{"id":1718,"date":"2015-03-18T08:52:50","date_gmt":"2015-03-18T15:52:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/?p=1718"},"modified":"2015-03-18T08:52:50","modified_gmt":"2015-03-18T15:52:50","slug":"goodys-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/archives\/1718","title":{"rendered":"Goody’s Song"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Goody<\/a><\/p>\n

Goody<\/em> photo by Todd<\/p>\n

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser<\/em> March 2015)<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/i>The truth is not ashamed of appearing contrived<\/i>.<\/i>\u201d Isaac Bashevis Singer<\/i><\/p>\n

As recently reported, Marcia and I are getting more airplay for our music on KVRF, a radio station in Palmer Alaska, than we\u2019ve had anywhere else in these United States, and our song getting the most play recently is \u201cGoody\u2019s Song\u201d<\/a> with lyrics based on a poem by my grandmother.<\/p>\n

In 1979 I turned thirty, moved to Sacramento, bought a fixer upper, my novel Inside Moves<\/i> <\/a>was being made into a motion picture, and my second novel Forgotten Impulses<\/i> <\/a>was about to be published. In the midst of this hoopla, my grandmother Gertrude, known to friends and family as Goody, sent me a poem she hoped I would turn into a song. I loved Goody, and she had just lost her husband, my grandfather Casey, so I said Yes.<\/p>\n

Her verses rhymed, sort of, but were syllabically inconsistent from one line to the next, and she used several gigantic words that simply would not sing. Nevertheless, I made a few feeble attempts to set her poem to piano music, and then gave up.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d rather regret the things I\u2019ve done than regret the things I haven\u2019t done.\u201d Lucille Ball<\/i><\/p>\n

Two months later, I got a call from my brother Steve who lived near Goody in Menlo Park. \u201cSo,\u201d he began in his no-nonsense way, \u201chow\u2019s Goody\u2019s song coming?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEr, uh, oh, yeah. Goody\u2019s song. I\u2019ve been so busy that\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe doesn\u2019t have long to live,\u201d said Steve, not buying my excuses. \u201cIt\u2019s all she talks about. Write something. Soon.\u201d<\/p>\n

So I dug up Goody\u2019s poem and spent an hour at the piano searching for chords and a melody to carry her heartfelt lines, gave up again, went for a walk, and had a revelation. The song was not a piano song, but a guitar song, a lament worthy of Tammy Wynette. The words would need to be simplified and the rhythm of the lines made consistent, but the gist of the poem would remain.<\/p>\n

I returned home, got out my guitar, and taking liberties with the original poem came up with:<\/p>\n

I made a terrible mistake when I left you.<\/p>\n

But what can I do about it today?<\/p>\n

Ran at the first sign of trouble,<\/p>\n

Now you\u2019re telling me to stay far away.<\/p>\n

I was so lucky when I met you,<\/p>\n

Now I just can\u2019t seem to forget you.<\/p>\n

Please take me back, help me find that loving track.<\/p>\n

What was I thinking of<\/p>\n

When I made so little of such a great love?<\/p>\n

I was a terrible fool to have left you.<\/p>\n

What can I do about it today?<\/p>\n

I ran at the first sign of trouble,<\/p>\n

Now you\u2019re telling me to stay far away.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019ve learned my lessons,<\/p>\n

Won\u2019t you help me out of this mess I\u2019m in?<\/p>\n

Please take me back, help me find that loving track.<\/p>\n

What was I thinking of<\/p>\n

When I made so little of such a great love?<\/p>\n

I ran and ran and ran and ran,<\/p>\n

Now I want to run back to you.<\/p>\n

A month later, after five takes in a recording studio with a drummer, guitarist and bass player, Steve and I went to Goody\u2019s apartment to play her the song. But before we rolled the tape, Goody made a speech. Picture a diminutive eighty-year-old woman, four-foot-ten in high heels, with curly silver hair and a twinkle in her eyes. Born to orthodox Jews in Detroit in 1900, her father a cantor, her mother the breadwinner selling groceries from a little shop, Goody had always wanted a career in show business and never stopped believing that one day, somehow, she would be discovered and become a star.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a premonition about this song,\u201d she said solemnly. \u201cEven before I hear it, I know it will be great.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because Goody was a fantastic joke teller, my brother and I thought she might be setting us up for a punch line, but not this time.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis song is the fulfillment of my dream. The spirit of my father lives in this song. It will be a beacon of hope for generations to come.\u201d<\/p>\n

We played the recording and Goody wept as she listened, and we hoped she was crying because she liked it.<\/p>\n

When the song ended, Goody proclaimed, \u201cNow if we can just get this to Johnny Mathis, all our troubles will be over.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, Goody,\u201d I said, glancing at my brother, \u201cthis is not really the kind of song Johnny Mathis tends to record.\u201d<\/p>\n

And without missing a beat, Goody said, \u201cWell, then that other guy who\u2019s always on Merv Griffin. Mac somebody.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMac Davis?\u201d prompted my brother.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d said Goody. \u201cGet it to him and all our troubles will be over.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy one regret in life is that I am not someone else.\u201d Woody Allen<\/i><\/p>\n

Goody died six months later, having outlived Casey by a year. We tried and failed to get the song to Mac Davis and Bonnie Raitt and several other famous recording artists, but \u201cGoody\u2019s Song\u201d became a staple in my repertoire and an audience favorite. And every time I sang the song and told the story of how it came to be written, someone would ask if I knew who it was Goody wanted to run back to, since she wrote the poem when she was in her late seventies.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t know the answer until thirty years later when Marcia and I recorded \u201cGoody\u2019s Song\u201d for our album So Not Jazz<\/i><\/a>, the version currently getting airplay in Palmer Alaska\u2014Todd playing guitar and singing, Marcia enriching the song with her fabulous cello playing.<\/p>\n

Goody wanted to run back to Goody\u2014the Goody she was before she surrendered to the cultural imperatives of her generation, married, had kids, and suppressed her desire to be an actor and a singer.<\/p>\n

\u201cGoody\u2019s Song\u201d is downloadable from iTunes and Amazon and CD Baby. You can purchase So Not Jazz<\/i> from Todd\u2019s web site UnderTheTableBooks.com or from Marcia\u2019s web site NavarroRiverMusic.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Goody photo by Todd (This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser March 2015) \u201cThe truth is not ashamed of appearing contrived.\u201d Isaac Bashevis Singer As recently reported, Marcia and I are getting more airplay for our music on KVRF, a radio station in Palmer Alaska, than we\u2019ve had anywhere else in these United States, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[268,1253,369,2708,3170,8,402,3174,3171,3172,3175,3176,1386,3173,122,9,33,1218],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1718"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1718"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1720,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1718\/revisions\/1720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}