Good Old Boys

Since his teenage days marketing demos to pop singers, Randy Newman has fancied himself a shirt-sleeves-rolled-up piano man in the classic mold more than a rock musician—a Laurel Canyon-era Hoagy Carmichael or Harold Arlen, if they wrote about young women being run over by beach cleaning trucks or lonely men with hat fetishes. Guitar leads and crisp grooves crop up across all of Newman’s studio albums, but live, he defaults to performing alone, interspersing his intimate, charmingly imperfect sets with self-deprecating banter and sarcastic qualifications.

His sense of humor, even outside of his caustically funny songs, can be polarizing. For one critic—Greil Marcus—a February ’75 Newman show proved toxic, threatening to overturn his reverent opinion of the Los Angeles singer-songwriter. With his stage banter and rave-up delivery, Marcus felt that Newman was lampooning the morally compromised but disenfranchised characters who populated his album of the previous year, Good Old Boys, which was written largely from the perspective of a bigoted Southern steel worker. “He made it clear that the song [“A Wedding in Cherokee County”] was a joke, that the people were jokes, that their predicament was something those smart enough to buy tickets to his concert could take as a sideshow staged for their personal amusement,” Marcus wrote in The Village Voice, excoriating the tittering, cocktail-sipping Manhattan crowd.

If Good Old Boys came out today, the nature of the criticism would, doubtless, be quite the opposite. Newman, who spent his childhood in New Orleans, would not have passed sufficient judgment on his racist, abusive subjects. He’d be criticized for assuming their detestable vocabulary, and for even dreaming up such a project in the first place. Any discussion of the album begins and probably ends with the fact that on its opening track, Newman — speaking as the steel worker, whom he named “Johnny Cutler” on early drafts for the album — says the “n”-word eight times, not including one use of “Negro.” Cutler is a gaping all-American nightmare in the vein of Mark Twain’s Pap. In the song, he seethes while watching Lester Maddox—the Klan-backed, segregationist governor of Georgia from 1967 to 1971 — be jeered offstage on “The Dick Cavett Show” (by “some smart-ass New York Jew,” Newman sneers).

“Rednecks” was a few steps, or a parkour leap, beyond any grotesque character study Newman had previously attempted, even 12 Songs’ masterclass in voyeuristic white privilege “Yellow Man” (“Eating rice all day/While the children play/You see he believe in a family/Just like you and me”) and “Sail Away,” his slave-trader salesman pitch to a group of Africans (“Climb aboard, little wog/Sail away with me”). Cutler is so content to wear his ignorance like a badge of honor in “Rednecks” that it’s easy to mistake some lines for Newman’s own voice nervously interceding to denounce him. The surging, C&W-tinged chorus of “We’re rednecks, rednecks/We don’t know our ass from a hole in the ground” functions as both Greek-chorus commentary on the action and Cutler’s motto. (It’s harmonized immaculately by—yes—the Eagles, who would conveniently drop out before “and we’re keeping the n*ggers down.”)

To make things even thornier, Newman folds bits of salient criticism about the hypocrisy of holier-than-thou Northern white liberals—in denial about the institutionalized segregation of their own communities—into Cutler’s objectionable voice. “Now your Northern n*gger’s a Negro/You see he’s got his dignity,” Cutler sneers facetiously, before leading a whirlwind tour through the implicitly ghettoized North (“He’s free to be put in a cage in Harlem in New York City/He’s free to be put in a cage on the South Side of Chicago, and the West Side”) with revival-meeting-like gusto that forces him off the beat entirely. The orchestra, in turn, seizes up and derails beneath him before thudding to a sudden halt. It’s the first indication that this album is no simple character study, but a composite survey of the roots and institutionalization of Southern bigotry in the 20th century—in other words, the diciest and most formidable project Randy Newman had (and has) ever attempted.

Newman sells his pivots and double-meanings skillfully in “Rednecks,” the album’s microcosm, through both his character building and deceptively intricate music—peppered with gestures that could have been pulled from ragtime standards, brass-band chorales, and the mid-19th-century popular songs of Stephen Foster. Like most of Good Old Boys, the song was scored for piano, full orchestra (largely arranged and entirely conducted by Newman), and rock rhythm section (expert bass and drums from L.A. studio masters like Jim Keltner and Willie Weeks, inspired by Muscle Shoals productions).

