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It’s strange to think a songwriter would find his own voice by using other people’s. But Grammy winner Randy Newman staked his career on doing exactly that while still in his teens. It was the late ’50s and syrupy songs by Paul Anka, Bobby Darin and Johnny Mathis were all over the dial. His uncles Alfred, Lionel and Emil Newman were noted Hollywood film score writers and had encouraged young Randall’s interest in the piano as early as six. After spending his childhood in New Orleans, Newman’s family returned to California. And though he landed a contract with standard bearers Reprise Records at age 17, Newman already knew charting a unique trajectory was the only way he would make it in the music business.

“I got bored with love songs as a teenager,” Newman says. “I started out going for the same records as Carol King, but I wasn’t as good as her.”

Ambiguous and quirky third person tales were the stock and trade of novelists more so than pop composers, who had decidedly one-tracked minds in the early ’60s.

“I never saw myself as a romantic hero,” Newman says. “And I wasn’t happy in a sort of us-versus-them mode. I feel like I lifted this banner and ran out of the trench, and nobody followed me.”

Newman can laugh about dependence on unreliable narrators with topical-if-misinformed points of view, but that dogged attempt to subvert traditional pop themes and the more superficial underpinnings of the American Dream has resulted in a career both uneven and startlingly successful.

The slave-trader’s advances in “Sail Away” and the celebutant whining in “Lonely at the Top” may have registered more knowing smirks than album sales. But songs including “Short People,” “I Love L.A.” and “You Can Leave Your Hat On” were hits for Newman or other artists such as Joe Cocker, Harry Nilsson and Dusty Springfield. His critically acclaimed scores for The Natural and Toy Story are still considered moving accompaniments to those cinematic classics. Even cartoon satire Family Guy has kept Newman in the current pop culture pantheon by spoofing him in two episodes. He and his teenage kids thought that was hilarious.

The 62-year-old is the first to admit he’s taken a strange course with his career. He flatly calls his 1979 synth-heavy Born Again “weird.” Of course that album sleeve featured him in KISS makeup and contained a tribute song to arena rockers Electric Light Orchestra. “That cover assumed people knew who I was,” Newman says wryly. “Otherwise it’s just some a--hole in makeup.”

Born Again predicted the oncoming greed culture of the ’80s, and if Newman were to write an entire album of topical pop today, he says the title would be American Empire.

“Our control over the world in important areas is beginning to fade,” Newman says. “There’s no stopping McDonald’s and Coca-Cola. But, for instance, a few years ago, Europe wanted to be just like us, and now they don’t. It’s on my mind, and if I can find a way to write about it, I will.”

Newman’s haunting “Louisiana 1927,” about the great Mississippi River flood, has been on many minds since last August. The tune Newman wrote in the mid-’70s has recently been drafted in as a theme for victims of Hurricane Katrina. Newman’s cousins lost their house in the flood last fall, and he was hoping to return to New Orleans for the first time since Katrina after his sold out performance at the Manship Theatre on March 19. Unfortunately Newman fractured his arm hiking, and the Baton Rouge concert has been postponed to a later date.For more information and rehab updates visit RandyNewman.com.