Latest / Revisionist History / Good Old Boys

Transcript

Good Old Boys · Revisionist History

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin. This episode contains explicit language. In the fall of
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four, the musician Randy Newman released an album
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: called Good Old Boys. The most beautiful song on the
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: record is the third song on the first side, Wait
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Can I Prevail on? You did disteal a little bit
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: of Marie Sure So. I love that song so much.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: We thank you very much. Look like a princess night
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: with your hair part of that.
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: I will know.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: My name is Malcolm Well. You're listening to Revisionist History,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. This episode is
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: about Randy Newman's Good Old Boys, one of the most
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: remarkable albums of its era. I listened to it for
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: the first time years ago, but then I happened to
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: listen to it again very recently and realized that Good
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Old Boys is not an album you can hear just
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: once and hope to do it justice, because it's not
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: just remarkable, it's unsettling. I don't think an album like
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: this could be made today, and by the end of
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: this episode, I suspect you'll agree with me. I decided
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: to go to California, sit down with Randy Newman, and
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: create a listener's guide to one of the most perplexing
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: works of music that I have ever encountered.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: Drug Well, I've got to be a little bit.
• 2:06
  Speaker 4: What you mean me?
• 2:10
  Speaker 5: He lo you the first time, so you.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: Always love you.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: Newman is in his seventies, still writing music, Tall and
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: slightly intimidating. He's Hollywood Royalty. His uncle, Alfred, was a
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: composer who was nominated for an Academy Award forty four times,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: won nine times. Newman has had a second career writing
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: for the movies as well, like You've Got a Friend
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: in Me for Toy Story. Newman is unusual among songwriters
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: because he writes in character, and the narrator of Good
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: Old Boys is a creation of Newman's. He's called Johnny Cutler,
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: a steel worker from Birmingham, Alabama, thirty years old. The
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: song Marie is about Johnny Cutler coming home late after
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: a night out with the boys and gazing love struck
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: at his sleeping wife.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: I like the idea very much about being inarticulate without
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: that's not the right word, in articulate, but being unable
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: to have the words unless you drink something. You know,
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: I can't say this to you and maybe to lack
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: the ability to say those kind of words.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: But he's the fact that he has been drinking and
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: he and you realize he can only say what he's
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: saying because he's and because she's asleep. Yeah right, yeah,
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: but that even that makes me humanizes him and even
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: more I sort of feel so love her.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: I mean, it would seem that that isn't drink, but
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: it might be. Is this a good guy? And my
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: answer to that is I don't know. I mean, I'm
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: suspicious of.
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: This.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: I'm drunk right now, baby, but maybe when I'm awake,
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: I might knock this shit out of you.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: Sometimes, Randy Newman wrote, Marie, he created Johnny Cutler. He
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: dreamt up a beautiful love song for him, but he
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: doesn't know if he understands him or even if he
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: likes him. As if Johnny Cutler came from his imagination
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: but is now somehow independent of it, it makes you
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: wonder who's in charge of this song.
• 4:28
  Speaker 4: Sometimes I'm crazy, but I guess you know, in a
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: week it all Liz.
• 4:43
  Speaker 5: And a hurt so and I never listen to the
• 4:51
  Speaker 5: world you say when you calmed me in trouble doll,
• 5:00
  Speaker 5: and I just try awake, but I love you, and
• 5:08
  Speaker 5: I love you the first time my sign.
• 5:15
  Speaker 4: And oh we love.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: The story behind Good Old Boys begins with a man
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: named Lester Maddox. Maddox was governor of Georgia from nineteen
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: sixty seven to nineteen seventy one. Now he's mostly forgotten,
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: but in his day he was notorious.
• 5:37
  Speaker 6: I thank his full to act for real. I don't
• 5:40
  Speaker 6: look at myself as one of the very smart people,
• 5:42
  Speaker 6: so I try to act like Lester Maddox like inside
• 5:45
  Speaker 6: I feel and think and believe.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Maddox grew up in the Depression in Atlanta. His father
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: was an alcoholic.
