Where does one begin a review of Randy Newman’s 1974 classic Southern concept album Good Old Boys? With the naked man and his dark secret? With the distraught bridesgroom of Cherokee County who cries out, “Why must everyone laugh at my mighty sword?” With Birmingham’s Dan, “the meanest dog in Alabam'”? With the mental patient and his fantastic story of his stripper sister, who runs off with a black man only to discover he’s a white millionaire? With the great 1927 Louisiana flood? With the legendary Louisiana politician “Kingfish” Huey Long? With the lovely and sad “Marie”? Or with the great “Guilty,” the confession of a man who “takes a whole lot of medicine for me to pretend that I’m somebody else”?
Too many folks nowadays tend to dismiss Newman as the fellow who writes all those soundtracks for rug rat flicks, or know him only as the guy who wrote the tempest-in-a-teapot toss-off “Short People,” but Newman could write soundtracks for midget porn and I would still respect him every bit as much–the guy’s a genius. Newman was and remains (check out 2008’s “A Few Words in Defense of Our Country”) probably the funniest, most sardonic–and yes, serious–pop songwriter ever to plop his ass in front of a piano. No one–with the possible exception of Bob Dylan on The Basement Tapes–has ever written songs that are as funny or as deep, and the amazing thing about Newman is that, unlike the Dylan of Big Pink, he possesses the ability to do both in the same song. And who else would think to write a hilarious ode to ELO (“The Story of a Rock and Roll Band” off 1979’s Born Again), or question his own sexual prowess in “Maybe I’m Doing It Wrong?”
A concept album about the Deep South might seem like an odd choice for a Jew who resides in Los Angeles, but Newman either lived or summered in New Orleans until he was 11–a childhood he recounts in “Dixie Flyer” off 1988’s Land of Dreams–and it left an indelible stamp upon him. You can hear it in his masterful command of southern dialect, and detect it in his understanding of Dixie resentment in title track “Rednecks” and other songs, and I think it’s these things that make Good Old Boys the best of Newman’s LPs, which is saying a lot given he’s the same very guy–perhaps the least unlikeliest looking rock star in history–who bequeathed us 1970’s brilliant 12 Songs and 1972’s Sail Away, not to mention the underrated 1977 record Little Criminals.
