Randy Newman vs the South
A Review of Good Old Boys

2,329 words

Edgy satires often achieve greatness proportional to the power of the thing they satirize. For example, a novel satirizing Communist Russia in the 1920s, such as Mikhail Bulgakov’s Heart of a Dog, would have lost much of its edge had it been written in, say, 1987, during the final years of Communism. But since it was written in 1925, when Communism was quite vigorous, Bulgakov got cancelled, and the book had to wait until 1987 to see the light of day. It’s easy to pick on something after it’s been enervated by history, but to satirize something while it’s historically ascendant and therefore dangerous, that is another matter.

It always rankles me when rock critics praise singer-songwriter Randy Newman as satirist. This is not to say Newman has no great songs; of course, he does. His collection of piano-centric Tin Pan Alley ballads, pop standards, ragtime parlor pieces, and shuffly-blues numbers contains some classics. Check out Dusty Springfield’s interpretation of Newman’s “I Don’t Want to Hear it Anymore” for a fantastic example. 1980s hits such as “I Love LA” and “It’s Money that Matters” demonstrate he can rock when he wants to—and to mass appeal. And I’m not even getting into his film score work. Instead, I wish to focus on Newman the lyricist—because so often in his songs there is text and there is subtext—and the latter is almost never as nice as the former.

At best, Newman’s satire is clever and amusing. His 1978 hit “Short People” ­comes to mind. The song’s narrator goes on and on rather humorously about how he hates short people, but is rather hidebound and nasty himself. The listener quickly realizes Newman is lampooning bigotry in general, not those poor souls they kept off of roller coasters when they were kids. Back in the day, however, not everybody got the joke, and those who didn’t often let him know all about it.

But this is fairly mild as far as satire goes. When looking at his body of work, however, Newman the satirist comes across more as a snide bully than as an incisive iconoclast because he tends to choose safe targets. His 1974 album Good Old Boys is great example of this. Here, he mercilessly skewers the people of the American South just over a century after they lost a war for their independence. They are a defeated people, so why not kick them when they’re down? It’s not like they are going to kick back.

It must be noted however that Good Old Boys begins with what might be Randy Newman’s most brilliant song, “Rednecks.” In all of the rock-era canon, very few songs take on race as directly or as profoundly as this vindictive singalong. While “Black Messiah” by the Kinks and “Safe European Home” by the Clash take race realism for granted while espousing an overtly white perspective, “Rednecks” assumes a white Southern perspective in the face of northern condescension and ridicule. He points out Northern hypocrisy when labeling the South as racist when the North is no better—all while living down to Southern stereotypes and throwing the word “nigger” around.

The song begins with segregationist Georgia governor Lester Maddox being laughed at on a television program by a “smart ass New York Jew.” (Actually, it was the Dick Cavett Show where Maddox eventually stormed off the stage). Offended, the song’s narrator retaliates with a song which defends both Maddox and the South. It’s chorus:

We’re rednecks, we’re rednecks.
We don’t know our ass from a hole in the ground.
We’re rednecks, we’re rednecks.
And we’re keepin’ the nigger down.

And then, after deprecating white Southerners for most of the song, Newman takes us to the crux of his satire. Really, there is nothing like it.

Now, your Northern nigger’s a Negro.
See, he’s got his dignity.
But down south here we’re too ignorant to realize
That North has set the nigger free.
Yeah, he’s free to be put in a cage in New York City.
He’s free to be put in a cage in the South Side of Chicago (and on the West side).
He’s free to be put in a cage in Roxbury in Boston.
He’s free to be put in a cage in Hough in Cleveland.
He’s free to be put in a cage in Filmore in San Francisco.
They’re gatherin’ up from miles around
And they’re keepin’ the nigger down.

