New Year's with Steve: In tribute to a great heart
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It's hard to believe Steve Goodman has been gone for 25 years. Even though we knew he had leukemia, and sang for 16 years with it, he fought it with courage and good cheer. You counted yourself blessed to find a chair when he presided at the Earl of Old Town every New Year's Eve.
Steve was the composer of great songs funny and sad, and a guitarist of amazing skill. He didn't claim to have a great voice, but he had the right voice for Steve Goodman and his loving audiences. He was above all a friendly soul with a big grin, and he would sing anything on New Year's Eve if it made him laugh.
"I miss my old man tonight," he sang in one of his great songs. I miss Steve Goodman tonight.
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Steve's most famous song, played to our astronauts on the Moon, was "The City of New Orleans." He was in fine form here, with his dear friend Jethro Burns. A later performance is offered lower down on this page.
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Pete Seeger, Harry Chapin and Steve
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Steve sings "The Twentieth Century is Almost Over"
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Steve and Jethro Burns
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Steve performs "Tico Tico" with Jethro. When Homer and Jethro performed before the Fourth of July fireworks at Memorial Stadium in Urbana - Champaign in the 1950s, I ran up 15 flights of stairs to get their autograph.
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Steve performs "A Dying Cubs Fan's Last Request" from a rooftop overlooking Wrigley Field.
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Janis Ian and Steve
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Steve does his tongue-twister "Talk Backwards"
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Steve and John Prine sing Steve's song "Souvenirs"
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John Prine sings Steve's "My Old Man"
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Steve and Jethro singing Michael Peter Smith's "Dutchman." Steve and many others in the Chicago Folk Revival (John Prine, Bonnie Koloc, Larry Rand, Fred Holstein) all had a special love for this song, which Steve popularized.
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Steve and Jimmy Buffet
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Steve and Bobby Bare live, singing "The City of New Orleans." Looking at this video, my feeling is that Steve was fairly ill at this time. There's a little energy lacking in his voice. But the joy is there.
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The City pulling out of Chicago more than 60 years ago
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And indulge me here. This beautiful tribute combines video shot from on board the "City of New Orleans" with Steve performing his classic American song. I rode the City many times to and from Urbana, twice between Chicago and New Orleans, and must have seen many of these same sights from its windows.
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For a bio, discography and ordering info for all of Steve's many albums, this is the place to go. And by the way, the guy on the left in the photo is Earl Pionke. Once when he was throwing out a drunk, the guy demanded to know his last name, "Of Old Town," he said.
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Roger Ebert's latest books are Scorsese by Ebert and Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2009. Published recently: Roger Ebert's Four-Star Reviews (1967-2007) and Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert. Books can be ordered through rogerebert.com. (Photo by Taylor Evans)
Got here via Twitter.
Not to get all nitpicky and stuff on New Year's Eve, but isn't that Janis Ian with Steve, not Janis Joplin?
Great, tender remembrance, Roger. Best wishes for 2010!
Surprised to see this on twitter. Thanks. Steve Goodman with the great almost forgotten Jethro Burns. Made my decade you did.
Hi Roger,
WOW! What a great tribute!! I know for sure of at least two dozen Cubs Fans friends of mine whom I will be sharing this with.
T-Tom Best
Thanks so much. It was wonderful to have Steve — and Jethro! — be a part of New Year's Eve again!
25 years later, one would still have to look very, very hard to find a voice as life-affirming as that of Steve Goodman.
To this day my favorite Steve Goodman song is The Lincoln Park Pirates =)
You're right, New Year's Eve without Steve has never been quite right.
One correction, that's Janis Ian not Janis Joplin !
What a wonderful memory. I was at the January 23, 1985 concert. I didn't realize what I was witnessing.
I only casually knew Steve from the Earl. I knew John better as he was my mother's mailman in Westchester.
Years later, I got to know Chuck Koster and heard a lot of stories about Steve's early years.
