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Clay Eals first saw Steve Goodman in McArthur Court. It was 1977 and Goodman was opening for Randy Newman, who had a hit with "Short People." Goodman, Eals jokes, was "the ultimate short person," a ball of fire little more than 5 feet tall who danced on the soles of his green tennis shoes and brought the crowd to its feet with his energy and good cheer.
"He got me," Eals says. "I was hooked."
Eals saw Goodman perform once more, a solo show at the WOW Hall in Eugene, but like so many who saw him, Eals never forgot him. Goodman was a charismatic performer who opened more than 200 shows for Steve Martin and was able to win hostile crowds over with a smile and a song.
The best Goodman was live Goodman," Eals says. "His records don't do him justice. So many people told me he was the best performer they've ever seen."
Goodman (1948-84) is best known as the composer of "City of New Orleans," a song made famous by Arlo Guthrie. When Bob Dylan met Goodman, he said he liked the song, particularly the line about "disappearing railroad blues." Goodman, in a typical response, told Dylan that "gypsy girl, the hands of Harlem cannot hold you to its heart" (from Dylan's "Spanish Harlem Incident") wasn't a bad line, either.
The Dylan anecdote is one of thousands Eals collected in "Steve Goodman: Facing the Music" (ECW Press, $29.95 paperback, 778 pages). Eals, a Seattle writer who was the Eugene correspondent for The Oregonian from 1973-81, spent more than 10 years working on the book and conducted more than 1,000 interviews, including Guthrie, Martin, Newman, Jimmy Buffett, John Prine, Kris Kristofferson, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Emmylou Harris and Goodman's high school classmate and friend Hillary Clinton.
Clinton said Goodman "used his talents to really make people happy, make them laugh. You know, you were always glad to see Steve comin' down the hall." For others, the happy memories were mixed with sadness.
"Most of the celebrities were overjoyed to talk about Steve," Eals said. "It was like a repressed memory for them. Some of them even cried."
The tears were because Goodman was diagnosed with leukemia in 1969 and died when he was 36. He lived with a death sentence and tried to live his life to the fullest, writing songs that were serious or whimsical or expressive of his deep love for the Chicago Cubs. His song "Go, Cubs, Go" is played at Wrigley Field, where Goodman's friends scattered some of his ashes.
Eals is on a national tour, talking about Goodman in some of the same clubs where Goodman played. His previous book is "Every Time a Bell Rings," a biography of Carolyn Grimes, who played Zuzu in "It's a Wonderful Life," and he's planning a biography of Fred Hutchinson, the baseball player and manager whose name is on a cancer research center in Seattle.
Ever the journalist, Eals turns the tables and asks about seeing Goodman live. Never, but that album with "The Dutchman" on it is pretty great.
"That's 'Somebody Else's Troubles,' " Eals says. " 'The Dutchman' is just a beautiful song. I think it's his best performance on record."
This train's got the disappearing railroad blues.
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