Yet for all this, “Rednecks” still misses the mark, making its shortcomings every bit as interesting as the song itself. First, Newman is satirizing ethnocentric whites everywhere, not just in the South—and such people would never be in a position to Bulgakov Randy Newman, even back in 1974. As usual, Newman had chosen a safe target. Secondly, Newman’s narrator basically claims that the North is every bit as bad as the South when it comes to whites being racist. Hardly a vindication or a rallying cry for regional identity, even though on a superficial level that is exactly what “Rednecks” appears to be. Yes, this does add a layer of sophistication to the song, but also a level of stupidity since it is perfectly unnatural for anyone to loudly proclaim their own ignorance and racism at the same time. The world Randy Newman is satirizing here is fantasy land.

Most importantly, Newman just gets it wrong about the South and race. Under segregation, Southern whites were not so much keeping blacks down as keeping them away. Compared to whites, blacks are violent, promiscuous, disproportionately criminal (especially with regards to theft, murder, and rape), and are easily misled in the political sphere. Of course, the post-Reconstruction whites would want to keep them separate from their mainstream society. It is the sane thing to do when resources are scarce and people have ties to the land where their ancestors were buried.

Still, “Rednecks” deserves credit for calling out liberal hypocrisy and for violating taboos. Newman utters the word “nigger” eight times, and uses it appropriately in the historical American context (as opposed to Patti Smith, who doesn’t). The song is truly unique and audacious and deserves to be included in any discussion about race in twentieth-century pop music. It also helps that the arrangement is impeccable with half of the Eagles singing backup. If Newman had left it at that, he would have gotten an A-.

But he didn’t leave it at that. After coming up with “Rednecks,” he decided to make a concept album centering mostly around this bigoted hick of a narrator, whom he named Johnny Cutler in his demo tapes. This album ended up being Good Old Boys, and in it, Newman was neither kind nor fair to the South.

“Birmingham,” a schmaltzy little blues ditty about the “greatest city in Alabam’,” is notable for its banality. Supported by piano, strings, a steel guitar, and whispering horns, Cutler describes his mundane family life and his job at the steel mill. It’s the kind of song the city’s mayor would have commissioned in 1950 to promote tourism—until the last verse. Indeed, we all know that Randy Newman is incapable of writing anything this ordinary; there’s got to be a twist somewhere. Sure enough, Cutler introduces us to his dog Dan, “the meanest dog in Alabam’.” He ends the song by saying, “Get ‘em, Dan.”

Of course, this means our hero liked to sic his dog on those poor, innocent, African-American protesters who caused so much trouble across the Southland during the 1960s. If anything, this song is too subtle. People born in the twenty-first century would just as soon assume the man was siccing his dog on a squirrel. Too much subtext is forced upon the listener by those three words, and as a result the song fails. One is prevented from enjoying it for nostalgic reasons, and one cannot enjoy it as satire without booking up on history. That said, Newman leaves his audience with the impression that this Johnny Cutler character is both dreary and cruel.

And it gets worse. In “Marie,” a lush, sentimental ballad, Newman reaches heights of lyricism only to smash it all on the rocks. After drunkenly expressing his undying love for his wife (“You’re a flower, you’re a river, you’re a rainbow”) Cutler admits that as a husband, he is completely worthless.

Sometimes I’m crazy
But I guess you know
And I’m weak and I’m lazy
And I’ve hurt you so
And I don’t listen to a word you say
When you’re in trouble I just turn away

“Guilty” is no better. It’s a stripped down piano-and-organ piece which expands upon Cutler’s alcoholism and betrayal, only now we know he’s also a cokehead who suffers from a psychiatric condition. In “Back on my Feet Again” an institutionalized Cutler lies to his psychiatrist (“I’m a college man and I’m very wealthy”) and then pleads with him to let him out. In “A Wedding in Cherokee County” we find out that Cutler is impotent as well. And his wife—this Marie, I presume—is quite the piece of work:

Her papa was a midget
Her mama was a whore
Her granddad was a newsboy ‘til he was eighty-four
What a slimey old bastard he was
Man, don’t you think I know she hates me
Man, don’t you think I know that she’s no good
If she knew how she’d be unfaithful to me
I think she’d kill me if she could
Maybe she’s crazy I don’t know
But maybe that’s why I love her so.