Today, “Rednecks” might seem like a relic, or baiting, self-satisfied armchair-liberal-ism at cross-purposes with itself. What constructive function does this kind of “humor” serve? By any stretch of the imagination, does Newman have the right to invoke this language? It’s an open question, but Hilton Als’ measured defense of Flannery O’Connor’s non-biographical, darkly humorous, “n”-word-studded Southern fiction comes to mind, especially his praise of the Georgia-born author’s rare ability “to depict with humor and without judgment her rapidly crumbling social order.” This, too, is Newman’s subject and methodology. His characters’ vocabulary pulls back the curtain on their self-hatred, so he doesn’t have to butt in and do it for them (O’Connor called this “mind[ing] your own bisnis”). He illuminates their fear of becoming marginal, their search for fundamental truth in all the wrong places, and the dead-end rituals of behavior and thought that anchor their communities. Newman’s narrators are the ones in his crosshairs; their unworthy targets are never dragged down with them—never roped into the songs’ action to ossify into caricatures and become punchlines. Lost in their demented reveries, and powerless to tell their imagined nemeses’ stories for them, Newman’s basket of deplorables are left to fall on their swords all by themselves. Jeff Chang deemed Newman’s approach, in defense of “Korean Parents” —another incendiary Newman song from 2008 —“the best kind of race humor… found by wedging open the wound long enough to stare at, and then sharing the joke in that. Of course, the trick is that you need to be the one who's bleeding.”

Newman felt that he needed to write “Birmingham” and “Marie,” to “explain ‘Rednecks’ better.” From there, Cutler became the necessary protagonist of his new album, which was to be called “Johnny Cutler’s Birthday.” “Birmingham” introduces Cutler’s family and home life with humorous banality; the darkness is left unspoken but you can feel it looming behind its jaunty string figures and horn oompahs. “Marie,” an emotional release for both Cutler and the listener, is a desperate paean by a blacked-out Cutler to his wife (for whom Newman also wrote a scrapped solo song and a duet), with a luxuriant string arrangement—an emotional release for both Cutler and the listener. There is something approaching honest self-reflection (“Guilty”), and then Cutler’s ultimate cop-out—a return to his escapist after-work routine (“Rollin’”). Across these songs, Newman expertly scales the depressive plateaus of the low-functioning alcoholic—the gentle, bluesy sensibility of the music feels appropriate, and makes for savage musical irony when the overlying scenes get dismal enough (they always do).

Newman also wrote interstitial songs for* Good Old Boys*—originally imagined as diegetic entertainment at Cutler’s 30th birthday party—which relayed tall tales, jokes, and fudged biographies of Cutler’s heroes. While sketching these, Newman would grow obsessed with the political career of Huey Long, the noted Great-Depression-era Louisiana governor, party-busting senator, short-lived presidential candidate, and megalomaniac. His research into the contradictory Long—part pseudo-socialist, part vindictive bigot—would force his pen away from Cutler, toward a broader-stroke compendium of Southern snapshots and lore.

“Louisiana 1927,” the first Long song and an apt musical sequel to “Sail Away,” examines the Great Mississippi Flood and the federal government’s mishandling of it, which stirred up class resentment, around which Long would build his candidacy for governor in the following year. “Every Man a King” is a barroom cover of an actual Long campaign song, espousing the rhetoric of his proposed (and completely untenable) “Share Our Wealth” program. Long promised to cap income and redistribute funds to make every American “a millionaire”—or at least, every bit as good as the highfalutin' ones calling the shots in Washington.

Long’s big production number, though—and arguably the album’s greatest musical triumph — is “Kingfish,” the best campaign speech in pop music history (though it’s unclear if it has any competition). It’s all glitzy, triumphant showmanship in the verse; even if we don’t know the history, we can sense the visceral allure (“Who took the Standard Oil men and whooped their ass?/Just like he’d promised he’d do?”) Discordant strings circle like buzzards in the would-be inspirational chorus (“Kingfish/Friend of the working man”), implying the proud, vengeful man hiding behind the catchphrases; here, the album’s resonances with America’s current political imbroglio become impossible to ignore. “Kingfish” is the Donald’s “I’ll fix it” platform stretched across three minutes of music. Long promises to make Louisiana great again by fashioning its government in his own convex self-image: that of the self-made man who is not afraid to speak truth to power, or rather, exalt xenophobia to a moral imperative and deride the proverbial Northern fatcats he was no better than. Long was often drunk during his fiery live appearances, and the spasmodic rhythms of the song mirror that live-wire energy: “I’m a cracker, you are too/Don’t I take good care of you?”

