Steve Goodman & Things That Touch The Soul
Steve Goodman in his favorite outerwear. (Courtesy of Rosanna Goodman)
Beloved Chicago singer-songwriter Steve Goodman did not miss much in his 36 years.
That’s how he wrote “City of New Orleans,” his 1971 ballad about a fading America. Goodman was taking the original City of New Orleans train from the Illinois Central station in Chicago with his wife Nancy to visit her family in Southern Illinois. She fell asleep next to him. Goodman looked out at the fast-moving farms from his window. Time was flying. Inside he saw restless riders, train conductors, and old men in the club car. He kept score. He was a Cubs fan.
Patrons at “The State of Sound (A World of Music From Illinois)” can see Goodman’s personal history in the Illinois Gallery of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum (ALPLM) in Springfield.
Rosanna Goodman is Goodman’s youngest daughter. She graciously loaned the ALPLM her father’s handwritten “City of New Orleans” lyric sheet as well as his beloved satin Cubs jacket. The items touch the soul.
“Certain items are more than sentimental,” Goodman told me during our lengthy early May taping of “The State of Sound Podcast” that will be released soon. “They represent a whole being. That jacket is iconically Steve Goodman. It’s tiny. It’s of that era.”
Rosanna wore it on April 22, 2008, when her grandmother Minnette threw out the first pitch at a Cubs game at Wrigley Field. “I was with my sister Jessie, who was wearing her Goodman Number One Cubs jersey they gave us,” Goodman recalled. “It’s special for me since Jessie and Minnette passed away not long after. It’s my last joyous memory of us together.” Jessie died in 2012 of a brain hemorrhage. She was 40. Minnette also died in 2012. She was 85. The Cubs beat the New York Mets 8-1 on that cool April afternoon. Goodman’s “Go Cubs Go” was played after the win, just as it is today.
Starting rotation (from L), Rosanna, Minnette and Jessie Goodman. (Courtesy of Rosanna Goodman)
Goodman is iconically Chicago.
Steve Goodman died from leukemia in 1984. He had three daughters. Rosanna was seven years old in 1984.
“I wasn’t quite sure if it was true,” said Goodman, an independent video producer in Los Angeles. We had to dig up the death certificates and yeah, it did happen. The thing about loss and the death of somebody who was in the public eye and honored by his colleagues is that spirit of friendship seems to never go away. It was extended to me and my family. We remained very close with Al Bunetta (the late manager for Goodman and John Prine) and John and other musicians who worked with my dad. I grew up with stories about how talented my dad was and the impact he had on people’s lives in general.
“There’s nothing I love more than to honor that legacy by letting people know, who may never heard of him, what his contribution was. And try to keep it going forward. It is a legacy I carry a torch for and I’m now making it a mission to reunite the world with my dad’s music.”
Rosanna Goodman
Did it take time for her to get in that place?
“It absolutely did,” she answered. “When I was growing up as a kid I liked my dad’s silly songs–’Elvis Imitators’ and ’Talk Backwards’,’ things like that. He had such a catalog. In 2006 I decided with some friends to put together a tribute album because I wanted a younger group of musicians to reinterpret these songs.”
“My Old Man (A Tribute To Steve Goodman)” was released in 2006 on Steve Goodman’s Red Pajamas record label. Luther Wright and the Wrongs cover the instrumental “Jessie’s Jig” and Rosanna offers a resplendent version of “My Old Man,” the ballad her father wrote for his father.
“To be honest after the loss of Al Bunetta and more recently John Prine, there are those individual legacies,” Goodman explained. “But the legacies together of what they had was pretty magical. I’d like to honor that for all the widows: Dawn Bunetta, my Mom Nancy Tenney and Fiona Prine. They were the heart and souls behind the men and the music.”
So, two projects are rolling out:
*Omnivore Recordings just released “It Sure Looked Good on Paper: The Steve Goodman Demos.” The 20 previously unissued tracks (also available on double vinyl) include a full band demo of “City of New Orleans,” Ed Holstein’s “Jazzman,” a sterling cover of “The Auctioneer, written by Leroy Van Dyke, Goodman’s “The Ballad of Paul Powell” (about the late Illinois Secretary of State) and “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid,” written for the Steve Martin movie. Goodman took on the daunting task of opening for Martin in 1978. The album’s title track is also a knee-slapper with Goodman’s wit in good form.
“Omnivore also released all of the Red Pajamas albums (“Artistic Hair,” “Affordable Art,” “Santa Ana Winds”) from my dad’s indy label we started at our kitchen table,” she said. “Red Pajamas was the first indy label to get major distribution. Nobody was doing it back then. Prine started Oh Boy after seeing the success my dad was having so he decided to do it with Al (Bunetta) too.”
* And work has begun on a screenplay with the working title “Somebody Else’s Troubles,” written by Robert Morgan Fisher. The screenplay is based on Clay Eals’ comprehensive 778-page biography “Steve Goodman: Facing the Music” as well as notes from Rosanna, Sarah, and Peter Bunetta, the brother of Al Bunetta.
Sarah (L), Jessie (top) and Rosanna Goodman. (Courtesy of Rosanna Goodman)
“I don’t know how they’re going to cast people,” she said. “I think actors would jump at the chance to play a young Steve Martin, Jimmy Buffett, John Prine, Hillary Clinton, who my dad went to high school with (Maine East in Park Ridge.) It’s a beautiful script.
