Saturday Matinee - Steve Goodman

Steve Goodman was the single best performer I ever saw. You may never have heard of him - his biggest claim to fame was that he wrote "The City of New Orleans" with which Arlo Guthrie had a big hit.

I saw him in concert several times. He'd always open with an old tune like "When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob Bob Bobbin' Along". And then he'd do his own songs, which could alternatively have you laughing hysterically - or crying hysterically.

Goodman was diagnosed in childhood with leukemia and wasn't expected to survive. But he did, until a relapse took his life in 1984. As one of his songs said:

From the cradle to the crypt,
it's a might short trip,
So you'd better get it while you can

And he did get it while he could. He wrote dozens of songs, recorded eight or ten albums, sang to thousands of people, and may accidentally have have been responsible for re-electing Richard Nixon.

He toured Florida in 1972 on Edmund Muskie's whistle-stop campaign train, singing songs to warm up the crowd. As his wife told the story, after Steve and some other performers finished and Muskie began speaking:

The entertainers retired to the air-conditioned lounge section. Steve suddenly felt stomach cramps -- the after-effects of a lingering flu and an ill-advised Mexican dinner the night before -- and he dashed for the toilet. There hung the traditional sign, which he himself had recently immortalized in song: "Passengers will please refrain from flushing toilet while the train is in the station.". Steve arose from the seat, a lighter and happier man. He reached for the cord. He hesitated. What was the worst that could happen? Presumably his loathsome and semi-radioactive deposit would simply fall below and be left (anonymously) between the tracks when the train pulled out. He yanked the cord and meekly walked back into the lounge.

He had no way of knowing that on this particular state-of-the-art passenger car, the waste matter was sucked out of the toilet and straight back through vacuum tubes along the sides to be sprayed in a fine mist from the rear of the train. A few seconds later, Muskie's campaign manager burst into the car howling, "People are being covered in sh*t out there!"

Steve replied, "Hey man, he's your candidate."

And so, and John Prine likes to point out, McGovern got the nomination and Nixon was re-elected.

Speaking of John Prine, here's a video of Goodman at his impish best singing a country & western song that he and John Prine wrote together.



He called himself "Cool-hand Leuk" in honor of the leukemia that he held at abeyance so long. And he could laugh at it enough to compose "A Dying Cub Fan's Last Request":


Finally, here's a song he didn't write, but performed every time I saw him. "The Dutchman" is performed with the legendary bluegrass mandolin player, Jethro Burns.