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Chicago Shorty

Filed under: Imported

Last night on American Routes, Nick Spitzer played Steve Goodman's version of "Easter Parade." It made me ridiculously happy and caused me to spend the whole night listening to his albums. I've long been a Goodman fanatic. He was an absolute beast of a guitar player, picking out rhythm and melody with a gleeful fervor that constantly threatens to run off the rails.

None of his studio albums quite capture Goodman's genius. There's a gloss to the production on many of the recordings that dilutes his quirky charms. Fortunately, since Goodman's untimely death from leukemia in 1984 there has been a slew of live material released, starting with the indispensable anthology No Big Surprise, which contains a disc each of live and studio material.

"Easter Parade" is from another posthumous collection dubbed The Easter Tapes. It's a mash-up of four Easter radio shows that Goodman recorded with New York radio icon Vin Scelsa. Frankly the Scelsa banter can be quite annoying (ditto for his ponderous liner notes), but Goodman's frenetic acoustic guitar work and half-ass vocals are completely beguiling. It opens with a warp-speed, virtuoso version of "Red Red Robin" and contains charming renditions of Goodman classics like "Banana Republics" and "City of New Orleans." His mad-cap dismantling of William Mayhew's "It's A Sin To Tell A Lie" (one of the greatest songs ever written as far as I'm concerned) is exhilarating.

But my favorite moment is near the close of the album when Scelsa challenges him to play "Splish Splash." With David Amram joining in on the bongos and tin whistle, Goodman gamely strums out a skewed version of that retarded Bobby Darin chestnut.

Posted by Paul Demko at March 27, 2005 11:34 AM

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