“It’s about these relationships. Imagine a friendship where one person dies….” Goodman stopped for a moment and continued, “John Prine was dedicating a song (“Souvenirs”) to my dad for 30 years. Almost every show. That type of lasting friendship and spirit is something to be celebrated. It takes years to make a movie, but Minnette pushing it will get this movie made in the next couple of years”
Prine, Earl of Old Town owner Earl Pionke, the Quiet Knight owner Richard Harding, Ed, Fred, and Alan Holstein, and many others mirrored the family spirit that Steve Goodman believed in.
“When my Dad was diagnosed at 21 with leukemia and with all the treatments, they said he couldn’t have children,” Goodman explained. “My mom and he wanted a child so badly that Earl Pionke got them a lawyer and they adopted my oldest sister Jessie. It was two years after that that Sarah was conceived. He got to have all the things he thought he never could. And family was one of them. He was on the road a lot, but we would skip school and he would take us to movies or ball games. On the road, he wrote children’s stories on postcards for my mom to read to us at bedtime. I hope I find them. I know they’re in a box somewhere. His major loves were baseball, family, and music. And when he could do them all at the same time, that was great. But when it was time to be with us he was ever-present.
“There was a community of musicians in the Chicago scene. They sang each other’s songs, they recorded them, they played together. Those kinds of relationships in music seem to have gotten lost. There may be a resurgence now, but Steve Goodman and John Prine, and many others from that era were champions of songwriter musicianship and friendship that was long-lasting. Earl helped my parents when they needed to get their first apartment.
“He believed in the community he was building.”
Singer-songwriter/Cubs fan Jimmy Buffett met Goodman at the Earl of Old Town in the early 1970s when he was opening for Neil Sedaka, Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks and others a few blocks west at the Quiet Knight. Buffett recorded Goodman’s ballads “Banana Republics,” “This Hotel Room,” “Frank and Lola” and “Elvis Imitators,” written by Goodman and Michael Smith.
In 2010 I took Minnette Goodman and Richard Harding and Richard’s daughter Catherine to see their friend Buffett in concert at Toyota Park in Bridgeview. Minnette was 83 years old and stood 4’9” and weighed 90 pounds. She held her own in the crowd of Parrotheads. She teared up when “City of New Orleans” was played as the walk-in song. Minnette never missed a Buffett concert in Chicago. Buffett spent more than a half-hour engaging Goodman and Harding backstage before the show. He remembered his younger community. “I think I have a picture of her from that night pointing her finger in Jimmy’s chest,” Goodman said with a laugh.
Rosanna Goodman, 3, dances on her father’s stage, site unknown (Courtesy of Rosanna Goodman)
The Goodman family tree continues to grow. Steve’s grandson Ben, 8, makes up his songs and is learning guitar. His grandfather was born Steven Benjamin Goodman. Louise, 7, is learning about Elvis Presley.
“She has the most hilarious costume and she calls herself ‘Little Elvis’,” said Goodman, who bonded with her sister Sarah’s children during the pandemic. “She’s an Elvis Imitator and she just can’t stop.
“Ben has the music bug. He has a ‘Wellness Wednesday’ at school and he wrote a suggestion for everybody to sing a song that makes them feel happy. And, if you don’t know one, make one up. The other day he asked Alexa to play him Steve Goodman’s “Banana Republics.’ They love listening to their grandpa.”
In the early 2000s, Goodman was the lead singer in Cookies Downtown, an all-female punk band from Brooklyn, N.Y. “That was a lot of fun,” she said. “I’ve worked for record labels, production companies, and studios, but I like being behind the scenes. I love to sing but it is something that I enjoy so much I was not interested in being criticized for it.”
I asked if Goodman what she learned from her father about the art of storytelling. “My Dad had this insane jukebox memory,” she said. “He could hear a song once and play it back. I know the lyrics of hundreds of songs. A lot of people close to my dad have said I have a similar spirit in telling a story. If that’s true or not, just that complement alone gives me that familiar connection so I can keep going. Telling a story and making art is a valuable thing in our society in all of our communities. We need to tell the stories of others even to imagine a better future.”
This was like sitting down with an old friend. Thank you.
Thank you, my friend!
Thank you, Dave. Enjoyed your piece immensely. Love Steve but fascinated to hear Rosanna’s story as well.
Thank you for reading and writing, Mark
Thank you so much! Goodman, Prine and Buffet, have been apart of my record collection, mixed tape and now playlist since the late 70’s. The “Three Wise Men”. For me, it has always been a quiet privilege to know them.
Thank you for checking in, Barbara!
This is a beautiful supplement to Clay’s book. I remember hearing that Minette told people not to grant him interviews, then had the chutzpah to ask for complimentary copies after the book came out. My friend Ethel Polk and I heard your eulogy for Minette at Space in Evanston: if Ethel hadn’t died from Covid at the end of 2020, she would have enjoyed this piece as much as we did this piece. Thanks for both.
I was just down in Nashville for the annual You Got Gold “John Prine-FEST” which I advise all of you to attend one year. Bonnie Koloc sang a song at one of the concerts. Much of the proceeds go to charity. The vintage juke box Steve gave to John as a gift of sorts {long story dealing with the writing of “You Never Even Call Me By My Name”) is in the Country Hall of Fame down there so you can also make a stop there to see that. I have been a fan of both Steve and John since around 1972, and remain so. Thanks for writing this article, it was very moving. Tom McConnell
Thanks for checking in Tom! Will try to get there next year.