classical pieces were also composed by the industrious and prolific Strouse. His Concerto America was written to commemorate the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Born on 7 June 1928, he grew up in New York and graduated from its Eastman School of Music in 1947. He later studied under Aaron Copland and Nadia Boulanger. In 1964 he married the dancer and choreographer Barbara Siman; they were married for almost 60 years until her death in 2023. His children, Benjamin, Nicholas, Victoria and William, survive him.
Strouse reflected on his career in the 2008 memoir Put on a Happy Face, named after one of his songs for Bye Bye Birdie. “The way a fine tailor feels about his material, I feel about musical notes,” he said the following year.