• 5:54
  Speaker 6: My dad never made hardly any money. We times we
• 5:58
  Speaker 6: didn't even have a bathroom in the house. We had
• 6:00
  Speaker 6: four rooms in a path rather than four rooms in
• 6:02
  Speaker 6: a bathroom. We didn't have electricity.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: Maddox dropped out of high school, got a job as
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: a steel worker to help his five younger siblings, married
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: his childhood sweetheart Virginia, and after the war he started
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: a diner near Georgia Tech. The house specialty was skillip
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: fried chicken. He called his place the Pickrick.
• 6:23
  Speaker 6: So I wanted to name no one else had. Now
• 6:25
  Speaker 6: I came on the name upon the name Pickwick, and
• 6:29
  Speaker 6: I found out it really wick doesn't meaning thing except
• 6:32
  Speaker 6: what you know it to be wick. That's what Webster
• 6:34
  Speaker 6: will even tell you that Wick and someone had already
• 6:38
  Speaker 6: used the name Pickwick in England, so I couldn't use that.
• 6:41
  Speaker 6: So it was about three o'clock one morning. I'd been
• 6:43
  Speaker 6: working on it for weeks.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: Maddox was one of those people who you can't do
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: a cartoon version of because he already looks like a
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: cartoon version of himself. He's skinny, with an oversized head,
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: bald dome, black plastic glasses, always in a black suit,
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: moves with a kind of loose, slimmed floppiness, like a clown.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: There are so many oral history interviews with Lester Maddox
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: floating around the State of Georgia that he must have
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: spent as many hours reminiscing about his time as governor
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: as he actually spent serving as governor. The man liked
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: to talk.
• 7:19
  Speaker 6: See the pick means to fastidiously, to pick out, to
• 7:21
  Speaker 6: choose a select, and rick means to pile up to
• 7:24
  Speaker 6: heap or damas. So I named my restaurant Pickrick and said,
• 7:28
  Speaker 6: if you'd picnic at the Pickrick and pick it out.
• 7:30
  Speaker 6: We would rick it up, and we would we did,
• 7:33
  Speaker 6: and that's why it was named Pickrick. I've never heard
• 7:36
  Speaker 6: anything else being named Pickrick.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: Maddix advertised the Pickrick in the Saturday edition of the
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: Atlanta Journal in a column with the title Pickrick says.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: Lots of one liners in Matoxisms, like the nineteen fifties
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: version of tweets well.
• 7:50
  Speaker 6: I talked about Christmas, I talked about marriage. I talked
• 7:54
  Speaker 6: about the monkey house at Grant Park. I talked about whether.
• 7:57
  Speaker 6: I talked about fishing in my edge.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: But soon his column, Pickrick says becomes more and more
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: political because this is Atlanta in the mid nineteen fifties,
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: one of the birthplaces of the civil rights movement, and
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: Pickcrick is a ten minute drive from Auburn Avenue, where
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: Martin Luther King, and Andrew Young and Vernon Jordan and
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: everyone else are starting to stir things up and less
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: Dramattox is not at all happy with that. He's a segregationist.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: And the more strident Maddox gets in his weekly ads,
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: the more popular Pickwrick says becomes. People start buying the
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: Atlanta Journal on Saturday just to read what Maddox is
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: up to. Maddox decides to run for mayor of Atlanta.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: He is no organization, no money. He drives himself around
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: and he loses. But the race is closer than you'd think,
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: so he runs again and loses, and runs a third
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: time and loses. But then the wave of desegregation protests
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: hits Atlanta in the early nineteen sixties. The public schools
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: are integrated first, then the lunch counters than the restaurants,
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: and since the Pickcrick restaurant does not admit black people,
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: the civil rights protesters come knocking.
