After graduating from high school in New York, you studied in France with Nadia Boulanger, one of the greatest music teachers of the 20th century. How did this opportunity come about, and how did it shape your approach to music?
I was very fortunate. In 1959, when I was 18 years old, I went to Fontainebleau, France, where there's a fantastic school—a conservatory—that this year is celebrating its 100th anniversary. The head of the school was Nadia Boulanger. She was an extraordinary teacher. She had taught Aaron Copland forty years before me, and many, many composers from around the world came. Quincy Jones, my friend, studied with her—we'd always talk about Boulanger when we got together. Michel Legrand, of course, studied with her. But she changed my whole world; she gave me a life of music.
How would you describe her most defining quality as a teacher?
She saw each student's abilities and didn't try to mold or shape us into something, but to let each of us grow in our own expressions. She was very encouraging. I actually just established a yearly scholarship at that conservatory that will, hopefully, go on forever. After the summer in Fontainebleau, she asked me to come to Paris to study with her, and I remained there for two years. She then got me a scholarship to go back to Fontainebleau the next year. Her influence on my life remains great and countless. I really carried her with me all these years.
It was in New York that you began your career playing for leading Latin artists like Ray Barretto and Tito Puente. Was this a natural path for you?
You know, I was very young when I discovered Cuban and Puerto Rican music. We call it salsa now; then, we just called it Latin music. I fell in love with that genre and listened to as many records as I could find. I thought, "That's what I want to do. I want to play piano in a Latin band." I started my own band when I was very young. Then I began playing with some of the great musicians, like Joe Quijano, Ray Barretto, and Randy Carlos. I started to write songs and arrangements for their bands. After a while, I made my first record, called Charles Fox and His Charanga Band. When I worked with Ray Barretto, we had a charanga band—you know, violins and flute and all that. I loved that music, so I made a whole album.
Do people today know about that first record, given that you are mostly remembered for other kinds of work?
That album, even though I did it probably 60 years ago, is still very much alive on YouTube and all those platforms. People are dancing to it around the world—young people, in 30 countries. It's kind of unbelievable. I never dreamed that. The way I discovered it was that I was going to make a new record, and I went online. I put in my name and the word "salsa," and all these stations came up—not just the Spanish-speaking ones, but Korea and Australia too. Anyway, Latin music has been a big part of my life, but I stopped playing it after I made three or four albums. I played with all those bands. Then, at some point, I was asked to come to Hollywood. So, for the next 50 years, I did movies, television, and records. And now I'm coming back to Latin music again—my first love.
Talking about Latin music, on October 16th this year, 2025, you were honored by the Latin Songwriters Hall of Fame in Miami with the Desi Arnaz Pioneer Award, in recognition of your background in Latin music. What does this recognition mean to you at this stage of your life and career?
You know, I can't tell you how honored I am by that. About 20 years ago, I was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in New York. Years later, now that I'm back into Latin music, I'm receiving this great honor from Rudy Pérez and Desmond Child. They're the heads of the Latin Songwriters Hall of Fame, and they called and said they'd like to present me with this award for my lifetime work with Latin music. It makes me very happy because Latin music was indeed my entry point into the commercial world of music, where I was playing the piano and earning a living. Now, many years later, I'm back to it with my new album and having done concerts in Cuba. It's a great honor, truthfully, to receive the Desi Arnaz Pioneer Award. Thank you for mentioning it.
In this musical journey, which reaches a milestone with this induction, have you incorporated any Argentine music, like a tango, along the way?
You know, I have not, but I love Argentine music. I love tango. It's romantic; it's beautiful. To watch the dancers is extraordinary. I've seen shows on Broadway that were about tango music. I know that my friend Lalo Schifrin, who passed away recently, worked in that genre, and it has certainly been an influence in my life. But no, I have not written any tangos yet. You are giving me a good idea—maybe I should.