I don’t believe he loves her and I don’t believe this circus soap opera is real; then again, I don’t believe most of Good Old Boys. I don’t believe Randy Newman wished to do anything other than viciously slander the South with his Johnny Cutler saga. Let’s see. According to all the totally not anti-white satire found in Good Old Boys, white Southerners who resisted racial segregation in the 1960s were stupid, ignorant, lazy, alcoholic, cruel, drug-addicted, dishonest, insane, and unable to achieve an erection. 1974 was still such an innocent time, otherwise Newman would have included songs about Johnny Cutler committing acts of rape, wife battery, and pedophilia. Why not? If you’re going engage in calumny, why not go whole hog? In “Rollin’,” the album’s final song, Mr. Cutler sits about in an alcoholic haze and regrets nothing. So redemption is off the table for this character as well—not that any of us could have seen that coming.

I’m beginning to wonder, what did the South ever do to Randy Newman. This is not satire. This is a one-sided, sardonic beat down of an entire people. Critic Winston Cook-Wilson states that Good Old Boys is “nothing less than a tour of Southern bigotry and pride in the 20th century.” Funny, because the only bigotry I’m seeing is coming from Newman himself.

Yes, there are a couple gems on this record. “Louisiana 1927” is a gorgeous, string-infused send up, reminiscent of Newman’s “Sail Away” but without all the oh-so-clever irony. Really, this song is so beautiful and plaintive in all its film score glory that it makes me wish Newman would just write straightforward songs and stay away from all the satirical stuff—or at least the racial satire (and yes, I am aware of his execrable “I’m Dreaming” from 2012) . The song recalls the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, which affected hundreds of thousands and caused around 500 people to lose their lives.

Newman doesn’t dwell on their inadequacies, nor does he invite us to scoff at their private hypocrisies. They’re human beings, despite being from the segregated South, and they are allowed to keep their dignity—especially given how the Coolidge Administration may not have handled the catastrophe as well as it could have. And these are white people we’re talking about. We know this because Newman quotes Calvin Coolidge himself calling the victims crackers, albeit condescendingly and without malice.

The C word reappears in the protean rag “Kingfish,” which is, in its entirety, a campaign speech set to music. As with “Birmingham,” the listener has to understand a little history before being able to place this song into its proper context. Kingfish was the nickname of populist Louisiana politician Huey Long, who supposedly capitalized on the class tensions ignited by the 1927 flood to propel his political career. Long became governor shortly after the flood, was elected to the US Senate in 1932, and was assassinated three years later. The song is pretty chilling, especially as it alternates from horror-movie strings to honking brass over Newman’s incessant piano as Long makes his dubious case to the working men of Louisiana:

Everybody gather ‘round
Loosen up your suspenders
Hunker down to the ground
I’m a cracker
And you are too
But don’t I take good care of you
Who built the highway down to Baton Rouge?
Who put up the hospital and built your schools?
Who looks after shit-kickers like you?
The Kingfish do.

These two songs are so good, they don’t belong on Good Old Boys. They exist in a different era, when the white man was still ascendant. Perhaps this is why Newman chose not satirize them? They were too vigorous and proud, even in their poverty and provincialism. You have to respect people like that. Back in 1927 they were still on the winning team. And as we all know, everybody loves a winner.

Unlike poor old Johnny Cutler, whom history as much as Randy Newman himself has made out to be a loser. That people like him were as human as everybody else means nothing to clever songwriters like Newman. That racial segregation may have had some justice behind it also means nothing. During the 1950s and 60s, the Johnny Cutlers of the world were fighting against the inexorable degeneracy of modernity. They were also correct about race. We’re learning this now. But this means nothing. And that’s because according to Randy Newman, people like Johnny Cutler deserve nothing . . . except contempt.