• 9:11
  Speaker 6: Well, the first time, I was about four wives and
• 9:15
  Speaker 6: tree blacks came in in Virginia and I were about
• 9:19
  Speaker 6: to eat our luncheon Saturday afternoon. They told me what
• 9:22
  Speaker 6: they're gonna do, and I told them, You're not gonna
• 9:24
  Speaker 6: do any such things.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: What they were gonna do was eat a pickrick with
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: the television cameras as witness.
• 9:30
  Speaker 6: I said, you never been here before. You just wanna
• 9:32
  Speaker 6: fuss and fight. So I grabbed two of them. I
• 9:35
  Speaker 6: think on them was John Lewis or Brown or somebody,
• 9:38
  Speaker 6: and I just had him out the door. When they
• 9:40
  Speaker 6: happen to remember they were supposed to lay down on
• 9:41
  Speaker 6: the floor. If you hadn't thought about that, I'd had
• 9:44
  Speaker 6: them both out and they got on the floor because
• 9:49
  Speaker 6: I couldn't drag them. So I called my black employees.
• 9:53
  Speaker 6: I hat the kitchen and I said, these people trying
• 9:56
  Speaker 6: to destroy our business. They don't want to eat with us.
• 9:58
  Speaker 6: They just want to create a problem. They got the
• 10:00
  Speaker 6: television and radio and everyone with them, and I said,
• 10:04
  Speaker 6: I'm going to give you ten dollars for each one
• 10:05
  Speaker 6: of them threw out. In the next thirty second.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: Them Maddox's employees through them out, but the protesters came back.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: This time Maddox met them at the door, with the
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: television cameras rolling and a crowd starting to gather.
• 10:24
  Speaker 6: India, now you want.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: There's Maddox in front of the pickrick with his black
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: suit and bald head, protesters shouting cameras all around. He's
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: in heaven.
• 10:37
  Speaker 6: I'll use a channels, I'll use guns, I'll use pain,
• 10:40
  Speaker 6: I'll use my fist, I'll use my customers, I'll use
• 10:43
  Speaker 6: my employees, I'll use anything. It's mind as bold. This
• 10:47
  Speaker 6: property belongs to me, my wife and my children.
• 10:51
  Speaker 7: It doesn't belong to anybody.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: Else, I'll throw out a white one or black one.
• 10:54
  Speaker 6: Or a red headed one, or ball when it doesn't
• 10:57
  Speaker 6: make any difference.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: Maddox gets hauled into court because the Civil Rights Act
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: has been passed and what he's doing is illegal. He's
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: given a choice integrate or shut his doors, and he
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: decides to shut to Pickwrick, one of the most popular
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: and successful restaurants in Atlanta, the business that he has
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: spent his lifetime building that made him famous, and to
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: every Southern er angry at the way the world is turning,
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: he becomes a hero. A friend says to him, you know,
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: maybe you should run for governor, and Maddox says, okay.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: And in nineteen sixty six, he wins. A white nationalist
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: in the hospitality business who came to public attention writing pithy,
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: politically charged statements in a widely read media forum, runs
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: against the political establishment and pulls off an upset victory.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: And by the way, it's a very close race. Maddox
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: doesn't actually get as many votes as his opponent, but
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: he wins when the election is thrown to the legislature.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: Oh and a huge part of Maddox's rhetoric is how
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: the media can't be trusted. He's constantly accusing newspapers of
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: lying about him. In fact, in the corner of his
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: official governor's portrait, there's a little table with a dead
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: fish on it, wrapped in a copy of the Atlanta Journal.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: A white nationalist in the hospitality business who wrote pithy
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: statements on a media platform, runs against the political establishment,
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: accuses the news media of running fake news about him,
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: doesn't get as many votes as his opponent, and nonetheless
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: stakes over the highest executive office. I mean, when has
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: that ever happen? Maddox serves four years, has to step
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: down because of term limits. Jimmy Carter takes over as
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: governor of Georgia, as the state, he might say, returns
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: to its senses, and Maddox consoles himself with running for
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: and winning the job of lieutenant governor. He is well
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: on his way to obscurity. And then he gets a
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: call from New York from the Dick Cavot Show, the
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: great late night talk show of the nineteen seventies. They
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: want him as a guest. That's when we return in America.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: You get foody.
