"STEVE GOODMAN KEPT SINGING TO THE VERY END"

By Jeff McLaughlin
The Boston Globe
Monday, September 24, 1984 (four days after Steve’s death)

"We all do whatever we do - including just walking down the street - with the idea that living is a gift," said Steve Goodman in a Globe interview last year. "And what happens when the gift is gone is none of my business." 

The gift is gone for him now - but the gifts he gave the world will most certainly live on.   Goodman, one of the most talented and beloved songwriters of his generation, died last Thursday in a Seattle hospital. He was just 36; the disease was diagnosed in 1969, a few months before he turned 21, a year before he wrote his most famous song, "The City of New Orleans," three years before Arlo Guthrie made his hit recording and turned the song into an American classic, and 13 years before most of his fans learned he had lived with chemotherapy all his adult life.

Goodman died one day before his latest album, "Santa Ana Winds," was shipped to record stores. He had been dropped by both Buddah and Elektra/Asylum records after making seven albums because he never developed pop-star sales totals, but he wasn't bitter. He just formed his own company, Red Pajama Records, and the first album for his label showed him standing, grinning, nearly bald, in front of a San Francisco barbershop called Artistic Hair. Leukemia treatments had taken his hair but not his self-deprecating humor or his exquisite sense of the absurd. During his last visit to Boston in 1983, his audience, obviously disturbed by seeing his gaunt face and his bald head, laughed uproariously when he introduced himself as the President of Red Pajama Records: "I am not only the president," he grinned, "but I am also a client." The take-off to the Hair Club for Men commercials got the response Goodman wanted. For the rest of the concert, his audience was at ease.

“I think he just got up every morning and thumbed his nose at death,” said Rae Anne Donlin, co-proprietor with her husband, Bob, of Passim, the legendary Cambridge folk music club that he seen such artists as Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and Harry Chapin perform at the intimate coffee house. “He just loved to play for people. Every time he got on stage, there was a glint in his eye, as if he were saying to the audience, ‘I’m gonna get you,’ and he always did. The love of music just poured out of him.” 

The Donlins’ first booked Goodman in February 1972 and he played for them for several years – even after his growing popularity led to much more lucrative offers from venues with ten times Passim’s capacity. “He remembered us; he wanted to help us in our struggles,” Rae Anne Donlin commented. Goodman would bunk at the Donlins’ house in those early days of his career when he couldn’t afford so much as a cheap motel. “Even those of us who knew he had a serious health problem were somewhat in the dark,” she whispered. “He never wanted anyone to be sentimental about him – the only clue was, he’d say that all he wanted out of his career was enough money to take care of his family. His family always came first.” 

Goodman succeeded, even without ever having a hit record of his own. His wife, Nancy, and three young daughters will be provided for by the royalties from “The City of New Orleans,” and such classics as “My Old Man,” “The Twentieth Century’s Almost Over,” “Men Who Love Women Who Love Men,” “Would You Like to Learn to Dance, "You Never Even Call Be By My Name” (written with John Prine, and a David Allan Coe hit), “Banana Republics” (made famous by Jimmy Buffett), and his recent gem about nuclear arms, “Watching Joey Glow,” which is on its way to becoming a staple at disarmament rallies. In addition to Buffett, Prine, and Coe, his songs have been recorded by Judy Collins, Johnny Cash, Joan Baez, John Denver, and Kenny Rogers. This year, Willie Nelson made “The City of New Orleans” the title cut of his latest album and it’s now high on the Billboard charts.

Commenting from his home in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Arlo Guthrie reflected on his old friend. “When I heard that Steve had died, I had to decide of I was going to be sad or remain adamant about celebrating his life as a more compelling tribute. It wasn’t a hard choice – if Steve wanted anything, he wanted his joyous spirit to be kept alive in us all.” 

Guthrie and Goodman had planned a national tour this fall. They had played together – but had never toured before. “He came out here to help me with a benefit concert in Worthington, in Berkshire County, in ’75 or ’76.” Guthrie said. “We raised lots of money for a clinic that day, but what I remember most is how he won over 15,000 people with his warmth of his personality and the joyousness of his writing.” 

Goodman knew his latest hospitalization might be his last. “He just called me up a few weeks ago, just before he went into the hospital,” Guthrie said. “We kidded back and forth over the years because it’s made out that I live under the shadow of death too.” Guthrie may have inherited from his father, Woody Guthrie, the fatal disorder called Huntington’s Chorea. “We each believed in just keeping on keeping on. But this one had him scared. ‘I might not get out this time, Arlo,’ he said, ‘and I’d like to say goodbye while I can. Keep on singing.’” 

As a live performer, Goodman was a brilliant, charismatic musician. He came out of the club scene – Kris Kristofferson “discovered” him in the Quiet Knight in Goodman’s native Chicago, and Goodman characteristically insisted that Kristofferson go with him down the street to hear another unknown, “better than me,” and thus was John Prine discovered. Goodman bought Guthrie an after-hours beer in Chicago’s Poor Richard’s club one evening in 1970 so he could play “The City of New Orleans” for him for the first time.

He was the finest kind of club performer – a brilliant ad-libber who could dissolve the barrier between stage and audience with a line; a mature musician who retained a child’s wonder at music – and he seemingly could turn any hall into an intimate club. His last Boston-area performances were at Symphony Hall as part of Tom Rush’s annual holiday concerts during Christmas week when he had a delightful time teaching a somewhat startled Jennifer Warnes how to boogie on stage without losing dignity, and at the Sanders Theater in Cambridge, opening for David Bromberg last February. Kari Estrin, who produced that sold-out show, already legendary, recalled, “He just wouldn’t let anyone feel bad about him, even though the chemotherapy had taken his hair and that once-plump face was now hollow. He could bring a smile to anyone’s face, and that’s what he loved more than anything.”

WCAS in Cambridge played Goodman’s seven albums in their entirety on Friday – a stunning tribute that no artist since John Lennon’s untimely death had been afforded on the station. There were so many requests that the local folk station repeated their prolonged tribute over the weekend. “Steve loved Boston – the Old World feeling, the dynamic history, the college students who filled the club doors,” stated Rae Anne Donlin. “Steve realized that Boston has three passions which he shared – music, politics, and baseball.” In tribute to Goodman, the lights in the various clubs he had played in over the years in the Boston area were dimmed in tribute Friday night for two minutes.

Goodman may have loved one thing more than music: baseball, and particularly, the forlorn Chicago Cubs. After the Sanders concert, he was delighted to talk about the Cubs’ chances for the ’84 season (“Forty years of saying ‘This is it,” but ‘this is it!”), and about the Cubs beautiful Wrigley Field. Discovering an arts’ writer was an avid Red Sox fan, he gushed, “Baseball is only really baseball when it’s played in a great park – and Fenway and Wrigley are the two greatest. And of course,” he commented, “the Cubbies and the Sox seem to share a common heritage now, don’t they!” One of his most requested songs was “A Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request,” and, in a small but deeply poignant irony, Goodman died before his Cubs could win what would be their first pennant in 39 years.

But in the words of that song, Steve Goodman remained cheery: “I’ve got season’s tickets to watch the Angels now.”

Rest in peace, Steve.