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GOOD OLD BOYS
(Rhino)
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Does anyone need three versions of "Rednecks," including the newly recorded one from this year’s Randy Newman Songbook, Vol. 1 (Nonesuch)? Maybe not. But the album it came from — Good Old Boys — is one of those essential recordings. The opening salvo of the 1974 disc, which has been given the deluxe two-CD reissue treatment by Rhino, is still one of popular music’s most complex and pointed songs about race relations, and what follows casts a bleak ("Louisiana 1927") but empathetic ("Marie") gaze on Southern attitudes and Northern hypocrisy alike, couched in music closer to Stephen Foster than to rock and roll. The demo version of "Johnny Cutler’s Birthday" on disc two of this set is a fascinating rough draft for the song as it was eventually released. In one long take, Newman sits alone at the piano, describing the intended narrative arc and giving rough but potent readings of songs that made the cut and a few that didn’t — notably, the gorgeously bitter "Shining," which is sung from the point of view of the "Redneck" narrator’s wife. Expanded reissues of 1972’s Sail Away and 1995’s guest-star-heavy Faust are also on the shelves. But this is the one you’ll come back to, despite the singer’s typically acerbic liner notes: "They should have waited until I was dead, like they did with Hendrix."
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