• 13:19
  Speaker 4: Won't have to run through the jungle and scuff up
• 13:23
  Speaker 4: your feet.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: The first Randy Newman song I ever heard was sail Away.
• 13:28
  Speaker 8: You just sing about Jesus and drink wine all day.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: It's great to be an American.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: Sail Away is the title track of the album Randy
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: Newman made right before he wrote Good Old Boys. I
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: was a kid when I first heard it, and I
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: had the same experience I would later have with Newman's
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: other songs. I didn't get it at first. I'm not
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: sure I even paid attention to the words. I just
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: loved how grand it was.
• 13:59
  Speaker 8: Ain't no lie side of me, no mama snake, just
• 14:07
  Speaker 8: a sweet wall amelon the bug wheat.
• 14:14
  Speaker 9: Everybody is happy as make it be.
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: Climb a ball, little wog.
• 14:23
  Speaker 5: Stay the way within.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: But then I got a little older, and as I
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: heard sail Away, I said, wait a minute. Everybody is
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: as happy as a man can be. Climb aboard little wog,
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: sail away with me. Wog really offensive British colonial slang
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: for someone who's not white. It's the N word. Basically,
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: I noticed some interesting story at behind sail Away.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: The song, Oh it was a A guy was going
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: to make a movie and he was going to give
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: ten minutes to five or six pop people, Van Morrison,
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: I remember, and Hendrickson to do ten minute thing, and
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: I came up with this thing. It had a sort
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: of a sea shanny before it, you know, very irish
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: kind of yo hoo, you know there and then this
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: guy be standing in a clearing in the jungle and
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: singing this song, and that was what I was going
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: to do with my ten minutes.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: Randy Newman wrote a song about an American slave trader
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: standing somewhere in West Africa giving his sales pitch to
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: potential recruits come to America. You're gonna love this little
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: cotton plantation that I've lined up for you.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: Oh no, lion, no moms sleep. It's a sweet watermelon
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: and a book. So those laugh.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the character is so kind of outrageous. Yeah, but
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: we're not laughing along with him. We're horrified by him.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: I mean it's yeah, but people laugh at that in
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: a nervous way, at the watermelon joke, and sit around
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: to think about Jesus drink wine all day.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: Now, there's a way to do that song so that
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: it's not so shocking. In like the cover version done
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: later the same year by Bobby Darren who was one
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: of the biggest pop stars of the nineteen sixties, won't
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: have the wrong through the jungle.
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: Bobby Darren is happy, Yeah, come to America, little one,
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: when we get rid of the wog. Oh my god.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: But no, that's that's like blasphemy. I'm a born Little
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: one sail.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: Away with me.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: In Bobby Darren's version, the line climb a board, little
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: Wog sail away with me, which is crucial in establishing
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: how vile the narrator is, becomes climber board, little one
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: sail away with me. I'm sorry, I can't get I
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: can't get pass it so quickly. That's unbelievable that.
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: He did a happy version.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: Yes, it's this, It isn't.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's there it is.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: The thing is Newman liked Bobby Darren. He knew him,
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: and he didn't know what to think. I mean, there
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: is a world of difference between wog and one. Also,
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken, Bobby Darren substitutes the words mamba
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: snake with mama snake eight no lions and tigers and
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: no nurturing mama snake.
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: You know, he was all, do I like to do that?
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: And it's like come to America, you know, become.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: But this is this, this song is like this.
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: Is not a dumb guy either.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: This is this song is like a It is a wallop.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: It is emotional wallop. He searing song about this the
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: darkest moment in America's past.
