Go, Goodman, Go

I tend to listen to Pandora whenever I happen to be building chainmail, filling out job applications, or if I happen to play a video game with a sub-par or repetitive soundtrack. One of my Pandora channels features the misleading title "Comedy." Originally developed from a Todd Snider song featured on Bob and Tom, a song by Steven Lynch, and a much less well-known song by a much less well-known artist, Cheryl Wheeler (so unknown in fact, that I almost misspelled her name). Pandora works by assessing the musical qualities of songs that you approve to find similar songs. The channel has since developed to favor "folk influences," "melodic songwriting," and much more nebulous things like "major key tonality" and "acoustic sonority" that music majors might be able to explain (as far as I can tell "acoustic sonority" is the equivalent of "sound-like sound").

Regardless, the channel ended up introducing me to an abundance of artists with interesting, lyrically-driven music that tends to feature lots of singer-songwriters playing a guitar. It's also introduced me to John Williamson and Spectrum - a means of letting me talk to Australian women by pandering to their love of 30-year-old Australian music. It also brought me Steve Goodman, who's likely the far more interesting find. He gets a spot on my site because of his sublimely timed birth. Also he died of leukemia in 1984.


Pandora introduced me to Steve Goodman through a medley he spontanteously created, which happened to be recorded during a live concert. During concerts he would ask for a cowboy hat before singing a semi-satirical country song he wrote with John Prine. When no one could produce a cowboy hat, an audience member shouts, "You want a motorcycle helmet?" The result was Goodman playing a medley of "vehicular songs" including 3 wikipedia-dubbed teenage tragedy songs with a humorous edge as he improvisationally plucked away at his guitar (while wearing the motorcycle helmet).



Goodman was well-known for connecting with the audience and keeping a friendly, personable atmosphere. A master of the guitar, he would often play so furiously and so long that a string would break mid-song. Without missing a beat he would continue singing and replace the string.

Goodman sung an abundance of humorous songs like Leroy Van Dyke's The Auctioneer (here for a tenuous YouTube link) or Shel Silverstein's Three-Legged Man - along with his own rendition of I'm My Own Grandpa (without the past-nastification of Futurama). But he also wrote many of the songs he sang, such as Talk Backwards and the afforementioned You Never Even Called Me by My Name.

Despite Pandora's inclination to give me many of his humorous songs, he was also a skilled lyricist. In years past he was actually more well-known as a writer than a singer-songwriter. His best-known song City of New Orleans refers to a 20-hour passenger train route that still connects Chicago and New Orleans (often dubbed "the least glamorous overnight train" due to the fact the majority of its passengers don't travel between Chicago and New Orleans so the train has very few luxury cars). Goodman took a sentimental look at a vanishing piece of Americana: the now-defunct rail network. Even today, it is often considered one of the best train songs ever written (again, here for a ephemeral YouTube video). I guess if we can have "dead girl songs" and "vehicular songs" we can have train songs too.

As a native of Chicago he wrote numerous fan songs for the Chicago Cubs - for the downtrodden team that has not won a World Series title in over a century (In contrast, the Brewers' franchise has been around since 1969 and managed to snag a pennant in the 1980s, something the Cubs last managed in 1945). The most famous of these songs remains Go, Cubs, Go due to its modern resurgence during winning Cubs seasons in 2007 and 2008 (and the fact it has more uplifting lyrics than his other well-known Cubs' song A Dying Cubs' Fan's Last Request).

Unfortunately, Goodman died of leukemia in 1984 at the age of 36. Mere days later the Cubs clinched their division in 1984. In a stroke of posthumous honors, he also won a grammy for songwriting for Willie Nelson's rendition of City of New Orleans.

And they called him Cool Hand Leuk. No, wait...that's what he called himself.