25 Facts About Steve Goodman

Steven Benjamin Goodman was an American folk and country singer-songwriter from Chicago.

Steve Goodman wrote the song "City of New Orleans", which was recorded by artists including Arlo Guthrie, John Denver, The Highwaymen, and Judy Collins.

In 1985, Goodman received the Grammy songwriter award for best country song.

Steve Goodman co-wrote "You Never Even Called Me by My Name", which became the best-selling song of country musician David Allan Coe.

Steve Goodman was born on Chicago's North Side to a middle-class Jewish family.

Steve Goodman began writing and performing songs as a teenager.

Steve Goodman graduated from Maine East High School in Park Ridge, Illinois, in 1965, where he was a classmate of Hillary Clinton.

Steve Goodman left college after one year to pursue his musical career.

In 1968 Steve Goodman began performing at the Earl of Old Town and The Dangling Conversation coffeehouse and attracted a following.

Steve Goodman's wife, writing in the liner notes to the posthumous collection No Big Surprise, characterized him this way:.

Basically, Steve Goodman was exactly who he appeared to be: an ambitious, well-adjusted man from a loving, middle-class Jewish home in the Chicago suburbs, whose life and talent were directed by the physical pain and time constraints of a fatal disease which he kept at bay, at times, seemingly by willpower alone.

Steve Goodman wanted to live as normal a life as possible, only he had to live it as fast as he could.

Steve Goodman remained closely involved with Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music, where he had met and mentored his friend, John Prine.

Later in 1971, Steve Goodman was playing at a Chicago bar called the Quiet Knight as the opening act for Kris Kristofferson.

All this time, Steve Goodman had been busy writing many of his most enduring songs, and this avid songwriting would lead to an important break for him.

Guthrie grudgingly agreed on the condition that Steve Goodman buy him a beer first; Guthrie would then listen to Steve Goodman for as long as it took Guthrie to drink the beer.

Steve Goodman played "City of New Orleans", which Guthrie liked enough that he asked to record it.

Prine refused to take a songwriter's credit for the song, although Steve Goodman bought Prine a jukebox as a gift from his publishing royalties.

Steve Goodman's name is mentioned in Coe's recording of the song, in a spoken epilogue in which Steve Goodman and Coe discuss the merits of "the perfect country and western song".

One of Steve Goodman's biggest hits was a song he didn't write: "The Dutchman", written by Michael Peter Smith.

Steve Goodman reached a wider audience as the opening act for Steve Martin while Martin was at the height of his stand-up popularity.

Steve Goodman wrote "Go, Cubs, Go" out of spite after then GM Dallas Green called "A Dying Cub Fan's Last Request" too depressing.

Steve Goodman could write serious songs, most notably "My Old Man", a tribute to Goodman's father, Bud Goodman, a used-car salesman and World War II veteran.

Steve Goodman won his second Grammy, for Best Contemporary Folk Album, in 1988 for Unfinished Business, a posthumous album on his Red Pajamas Records label.

On September 20,1984, Steve Goodman died of leukemia at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle, Washington.