Looking back to the 1960s, you started working in television—first with Skitch Henderson on The Tonight Show and later at Score Productions under Bob Israel's direction. Regarding your compositional work in the later, how do you recall your time composing sports themes for shows such as Wide World of Sports or Monday Night Football?
Well, it's interesting. I'm not a very big sports fan, but in 1965, I was asked to write the theme music for Wide World of Sports, and that stayed on the air for 35 years, I think. Actually, my theme is performed by orchestras around the world, which is quite wonderful. Two years later, I was asked to do a new show for ABC called Monday Night Football. At the time, they didn't know if it would even be successful, because they didn't know if women would want to be home with their husbands watching football. But it was a great success, and women indeed started watching it. My theme stayed with the show for many years.
And how do you think those themes differed from the ones you did for game shows, like Match Game or What's My Line?
You know, every time I approach a new show, I start from scratch. I don't think I carry any influences from other shows, and that's important. I think you have to approach each show with its own vitality and its own interest. I did a number of game shows for Goodson and Todman: To Tell the Truth, What's My Line?, Match Game. Game shows are different from writing themes for a series that has a storyline. These are all of the moment—someone's going to win, someone's going to lose, what is the question, what is the answer. The idea is to bring in the excitement of the show: "Stay with us, we're going to present something that's fun and exciting." And then, other than the theme itself, there are a lot of little musical cues.
What are those little musical cues for?
You have to do them for the moment when they're waiting, for example, for an answer. There's some waiting music, some anticipation music. Then, if they've answered incorrectly, it's one kind of music. If they've answered correctly and win a barrel of money, it's another kind of music.
In 1969, you started scoring Love, American Style, which eventually won you two Emmys. Because it was an anthology comedy, was it easy or more challenging to find the right musical tone for each segment and each episode?
Oh, that's a good question. So, I wrote the theme for Love, American Style. And normally, in a show, you'd carry that theme through the episode. I'll skip ahead to The Love Boat. Every time you see the cruise, the producer said, "I want to hear the opening song." I only used the Love, American Style theme song at the very beginning and the very end. That show had three segments in each episode with completely different casts and different storylines. So, for each of those stories, I gave a different theme and different kinds of scoring. It was like I was scoring three little movies every week.
What about the vignettes in between the segments?
Well, in between, it was just kind of a fun choice on my part—for those little comedic vignettes that took 20 seconds or a minute at most—to score each one as though it were a different classical composer. So it would be Brahms, Mozart, Haydn, and Chopin. That was just my own conceit for the fun of it, but somehow the whole thing worked. The show was on the air for, I think, six years. You know, many years later, there are still so many television stations that air that series.
Around that time, a segment of Love, American Style led to the creation of the hit TV show Happy Days. How did your music end up being used as the show's opening theme, especially since during the first year they had used Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley & His Comets?
So, Happy Days was originally one of the three segments on Love, American Style. ABC thought that they would be able to pay for some pilots within that show. I supposed Happy Days would be kind of serious. Unfortunately, at that moment, the network didn't think the world was ready to revisit the '50s. But then George Lucas's movie, American Graffiti, came out a couple of years later, which starred Ron Howard, by the way. They used Rock Around the Clock, and that became a big hit film. ABC said, "Well, we have a '50s television series—let's go with Happy Days."
So, did they attempt to replicate the film's success with the same theme song in the first season, only to change it in the next one?
They did the original show, and Henry Winkler was in it, but he wasn't the star. Ron Howard was more of a bigger name. In the first year, the show did well—not spectacularly, but well enough that they gave it a second year. During that first year, they said, "Well, let's use Rock Around the Clock rather than the Happy Days song," which is the one I wrote, because Rock Around the Clock was in the movie American Graffiti. They used my song, which I wrote with Norman Gimbel, as the end title. So, when the show started its second year, they decided to go with a different format. Henry Winkler was quickly becoming a big star as Fonzie. Ron Howard was too, but they decided to feature Fonzie more in the episodes.
Which other changes occurred between the first and second seasons, and why was your song part of those changes?
