David Kastin - Song Of The South: Randy Newman’s “Good Old Boys”
Easily the best thing I’ve read so far about Newman. Apart from being a fascinating history of how the album came about, and providing a wealth of historical, political an cultural context (often a very complex fabric) for its themes and songs — the paragraphs on “Rednecks” and “Louisiana 1927” are especially strong —, the author also makes knowledgeable musical observations and doesn’t overlook to underline and appreciate the importance of the orchestrations and the production. Along the way, Kastin discusses much of Newman’s other work and spends some time talking about writers and composers who had an influence on Newman’s output: William Faulkner, Charles Ives, Scott Joplin, Stephen Foster, Flannery O’Connor, Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Fats Domino, …
Not just the best book about Newman — the worst, in my opinion, is Kevin Couriers’s irritating, insufferably arrogant and, from a musical perspective, downright idiotic “Randy Newman: The American Dream” (as bad as his book on Zappa: “The Subversive World of Frank Zappa”) — but one of the best books on a musician/songwriter I’ve ever read, full stop.
I don’t know if physical copies of the book can still be purchased; I bought it ($2.99) from the Kindle store and read it on the iPad.
Almost as good (and also available in the Kindle store - $16.99), but in more conventional ‘biography’-type of way, is “A Few Words In Defense Of Our Country” by Robert Hilburn, a much more lengthy take on the life and work of Randy Newman, which, unlike Kastin’s “Song Of The South”, goes into much greater detail about Newman’s personal and family life, work methods, creative struggles, failures and victories.
As one Amazon commentator says: “Excellent bio, occasional gushing forgiven”.
And here are a few songs from "Good Old Boys":
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