Born in California to a musical family, Newman spent the summers of his younger days in New Orleans. Uncles Alfred, Lionel, and Emil, as well as cousins Thomas, Maria, and David, are all successful musicians and composers in film and television.

Holding an audience’s attention with no more than a piano, voice, and song is not easy. Newman did it with deceptively simple songs accompanied by piano drawn from New Orleans traditions passed down from artists such as Professor Longhair and Fats Domino. He has claimed a space in the world of songcraft and orchestration with multi-layered works typified by his three-minute essay on slavery in America, “Sail Away.” Newman’s “Political Science” applied satiric wit to geopolitics, summarizing with the refrain, “We’ll drop the big one and pulverize them.” After drawing laughs with a skewed viewpoint of the larger world, he gazed into the human inner world with “Last Night I Had a Dream.” Then we were transported to another time and place; tea on a lazy afternoon on a front porch with “Dayton, Ohio-1903.” A review in The Crimson White written by none other than Mike Duke, summarized Newman’s concert in Tuscaloosa saying, “The evening sailed away; over far too soon.”

The Alabama-born Duke began the evening with the blues and soul he would refine with Mobile’s Wet Willie. Later Duke settled near San Francisco, leading the house band at the legendary music club Rancho Nicasio. He continued honing his writing and composing craft, notably with the hit for Huey Lewis and The News, “Doing It All For My Baby.”

The Newman-Duke concert continued a tradition of intimate presentations of world-class talent by the University Program Council in its Down Under concerts series, as well as later shows dubbing “music under the stars” staged at the Bama Theatre. These small-venue events featured emerging talent including, John Prine, Billy Joel, Lily Tomlin, Jimmy Buffett, and more.