They decided to do it with four cameras live rather than a filmed show, which was how it had been done during the first year. So now there were four cameras, it was all done live, and Garry Marshall, who created the show, would come out and introduce the characters. It was a big, fun party. They said, "Well, we might as well go with the song Happy Days because we own it." And so everything changed in the second year. The show became the number-one show on television, and my song became a hit record around the world, in many countries—not just in America. That show was on the air for 12 years. It's still on the air, you know; hopefully, it will never go away.
Well, then Laverne & Shirley happened. When you composed the main theme for that show, there wasn't yet a fully developed idea of the characters, who had only appeared as guests on Happy Days. How did you approach the work while everything was still taking shape?
Happy Days was on the air, and it was becoming a big hit. The song was a big hit. These two girls, Cindy Williams and Penny Marshall, came in as kind of the love interest for The Fonz and for Richie. They were just in two or three scenes on the show, but it was done so well that ABC and Paramount Pictures started getting a lot of calls and letters saying, "Oh, we love these girls. Can we see more of them?" Without even having a complete script, they made a presentation. But the producers of the show loved to show a whole main title look, not just a little thing. So they devised that and asked me to write a new song, which is when I asked Norman Gimbel to work with me.
Did they provide any direction to help you know how to start composing the main song?
Well, we didn't know who these girls were. They worked in a factory—a beer factory—but we didn't know anything else about the characters. There was no script. There was no story. So we spoke to the producers, and they said, "Well, these characters are working in a brewery, but they want to do more. They want to go out and make things happen in their lives. They're not just going to be content with what they have now." So we wrote a song called Making Our Dreams Come True. That record came out right after Happy Days, and the two records together were climbing up the charts. They were both big hits at the same time.
Why was Cyndi Grecco chosen to sing the song?
Cyndi Grecco—I found her singing in her band at Magic Mountain. I was there with my children one day, and I heard this voice that sounded good. I went over, introduced myself, and said, "You know, I think you might be the right person to sing my new television theme." And that changed her career. She became a star from that song. We made an album together after that; it was a very nice association. I've been very fortunate with my television shows. Of course, I've done many shows that you don't know, that didn't become hits. I've done many shows that remained as pilots. But maybe 35 or 40 shows altogether have my themes on them. A number of them have lasted through the years, and I've been very fortunate that that happened.
One that has definitely lasted is Wonder Woman, played by Lynda Carter. You composed the memorable theme song for that show. What was it like to musically explore the show's plot?
It was a comic book. It was campy. Also, it started off about American soldiers during World War II. Wonder Woman was the first comic book hero who was a woman. All the others before that were men, starting with Zorro. I once did a whole ballet based on that character, and that was a lot of fun. That ballet still plays with the Smuin Ballet in San Francisco. He was the original comic hero, I think—even before Batman. But Wonder Woman was the first woman. So that alone was interesting. I did a big, rousing, very fast theme, with three singers singing Wonder Woman. It was an up-tempo song at its best.
Your next big TV project was The Love Boat, which you mentioned earlier. Could you share the funny story about how you had to present the opening song to producer Aaron Spelling?
So, that show was originally a two-hour movie called The Love Boat. Then it received a lot of reaction, and they decided to put it on the air as a series. Aaron Spelling and Douglas Cramer were the producers. Well, I asked Paul Williams to write lyrics with me, and together we came up with this song. The producer said to me, when we sat down to talk about what the show would be, "Do you remember the movie Murder on the Orient Express?" I said, "I do." He said, "So it starts with a train about to take off, people going around the world. And there's a sense of adventure. There's a sense of excitement. You hear the foghorns of the train. You hear the clanging of the wheels." The main theme of the film was a waltz with a large string orchestra. He said, "That's what I want."
Did you take his input into account?