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: It's a jaw dress like springtime for Hitler, a little one,
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: little wall like come away with me. You know, he
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: just was so right, his Shulvia's instincts couldn't restrain himself.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: How did you feel when you first heard that version?
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: I felt, you know, oh, my Jesus Christ. And that
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: was it.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: The original intention of sail Away was to make the
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: listener uncomfortable. Newman takes a familiar figure, a salesman, an entrepreneur,
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: a patriot, and gives him a rollicking sea shanty. But
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: then he forces you to acknowledge that underneath all that
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: there looks a monster. Bobby Darren chickened out. He couldn't
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: do it. He didn't want us to be uncomfortable, and
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: so Wog became one and sail Away became a glorified
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: nursery rhyme. I don't mean to single Bobby Darren out,
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: because I think that most of us take the easy
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: path in these situations too. But the particular genius of
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: Randy Newman is that he won't do that. He can't.
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: Dick have a troll.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: So it's nineteen seventy. Lester Maddox gets a call from
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: Dick Caviot, come on our show. He flies to New
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: York and who tunes in that night Randy Newman, Ladies
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: and gentlemen, Dick Cabot. Dick Caviott is a year into
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: his legendary late night show on ABC, up against Johnny
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: Carson's Tonight show. Cavit show was like a highlight reel
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: of the nineteen seventies. He did the greatest ever interview
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: with Jimmy Hendrix. Groucho Marx was a regular, so was
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: Muhammad Ali. He once had Salvador Dally on the same
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: show as a legendary pitching great Satchel Page. The famous
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: debate between Gorvadal and Norman Mailer that was on Dick Caviot. Listen,
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: we have a.
• 19:55
  Speaker 7: Very good show tonight, and I want to move right
• 19:57
  Speaker 7: into it. Excellent show. I think I don't know, how
• 20:00
  Speaker 7: do I know? I haven't seen it. It might be a
• 20:02
  Speaker 7: big dead brow Why do people say that at the
• 20:05
  Speaker 7: beginning of his show.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: Cavot looks like Paul Newman's baby brother, no more than
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: five or six, impish, big polka dotted tie. His first
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: guest is a woman named Alice Gray, an entomologist from
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: the American Museum of Natural History, cat eye, glasses, hair,
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: and a bun who brings a box full of cockroaches
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: to the set.
• 20:25
  Speaker 7: What can we do about then? What can we learn
• 20:26
  Speaker 7: about them? Are they our friends?
• 20:29
  Speaker 6: No, they're not exactly our friends, but there are certainly
• 20:32
  Speaker 6: our companions.
• 20:34
  Speaker 7: And all our.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: All our doings, and I'm rather fond of them.
• 20:39
  Speaker 6: They have a distinguished linage.
• 20:41
  Speaker 8: How many of us could meet our ancestors of three
• 20:44
  Speaker 8: hundred million years ago and recognize them the cockroaches?
• 20:47
  Speaker 7: Can they go back that far?
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: They go back that far.
• 20:49
  Speaker 7: It's older than the dinosaurs.
• 20:51
  Speaker 6: Twice as old as the dinosaurs. All the way back
• 20:53
  Speaker 6: to the coald Age, they were already recognizably cockroaches.
• 20:57
  Speaker 7: That's it's always the people who don't like We're the
• 21:00
  Speaker 7: last to leave, isn't it.
• 21:03
  Speaker 6: They'll be here long after we have quitted this earth.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: I'm sure Cavit does a good ten minutes. I'm cockroaches
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: are these?
• 21:10
  Speaker 7: Your cockroaches are some of ours?
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: The cockroach lady finally leaves the stage.
• 21:16
  Speaker 7: And then my next guest tonight is Governor Lester Maddox.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: How comes Maddox, the gleaming bald head, the black suit Governorm.
• 21:27
  Speaker 7: Maddics, I still call you, Governor, dont.
