Randy Newman - Good Old Boys (2LP)

Randy Newman’s Good Old Boys landed in September 1974 on Reprise and has only grown sharper with time. It’s one of those records that can stop a room cold, not through volume or flash, but with a voice, a piano and a tangle of uncomfortable truths. Newman sets his sights on the American South, but he also takes aim at the rest of the country, sketching characters who are messy, big-hearted and blinkered all at once. What keeps it from feeling like a lecture is the care in the writing and the tenderness of the music. He loves these people, even when they make him wince.

“Rednecks” announces the tone immediately, opening with a nod to a notorious TV moment involving Georgia’s governor and then slipping into a first-person drawl that savages Southern racism while poking holes in Northern smugness. It is satire with teeth, yet it’s also painfully human. Newman sings low and weary, his piano steady as a conscience that won’t quiet down. That push and pull runs through the album. “Birmingham” paints civic pride as a kind of coping mechanism, a bright smile over soot. “Marie” might be the most beautiful love song he ever wrote, a slurred confession that admits alcohol does what sober courage can’t. And “Guilty” is the morning after, a foggy lament you feel in your stomach. Plenty of artists later took those two ballads into their sets, which makes sense. They’re classics because they’re honest and unadorned.

Huey Long haunts the middle of the record. “Kingfish” plays like a campaign tune with a wink, and Newman folds in “Every Man a King,” the real-life theme co-written by Long and Castro Carazo, to underline how populist promises can sound so sweet when money’s tight and hope is thin. The historical threads don’t feel academic though. They feel like family stories told around a table, where punchlines sit beside tragedy and no one bothers to separate them.

Then there’s “Louisiana 1927,” the song that left its original context to become something larger. Newman recounts the Great Mississippi Flood with cold, cresting water and a bureaucrat’s shrug, then caps it with that line most people now know by heart: they’re trying to wash us away. After Hurricane Katrina, the track took on a second life as an unofficial anthem for grief and resilience. Hearing it in that light, you realise how carefully Newman measures empathy. He never sentimentalises the South. He just understands it, and he understands how the rest of America talks about it.

Sonically, Good Old Boys is plush in the right places and sparse where it counts. Newman’s piano is the anchor, but the arrangements bloom with strings and horns that never get in the way of a sharp line. Lenny Waronker and Russ Titelman keep the production warm and roomy, the kind of sound that still feels right pouring out of speakers on a rainy afternoon. It was a breakthrough too, giving Newman a proper Top 40 album in the US and drawing strong notices from critics who had already clocked him as one of the great American songwriters of the era.

If you’re hunting Randy Newman vinyl, this is a cornerstone. An original Reprise pressing has a satisfying heft, and the reissues have kept the dynamics intact, so you can’t really go wrong if you find a clean copy. Spin “Rednecks” and “Marie” on a Sunday and you’ll see why this record turns casual listeners into lifers. If you like to buy Randy Newman records online, keep an eye out for editions that mention the bonus demo suite tied to Johnny Cutler’s Birthday, the early song cycle Newman worked through while shaping this album. Those sketches show how methodically he built these characters, trimming and refining until they felt like neighbours.

Good Old Boys vinyl also pairs neatly with Sail Away and 12 Songs if you’re lining up Randy Newman albums on vinyl for a long afternoon. There’s a conversation between them about power, kindness and the stories people tell themselves to get through the day. Pop into your favourite Melbourne record store and you’ll probably find at least one staffer who lights up at the mention of “Louisiana 1927.” And if you’re browsing from home in Australia, plenty of shops specialising in vinyl records Australia wide stock solid pressings. However you find it, this is a record that rewards time and attention. It makes you laugh, then flinch, then lean closer. Half a century on, that’s a rare trick.