It's always my job to interpret what the producer wants. Composers don't live alone; we live in a collaborative world. When you're working for what's on the screen, there's a director, there's a writer, there are producers — you know, people have a voice. And you want to take all that input and create your own. I took that insight about the excitement and adventure, but instead of a waltz with strings, I made a disco called The Love Boat. When I went in to play it for Aaron Spelling and Doug Cramer, I brought with me a demo of the song I had recorded with singers. I said, "All right, I have a tape." But they didn't have a tape machine.
Did you have any other way to show him your recorded demo?
I said, "All right, how about a cassette?" This was in the late seventies. They looked around the room, and Aaron Spelling got on the telephone with his assistant and said, "Could you bring me a cassette machine?" She came back in a few minutes and said, "I'm sorry, Mr. Spelling, there's no cassette machine in the building." So we were on the lot at 20th Century Fox. There are pianos all over the recording studios. Mel Brooks' office had a piano. His assistant went to look for one and came back in a minute, saying, "I'm sorry, Mr. Spelling. There are no pianos available right now." So I didn't know how to present my song. I had a big, fancy demo with singers and musicians, and he couldn't hear it, and I couldn't play it live with the piano.
So, what did you do at that point?
I finally said, "All right, Aaron. Here it goes." And I started singing and snapping my fingers: "Love, exciting and new. Come aboard, we're expecting you." That's how he heard the song—the most unusual way. And then he said, "I like it." (laughs) So we went from the waltz with strings to my snapping of the fingers. Now all the Princess lines have I don't know how many cruises, and all of those have the foghorn that plays my theme. It's the ugliest sound you'll ever hear, but they all have it, and when they pass each other, they all hit the foghorns. So maybe I'm the only composer who achieved this on a big ship.
Going back in time, your biggest musical hit was Killing Me Softly with His Song, in the early 1970s. It's impossible to avoid the controversy surrounding Lori Lieberman and her degree of involvement, if any, in the composition of the song. What's the truth behind all this?
Okay, so I'll tell you this: there's no controversy. Norman Gimbel and I wrote the song—no one else. Anyone else who says they wrote it is just not true. Norman and I were sitting around the piano. We had done a whole album with Lori Lieberman, and we did four albums following this one, by the way. We were looking to finish the album and write the tenth song, and Norman had a book with lyrics and other titles. He came up with the idea: he had a title of a song called Killing Me Softly with His Blues. Actually, he had found that in a book that Lalo Schifrin gave him. Anyway, we talked about it. Killing Me Softly sounded good, but with His Blues sounded like an old-fashioned phrase. So we went with Killing Me Softly with His Song, which sounded more modern.
How did the composition process evolve from there?
Norman went home. He called me, probably two hours later, and gave me a whole lyric. I sat at the piano, took the words down, and wrote the music as quickly as I could. That's how quickly I wrote it. We had a song. When we brought Lori Lieberman in to hear it the next day, I played it for her and sang it to her. She said, "Oh, it reminds me of me being in a club and hearing Don McLean sing a song." That is the story, and any other story you hear is simply not true.
What was it like to see the same song transcend time and reach the top of the charts twice—first with Roberta Flack in 1973 and then reimagined by the Fugees in 1996?
It was amazing. I mean, it was 20 years later. The Fugees came up with a record. Lauryn Hill said that her mother used to listen to Roberta Flack sing when she was even pregnant with her. And there was a wonderful feeling to reach a whole new generation of people with that song. Well, since then, we get new recordings every week by different artists in every country. Roberta Flack was a dear friend; she just died, you know, within the last few months. But when I came out with my memoir called Killing Me Softly: My Life in Music, I asked if she would write the introduction to it. She said, "I'd love to," and she wrote a beautiful introduction. She was a dear, wonderful person. She also sang one of my television themes.
Which TV series was it?
It was originally called Valerie, with Valerie Harper, and after a year, they changed the title to The Hogan Family when Sandy Duncan replaced her in the lead role. Roberta sang the song I wrote for the main title. That stayed on the air, I think, for six or seven years. She was just a wonderful artist, and it was a great, great relationship. And then, of course, Lauryn Hill came along and sang it, and the thing is, the whole world knows the song. So what a great thrill that is for me, you know.