• 21:30
  Speaker 6: Call me mostly anything you won't do everybody else?
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: Does?
• 21:34
  Speaker 7: Have you ever followed bugs before?
• 21:37
  Speaker 6: Yes, a few moments ago on your problem.
• 21:39
  Speaker 7: That's the only time.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: That's the only time. God, I love Dick Cavit. They
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: shake hands, they take their seats rust colored swivel loungers
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: atop a gray shag carpet. Kavit shows the audience a
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: photograph of Maddox holding his axe handle outside the Pickrick restaurant,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: and Maddox then corrects him and says, no, it's not
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: an axe handle, it's a pickhandle, and goes off on
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: one of his long, endless digressions about the meaning of the.
• 22:06
  Speaker 6: Pickrick hard work. And we had in the restaurant some
• 22:10
  Speaker 6: of these pick candles, two cakes of them, by a
• 22:13
  Speaker 6: big old fireplace where we burned hickory wood, And there
• 22:15
  Speaker 6: were six of them in each of the cakes. And
• 22:17
  Speaker 6: they were dark red because that was the look something
• 22:22
  Speaker 6: similar to a chicken leg or pit. Candle does not
• 22:25
  Speaker 6: like the axe handle. It's the news me he talks about.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: And Kaviot, who must be wondering what on earth, simply.
• 22:31
  Speaker 7: Says, well, I've certainly learned a lot.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: Kaviot brings on his next guest, the football player Jim Brown,
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: then one of the most famous professional black athletes in
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: the country. Brown settles down next to Maddox, who is
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: literally half his size, and gives him a polite smile,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: and Kavit says to the two of them, do you
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: feel separate but equal? I realized that's nineteen sixties civil
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: rights humor, but I still think it's hilarious. Maddox turns
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: to Brown and says, I thought you was the singer
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: he thought Jim Brown was James Brown. He then volunteers
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: his personal definition of what being a segregationist really means.
• 23:16
  Speaker 6: A segregation is a person that loves his race enough
• 23:19
  Speaker 6: or all the racers enough, has enough for racial pride
• 23:21
  Speaker 6: and integrity to want to preserve them. And I think
• 23:24
  Speaker 6: a racist is one that doesn't care enough for his
• 23:26
  Speaker 6: race or another race to where they would don't care
• 23:29
  Speaker 6: whether they are malcolmated or destroyed.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: Or not amalgamated. Good lord, Now think about this for
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: a moment. Maddox is no longer governor Georgia has come
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: to its sinces an elected nice, safe, modern, non racist
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: Jimmy Carter. Maddox is a footnote. So what point is
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: there in having him on a mainstream talk show like
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: Dick Cavot. The magazine where I work, The New Yorker,
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: had a case like this recently. Donald Trump's Bengali Steve
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: Bannon was invited to speak at the magazine's annual literary festival,
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: and everyone flipped out. The New Yorkers writers took to Twitter.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: A bunch of high profile celebrity in teas to the
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: festival dropped out. And the argument that was made about
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: Bennon is an argument that could as easily have been
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: applied to Maddox years ago. What's the point of giving
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: someone like that a platform? I mean, what could possibly
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: be learned from listening to them talk? And sure enough,
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: what happens over the course of the next hour of
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: the Dick Cavit Show exactly what you would think.
• 24:34
  Speaker 10: I think, what we're really talking about in this country's
• 24:36
  Speaker 10: economic development of black people.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: At one point, Jim Brown says something thoughtful and reasonable
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: that he thinks the priority for black people ought to
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: be economic development, and Maddox jumps on.
• 24:48
  Speaker 6: Him economic development.
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: All people, Well, we're talking about I'll tell you what
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: I'll tell you everybody? Can I Can I give you
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: an answer?
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: Can I give you an answer?
• 25:04
  Speaker 6: Do you mind? I'll go ahead, be ready, I'll give
• 25:07
  Speaker 6: you fat.
