Notes About Randy Newman's Score for RAGTIME

While looking at the film again recently, I noticed that something seemed odd about the music in the final cut versus the soundtrack album. Then, I soon figured it out; the soundtrack album, ironically, includes about 13 minutes worth of music that were all but dialed out of the movie. These include an alternate version of "Newsreel", chunks of the massive "Denouement" cue, and a song written initially for the opening credits of the film, "Change Your Way", which was supposed to be sung by Scatman Crothers. Since the scene was never shot, Randy ended up singing that song on the album instead, hoping for a spot on the radio.

So in truth, on the 34:14 running OST, only 21:12 minutes of it is heard in the final cut.

What's also astounding is that there are still cues that are sadly missing from the CD, a good portion of 25 and a half in all. Given this and what we hear on the CD, it can be safely assumed that Mr. Newman wrote about 60 minutes of music for the movie, a good quarter or so of which was shaved off, leaving only about 47 minutes of music in the movie. That makes Ragtime a movie with a surprisingly scanty amount of music, with a good 108 minutes or so silent.

Rather ironic that one of Newman's first scoring assignments which would grant him an Oscar nomination would suffer a lot of cuts.