One of the more interesting things about Randy Newman is the way that he perplexes his own audience.

A significant number of music fans tend to take lyrics at face value, and there were a lot of listeners who took Newman’s character studies as a truthful representation of his own opinions, which was (and perhaps still is) outrageous. On the title track of his previous album, “Sail Away”, I knew seemingly intelligent people who believed the song to be a gorgeous portrayal of patriotism, rather than a bluntly outrageous characterization of a slave runner convincing the “little wogs” of the great life awaiting them across the sea.

With “Good Old Boys,” he directly addresses the racism that permeates a percentage of the American South, and somehow walks the fine line between mockery and sympathy. If listeners still took a superficial view of his words, they should have been appalled, but I feared that a few too many people – like a few of my New York neighbors – did take a literal perspective. Newman’s characters can be despicable, but over the course of “Good Old Boys”, he captures the complexity of human nature, where overt judgmentalism bleeds of hypocrisy. It’s a tough line to walk. On one hand it tests the listener to come to terms with overt ugliness, but it also demands sympathy.

Featured tracks include:

Rednecks

Birmingham

Marie

Mr. President (Have Pity on the Working Man)

Guilty

Louisiana 1927

Every Man a King

Kingfish

Naked Man

A Wedding in Cherokee County

 Back on My Feet Again

 Rollin’

September 1974 -  Billboad Charted #36