Like his fellow Broadway composers Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim, Charles Strouse, who has died aged 96, had a classical music education. But his breakthrough hit – for which he won his first Tony award – with lyrics by his early career collaborator, Lee Adams, was Bye Bye Birdie (1960), a satirical take on the new teenage culture of rock’n’roll, with reference to the kerfuffle surrounding Elvis Presley’s call up to the US army.
His biggest hit of all, though, and the first without lyrics by Adams, was the uplifting Depression-era musical Annie (1977), based on the cartoon strip little orphan girl melting the heart of billionaire Daddy Warbucks. The show ran on Broadway for over 2,300 performances, and for more than three-and-a-half years at the Victoria Palace in London, and was made into a film in 1982.
