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Goodman's fans - and there are many here in Canada, where he often performed - will enjoy the tales here.
"When I think of Steve, even now, I just get a big smile on my face."
That's Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (a mid-'60s classmate at Maine East High in Chicago), one of hundreds of voices collected in Steve Goodman: Facing the Music, a lengthy biography of the sparkling singer-songwriter who penned The City of New Orleans. Steve Goodman wasn't hugely famous in his lifetime, so why this book now? Biographer Clay Eals, a Seattle journalist, answers this way: "Fame," he writes, "is a misleading measure of greatness."
Facing the Music celebrates Goodman's greatness, not just as an entertainer, but as someone who lived his short life passionately, under the cloud of life-threatening illness. From Johnny Cash and Steve Martin to Chicago pals and far-flung folkies, the large chorus here assembled speaks out in agreement. Two decades after his death, Goodman remains unforgettable.
Steve Goodman's best-known song is still played. Its finely observed verses are wistful pictures of the "disappearing railroad." Its famous, upbeat chorus is one that most of the '70s generation knows by heart:
Good morning, America, how are ya?
Don't you know me? I'm your native son.
I'm the train they call The City of New Orleans
I'll be gone 500 miles when the day is done.
But the hit version of this "great train song" was recorded by Arlo Guthrie, in 1971. (Willie Nelson's country hit came in 1984.) So who was Steve Goodman? First, the biography maintains, he was an unforgettable performer. "If you did have the misfortune to follow him," singer Loudon Wainwright III says, "you were in deep shit." Goodman literally ran onstage. Once behind the mike, he was a dynamo: elfin, hyperactive,a big smile and blazing eyes framed by shaggy black hair and beard. Goodman - who was a star boy singer in temple, who practised so relentlessly he became a "monster on the guitar" and who brought tremendous wit, versatility and invention to the stage - could have an audience laughing helplessly or move them to tears. And if he played each show as if it were his last, he had good reason.
In 1969, Goodman was just 20, an indifferent college student and a singer-songwriter on the rise, when he was diagnosed with leukemia and began chemotherapy at the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Stunned, then resolute, Goodman committed what time he had left to his passion: making music and entertaining.
At first, he could only function when treatment symptoms eased, but Goodman went into remission and joined the top singer-songwriters angling for record deals in the early 1970s, his condition a well-kept secret.
He got his recording conract, improbably, thanks to Paul Anka, who spotted Goodman in a Chicago folk club. Anka also promoted Goodman's best friend, a Chicago mailman with a glowing lyrical gift: John Prine. Kris Kristofferson, another fan, gave over his New York showcase to the Chicago pair and helped launch them to the music press.
Goodman never failed to deliver onstage. That can still be seen on DVDs of Austin City Limits or heard on the definitive posthumous CD, No Big Surprise. Those who saw the remarkable Goodman live likely still remember his set. He'd open, strumming hard, with It's a Sin to Tell a Lie, then shift to his own wry commentaries, such as Men Who Love Women Who Love Men or Banana Republics (a hit for Jimmy Buffet). A cappella, he'd sing The Ballad of Penny Evans (in the voice of a Vietnam widow who bitterly refused government cheques: "They say the war is over, but I think it's just begun"). He'd dazzle with Leroy Van Dyke's tongue-twisting The Auctioneer, then move an audience to tears with Michael Smith's The Dutchmen, an impossibly beautiful song about a couple in old age grasping for memories as one slips into the void of Alzheimer's. For his closer, he'd grab a cowboy hat from the crowd and warble "the ultimate country song," the uproarious You Never Even Call Me By Name, written with John Prine. City of New Orleans was the cherry on the cake. Goodman was wit and charm, his smile bright, his eyes blazingly alive. The effect was magical.
Somehow, Goodman's onstage magic never translated onto records, and his records never really sold. He was a hit opening huge concerts for Linda Ronstadt, Johnny Cash and - in 200 gigs during the "wild and crazy" years - Steve Martin. Bette Midler and Billy Joel sought him out and sat in with him in clubs. But big-time success eluded him. And the singer-songwriter era gave way to disco and punk.
As Chicago as Wrigley Field (where hard-core baseball fan Goodman was once banned for writing the satirical A Dying Cub Fan's Last Request), Goodman moved to California in his last years, taking his wife and three daughters close to the ocean and his songs to movie producers. After nearly eight years remission, his cancer symptoms returned in 1982. ("Do you believe this fucking thing came back! I have so much to do," he railed to his friend, Phoebe Snow, as he lay in the same New York hospital room where Bob Marley died.) Mostly, Goodman carried on with dignity, courage and a smile, playing music until he couldn't any more. In September, 1984, he died in a Seattle hospital after an unsuccessful bone-marrow transplant.
He was 36.
Steve Goodman: Facing the Music charts his life carefully, and Goodman's charisma and good-time energy shine through in hundreds of anecdotes.
Eals, to his credit, also reveals the singer could be "fierce and demanding," was no stranger to the temptations of the road, and lived with some bitterness as his career levelled off. (Ironically, Goodman would win several Grammy Awards after his death.) The book also traces Goodman's musical evolution as he soaks up influences from Chuck Berry to Tom Lehrer. Frequently noted are Goodman's kindness and generosity: offering the stage or a couch to fellow musicians, selflessly promoting Buffet and Prine, and quietly raising more than $1-million for Sloan-Kettering cancer research.
Facing the Music is too detailed for the casual reader (think of Shakey, Jimmy McDonough's weighty biography of Neil Young). The backstage glimpses of the era's stars (John Denver, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan) fascinate. But there are arid stretches. Editing would have been welcome. (Do we need to know that Goodman "nearly got busted" smoking a joint in a men's room?) Still, Goodman's fans - and there are many in Canada, where he often performed - will enjoy the tales here. There is no commentary from Goodman's wife, Nancy, who is preparing her own book, or from his mother or two of his three daughters. The portrait here seems well enough drawn without them.
Steve Goodman had enormous talent and heart. He also stood a diminutive 5 foot 2. Some dubbed him "Chicago Shorty." But a fellow musician notes, "Onstage, he didn't work small...[he was] the best single entertainer I ever saw." Country star Emmylous Harris adds, "People who are fans of Steve Goodman will be fans till death." This book, which features scores of photographs, a full discography and a tribute CD, is for them.
Steve Goodman left thrilling memories and plenty of smiles. Among his nicknames (another was "The Little Prince"), there was one this gifted wordsmith liked better, which hints at both the medical condition he kept secret for so long and the sense of humour that rarely left him. He preferred the nickname "Cool Hand Leuk."
Peter Feniak is a Toronto writer and consultant, and a former board member of the Winnipeg Folk Festival where, among thousands, he cheered the amazing Steve Goodman.
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