Moving on to cinema, one of your first original soundtracks was for the 1968 cult classic Barbarella, starring Jane Fonda. What kind of musical vision did you and Bob Crewe pursue to give the film its futuristic, science-fiction edge?
That was only my second film, and it was a great experience. The film had a kind of fun, spoof-European feeling on the world of science-fiction pictures. Roger Vadim was married to Jane Fonda, and he was a wonderful director. Bob Crewe and I got to work with him, and so we took off on this fantasy land of adventure and songs, and all the trials and tribulations that Jane Fonda went through as Barbarella on strange planets. It was a totally joyous experience. It was a big hit around the world, and when I finished scoring the film, I had to go to France to teach Jane how to sing my song in the part where she takes off her clothes in space for a long intergalactic voyage. She was not even singing; she was humming my song.
What were those first film experiences like?
I thought, "Wow, this film world is wonderful." I was working with Latin music at the time, but I got these wonderful opportunities. That was my second film; Dino De Laurentiis was the producer. My third film had the same director as my first film, which was The Incident. When Larry Peerce made his next picture, Goodbye, Columbus, he wanted me to go to California to do the music. Well, the people at Paramount Pictures didn't know who I was. I was a 26- or 27-year-old composer living in New York, but because I did Barbarella, they brought people out to see what this young composer was doing in this major film that they didn't even know.
I imagine they were quite impressed with your work. Were they?
They all liked me, I guess, and asked me to come back and do Goodbye, Columbus. So that was my entrée to bring me back. And just to show you the connective link: when I finished the music for Goodbye, Columbus in California, there were these producers who said, "We'd like you to stay around. We have a new show called Love, American Style. Would you do the pilot, stay a few weeks longer?" A whole career opened up for me in California.
Going forward in time, you worked with Colin Higgins on 9 to 5, once again starring Jane Fonda. What was it like working on a film where the main song had already been written by someone else—Dolly Parton, in this case?
So, my first picture with Colin Higgins was Foul Play, which was a great film starring Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase. I scored the film and wrote the song with Norman Gimbel called Ready to Take a Chance Again. Barry Manilow sang that song in the film, and it was a big hit. When Colin Higgins was doing his next film, which was 9 to 5, he called me and asked me to do the score. He said, "I'm sorry I can't ask you to do the song. We already have a song, and it was written by Dolly Parton, and she sings it. Will you please do the score?" He knew that I didn't like to do scores unless I composed the song, which you don't see very often these days.
What do you mean?
You know, there's very often one composer who does the score, maybe two, and then these other people write the songs. In my case, I was very fortunate that I came on the heels of some of the great people like Henry Mancini, the people who wrote their own songs and scored their own films. In this one case, Colin was my friend, and he asked me if I would do the score, knowing that Dolly Parton had written the song. And I accepted. By the way, Dolly wrote a great song, and she's a great songwriter. Anyway, it was a very happy time in my life musically. My whole life musically has been a happy time, frankly. Colin had another movie that he was going to do called The Man Who Lost Tuesday, and sadly he died at that time. He died way too young.
On a lighter note, which interpretation of one of your songs is your favorite, given that your music has been recorded by everyone from Fred Astaire to Luther Vandross — including Johnny Cash and Carly Simon?
Oh my goodness, I honestly don't know that I have a favorite. Every song I wrote carries a piece of my life at that time. You know, I got to explore that in the movie that was made about my life, Killing Me Softly with His Songs. It would be easier to say the most successful ones are my favorites, but that's just not true. I love the experience of having people sing my songs and bring something new. Working with Fred Astaire was a fantastic experience. I used to go to his house to rehearse with him, and he had a little piano in his bedroom. I'd be at the piano playing, and he would be sitting behind me on his bed. And I'd think to myself, "Holy cow — that's Fred Astaire singing behind me!" (laughs) He was a true gentleman.
