Charlie Smalls

Charlie Smalls (October 25, 1943 – August 27, 1987) was an American composer and songwriter born in New York, New York, best known for writing the music and lyrics for the 1975 Broadway musical The Wiz, an African-American urbanized retelling of L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, with a book by William F. Brown.

Smalls demonstrated exceptional musical ability from an early age, enrolling at the Juilliard School at age 11 in 1954 and remaining there until 1961. He later graduated from the High School of Performing Arts before touring as a member of the New York Jazz Repertory Company. His early songwriting work included "From Me to You," recorded by Hugh Masekela for his 1966 album Hugh Masekela's Next Album, and "Never Felt Like This Before," written for John Cassavetes's 1968 film Faces. That same year, Smalls appeared in the tag scene of the Monkees episode "Some Like It Lukewarm," which aired on March 4, 1968, in a piano-side conversation with singer Davy Jones.

The Wiz opened on Broadway in 1975 and earned Smalls the Tony Award for Best Original Score as well as the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music and Lyrics, both in 1975. He subsequently received the 1976 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album for the same production. The show was later adapted into a feature film in 1978, for which Smalls also contributed. He additionally composed the score for the 1976 film Drum.

At the time of his death, Smalls was developing a new musical titled Miracles, an adaptation of H.G. Wells's The Man Who Could Work Miracles, and had recorded material for the project with Geoffrey Holder and the Harlem Boys Choir. He died on August 27, 1987, at the age of 43, in Belgium, where he had been accompanying the tour of jazz dance instructor Sue Samuels, to whom he was engaged. The cause of death was complications from emergency surgery to repair a burst appendix. In 1989, his score for The Wiz was donated to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture by Mildred Harper, mother of The Wiz producer Ken Harper, along with Harper's papers.