I recapture my youth and my innocence everytime I hear one of his songs.
I miss you Steve. I look forward to hearing you again.
With love,
Timothy
I'm listening to "City of New Orleans" as I type.
When I was child, I often had the sense in the late 60's and early 70's that something was in the air and moving. Something akin to the passing of unseen travelers on journeys far away, and all felt as a profound awareness of there being something in the air; like a collective "sigh" was rippling over the landscape.
Now that I'm older, I know what it was. It was loss in the wake of change.
The City New Orleans sounds a lot like what I heard. Steve Goodman appears to have caught a moment in time.
P.S. everyone I know is broke after Christmas and thus staying home for a quiet New Years Eve, including me. That's not a complaint though! It's nice when you can relax with a few ciders, and eat some gummy bears and watch The Iron Giant. :)
I believe the above picture is Janis Ian not Janis Joplin.
Ebert: Right. The web site only said "Janis," and I...
Thanks - My dad passed away 25 yrs ago last Nov. He was a Steve Goodman fan (as am I).
I miss my old man every night ...
I believe that is Janis Ian not Joplin
http://www.janisian.com/news-2007june.html
Hi Roger,
My husband tells a story about how the security guy didn't want to let Steve Goodman into Follinger Auditorium...he couldn't possibly be Steve Goodman because he was too short.
Happy New Year.
Thanks for posting this tribute. You have helped make an otherwise humdrum New Year's into a memorable one.
From Stevie's brother.
Thank you
and Peace and Love.
Thanks for the memories! "We'll take a cup of kindness yet for auld lang syne."
Thanks Roger. You should do a similar tribute to Fred Holstein some time.
A wonderful New Years gift. My wife and I were fans of Steve from before he was popular till the end. Happy New Years everyone and Happy Nye Years Steve.
There is a monumental bio of Steve that my friend, Erica Pionke, shared with me. She read it in preparation to write a bio on the Earl himself (btw, Pionke means "drinker" in Polish). In the book there is a photo of Steve Goodman and Hillary Clinton in high school! They were classmates.
This is a wonderful compilation and selection of familiar tunes. Thanks.
I'm surprised you didn't mention John Denver's version of Steve Goodman! Of course, I'm pretty sure Steve wouldn't like that, but it's a good story, and good trivia. I wonder what your take is on it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNIfU0SyCw4
"I'll hang around as long as you will let me..."
What a great talent - a body of work that would be the envy of any songwriter of any era.
Caught this via twitter, Roger. There was such wit, such infectious joyousness in Steve Goodman's performances. I listen to him often, and always get choked up. He is missed, and you've put together such a good tribute. Thanks.
I've loved Steve since the first time I heard "The Dutchman", in the middle of the night on the radio I kept playing quietly beside my bed. I saw him in Montreal in, I think, 1975: I was 14, and I've never forgotten the show. I may even still have the ticket stub.
I was lucky enough to see John Prine just a few months ago, and thought of Steve the whole time. I may have wept a bit when John sang "Souvenirs".
Thanks for the wonderful tribute, Roger. When they finally invent that damn consumer-grade time machine I've been waiting for, one of my first stops is going to be Chicago in the 60s so I can hang out in Old Town with all of youse for a while.
I plead guilty to loving Michael Smith's song "The Dutchman" -- enough so that I don't sing it! Mike and Steve did such good versions -- better left to them. I have done Mike's very funny song "Last Days of Pompeii" and consider him one of the brightest songwriting lights. I met Mike as a teen working the It's Here coffeehouse about the same time as I bumped into Goodman at Scot's Cellar, another coffeehouse in Morton Grove. Steve and I were high school students playing folk to get girls. (It worked.) I have a fine Jim Polanski photo of "Big John" Stanisha, folk music fan extraordinaire, and Steve Goodman (a physical pairing right out of "Of Mice and Men") in my office and know what you mean about missing Steve's infectious New Year's Eve energy. He instigated the Midnight Special NYE party like no one else.