Does any other name come to mind?
I mean, I worked with so many singers. I worked with Bobby Darin, for example, and wrote his arrangements for his very last record — which is how I started as an arranger. But I love the idea that all these songs have different significance for me. I've written hundreds of songs; I've written ballets and music for the concert hall. So every one of these things is a moment from my past life, and I'm very fortunate to be able to say that I don't look back on anything that didn't bring me happiness.
Moving on to current projects, your upcoming release, which will be out soon, is a salsa album called Charles Fox Live in Havana, based on your concerts at the Gran Teatro de La Habana. What was it like recording in Cuba, the country considered the birthplace of the genre?
That was a fantastic experience in my life. After 50 years of being in Hollywood and making movies, records, and television shows, I really missed playing Latin music in a band. And no one knew that I wanted to do that, so no bands called me to see if I would play with them. I decided I was going to make a new record, and I mentioned it to my good friend, who passed away recently, Edesio Alejandro. He was a very important composer in Cuba. I told him I wanted to do a new record, maybe come to Cuba or Puerto Rico. The next thing I knew, I had a call from the Minister of Culture of Cuba asking me if I would come there to do concerts. I couldn't say yes quickly enough.
How did the idea of filming those concerts come about?
When I told my friend Danny Gold, who's a wonderful filmmaker, he said, "Oh, I'd like to film that. I'd like to film your concerts." So I thought that'd be great. He came with a crew of 10 people, cameras, and a load of equipment. I put together a whole two-hour concert — maybe 17 or 18 songs — and I had some of the most wonderful musicians in Cuba playing with me. Even the Orquesta Aragón, with their violins, singers, and flute players, all played with me on some of the numbers. And Omara Portuondo, the great singer from Buena Vista Social Club, sang with me.
Were you able to communicate properly with the Spanish-speaking audience?
I didn't speak Spanish at all, and because I wanted to speak to the people in their language, I had a teacher come to my house three times a week to give me Spanish lessons. I learned enough in two or three months to speak to the audience all night in Spanish. Maybe the accent wasn't perfect (laughs), but I had a wonderful time. The people were very receptive. We did two sold-out concerts, and those concerts are now coming out on an album that will be released this month, called Charles Fox Live in Havana. I'm excited to have a new Latin record coming out with all my friends.
What was your impression of Cuban people?
The people are wonderful there. You know, they are very poor, but they're still very happy people. They just love music. It's like music is infused in their souls. For me, it was almost like coming home. Actually, the Minister of Culture said to me, "Thank you for bringing Cuban music back to Cuba." The reason he said that was because my music is reminiscent of what I played in the '60s and '70s. You might call it old-fashioned salsa. On the other hand, I also have new songs, and some jazz-concept songs as well. So it's a potpourri of different things. But, as always, the world moves ahead, and the music they do — there's a lot of rap now in Cuba — while my music was really kind of pure salsa. So it was a nice feeling to hear that coming from him.
Is there anything you are looking forward to in the near future or want to accomplish soon?
I'm going to write a new guitar concerto for Ángel Romero, from Los Romeros — the great guitar quartet. That's my newest project. But I also have another thing that I've completed now: I've written a new musical, a new show — hopefully for Broadway — called Ain't That Jazz, with the man who wrote Les Misérables, Alain Boublil. We've been writing together for years now, so hopefully you'll be hearing more about that at some point.
Is there a final message you want to give to my readers?
Well, let me just say to your readers that I'm very happy to do this interview with you, Guido. I really appreciate all the warm welcome I've received from the world community, particularly in Spanish-speaking countries. I made Latin music, which, as I said to the audience in Cuba, "It's your music, but it's also my music." I feel that my music incorporates the feelings of people from different countries and different languages. It's a great pleasure to have made this connection with your audience. I hope they enjoy my new record and the music I've written, and I look forward to one day going to Buenos Aires. I know it's a very beautiful city, and hopefully my path will bring me there soon.