Good Old Boys creates a rich sense of time and place, contrasting interior and exterior settings, and his characters’ public and private selves, cinematically. “Marie” is a wee-hours argument in the kitchen; “Kingfish” is cavernous, roaring, the sound of an unruly political rally; “A Wedding in Cherokee County,” on the other hand, is intimate parlor music. The opening riff sounds like a turn-of-the-century pop song, played off some weathered, forgotten sheaf of sheet music found in the piano bench. But then, an ornery new character begins to describe the pitfalls of living with his mute fiancée in the backwoods of Alabama; in the waning moments of the song, he bemoans, in lofty euphemisms, his erectile dysfunction (“But though I try with all my might/She will laugh at my Mighty Sword”). A classic American tale, really.

Despite, or more likely, because of moments like this, Good Old Boys would be Newman’s first remotely successful release as a solo artist, providing some nagging perspective on the charts just as loud-and-proud Southern rock acts like Lynyrd Skynyrd, Charlie Daniels, and the Marshall Tucker Band were rising in popularity. The album was heralded by positive reviews and promotional literature that spread word of its controversial material, as well as an ambitious tour, including some dates with 80-plus-piece orchestras. It didn’t hurt that it was overstuffed with great pop melodies; its listenability seduced listeners into examining and reexamining its troubling themes. It became Newman’s first to clear the top 40—or even crack the double digits—on the album charts.

It also marked the moment at which Newman’s career turned a lonely new corner. These were not, like songs on his previous albums, ones that could be easily plucked from their context and marketed to other singers. Bonnie Raitt’s pre-existing, less skeletal version of “Guilty” would be a rare exception. There had been plenty of unlikely Newman interpreters (in one of the most head-scratching examples of master-imitating-disciple, Ray Charles covered “Sail Away”), but the image of a contemporary pop vocalist—Tom Jones or Donny Osmond, perhaps—delivering “Papa was a midget/Mama was a whore/Granddad was a newsboy till he was 84” was tough to conjure.

From that point forward, Newman would begin to become an island unto himself. He charted a couple of widely misunderstood, if brilliant, hits, before putting the better part of his energy toward film scoring. In 1977, “Short People”—absurdist, rock-ified, nursery-rhyme catchy — would go to No. 2 for mostly the wrong reasons; the uproar surrounding the song (another rumination on prejudice) would result in record-burning parties and Newman’s face on dartboard targets, and prompt him to give the audience a raspberry when he performed it on “SNL.” “I Love L.A.” would be played at Clippers games and receive heavy circulation on early music television; Maroon 5 would cover it with pride and the Kardashians would rewrite it, all despite the defining line “Look at that mountain, look at those trees/Look at that bum over there, man, he’s down on his knees!” Both were regarded as novelty songs—as “You’ve Got a Friend in Me,” now Newman’s biggest claim to fame, ultimately would be—and so Newman became, to non-acolytes, a novelty act.

Perhaps, in another universe, he might have remained more at the center of the pop songwriting world, whether or not he was singing on the records (his voice had always been a hard one to sell). But his compulsions forced him elsewhere. “I like to know what makes people tick, what their mothers and father were,” Newman told journalist Paul Zollo. “Why they talk the way they do, using this sort of word or that sort of word. What it all means.” Randy Newman, in that search for meaning, became the king of the unreliable narrator in American popular music, and one of rock’s greatest lyricists full-stop. But part of earning the distinction involved venturing into dark corners, and inhabiting them for a while; in his Good Old Boys review for Rolling Stone, Stephen Davis would use this logic to diagnose Newman as deeply “troubled.” It was a dirty job, and certainly, no one had to do it. It was usually thankless and almost always alienating. But it also yielded one of the best singer-songwriter albums of the 1970s, which remains as shocking, pristine, and regrettably relevant as the day it was released.