Nonesuch's Randy Newman Songbook series (previously released as two separate volumes on CD in 2003 and 2011) comprised of solo recordings of songs from throughout Randy Newman's five-decade career now released on vinyl for the first time in this 4 LP Box Set.

Sixteen additional songs from a newly released third volume, along with five bonus tracks ("Feels Like Home", "A Wedding in Cherokee County", "Family Album : Homage to Alfred, Emil and Lionel Newman", "I'm Dreaming", and "Wandering Boy"), join those first two volumes in a new, thematic sequencing, to create this new complete Songbook box set. Mitchell Froom produced The Randy Newman Songbook, Volume 1 and was joined on Volume 2 and Volume 3 by Newman's lifelong friend and colleague Lenny Waronker.

The New York Times said of the first volume of The Randy Newman Songbook : "The great craftsmanship is more apparent in the stripped-down context", and the Associated Press said, "Few singer-songwriters could inject more new life into solo piano versions of their work than Randy Newman". The UK's Uncut called Volume 2 "another subtly sublime stroll through the master's back catalogue", noting that Newman is "owner of a peerless canon", and that the album "isolates his full range of qualities : the improbable juxtapositions of caustic topicality and heart-wrenching universality, the concise character studies, and singing and piano playing that seem to emanate from the very fabric of America".

After starting his songwriting career as a teenager, Randy Newman began recording as a singer and pianist in 1968 with his self-titled album. Throughout the 1970s he released several other acclaimed albums such as: 12 Songs, Sail Away, and Good Old Boys. In addition to his solo recordings and regular international touring, Newman began composing and scoring for films in the 1980s. The list of movies he has worked on since then includes The Natural, Awakenings, Ragtime, all three Toy Story pictures, Seabiscuit, James and the Giant Peach, A Bug's Life, and most recently, Disney/Pixar's Monsters University, the prequel to Monsters Inc. (which he also scored).