• 25:09
  Speaker 10: What I'm really saying is that there are some people
• 25:11
  Speaker 10: that have suffered in this country, poor people generally. But
• 25:14
  Speaker 10: let's say that we have various ethnic groups in this
• 25:16
  Speaker 10: country that have attained a certain kind of equality. Black
• 25:19
  Speaker 10: people are more or less along with the Indians on
• 25:23
  Speaker 10: the last wrong of the ladder. Can I finish together?
• 25:25
  Speaker 10: Can I finish? I?
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: Do you mind?
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: Now?
• 25:30
  Speaker 10: What I'm really saying is that I feel that the
• 25:33
  Speaker 10: way to bring about equality of black people in the
• 25:35
  Speaker 10: system is three.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: Quality white people.
• 25:37
  Speaker 6: Now I'm gonna interrupt.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: You have time and black people.
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: If you interrupt me, I can't talk to you.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: Then Maddox starts going on and on about all the
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: things he's done for black people in the State of Georgia,
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: and Jim Brown turns to him with genuine curiosity and
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: asks if he's had any blowback from white bigots the.
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: Bigots, have any problems with that from the white biggots
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: because you did so.
• 26:01
  Speaker 10: Much for the black man.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: Which is kind of a great question, because if Maddox
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: has in fact been this great friend of black people,
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: then you'd think he would have angered all the hard
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: core segregationists and everyone else who was opposed to the
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: civil rights movement. Right.
• 26:17
  Speaker 7: Mister Brown asked your Governor Maddix, if you'd had any
• 26:20
  Speaker 7: trouble from your white admirers for the fact that you
• 26:22
  Speaker 7: have said no, he said, biggots, Well, what did you
• 26:25
  Speaker 7: say it?
• 26:26
  Speaker 6: Like he's said.
• 26:28
  Speaker 9: You have?
• 26:29
  Speaker 6: Why didn't you say and I say that while I'm
• 26:30
  Speaker 6: talking about Dick, take words, push them around, and you
• 26:33
  Speaker 6: mislead the people in your audience, and all you ought
• 26:36
  Speaker 6: to start being honest, all of you with your words
• 26:38
  Speaker 6: and what you're saying to people. You said admirers, and
• 26:41
  Speaker 6: he said, biggats a lot of difference his name.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: The last half of the show is just Maddox getting
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: more and more agitated, Dick Cavot trying to calm him down,
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: and Jim Brown looking over at Maddox like he's a
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: misbehaving child. Maddox asks Kavot to apologize. Kavot refuses. The
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: audience makes astonished noises. Maddox stands up and starts to
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: walk off the stage. Kavot says, come on, sit down.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: Maddix says, I'll sit down when you apologize.
• 27:08
  Speaker 7: So it says, if I called any of your admirers
• 27:12
  Speaker 7: bigots who were not biggots, I apologize.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: This is insane. What was Dick Cavot thinking inviting this
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: guy in a show?
• 27:21
  Speaker 6: Why don't you, Georgia have those friends of mine for
• 27:24
  Speaker 6: calling him biggots? I think I may lay down, Dick.
• 27:30
  Speaker 7: I wait a minute, Please don't laise, I'd like that
• 27:35
  Speaker 7: with Georgia.
• 27:37
  Speaker 6: And he also apology to the only biggest.
• 27:39
  Speaker 7: So I'm wait, oh wait, wait wait.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: Maddox gives Cabot an ultimatum one minute to take it
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: back or he'll walk out for good, at which point
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: Jim Brown pipes up, Wait, what about me? How much
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: time do I have? It's a circus.
• 27:53
  Speaker 7: I would say that I phrased the question in a
• 27:55
  Speaker 7: way that was not exactly accurate, in the sense that
• 27:58
  Speaker 7: he did say biggots have any white bigots been upset
• 28:02
  Speaker 7: because you have done certain things about your.
• 28:04
  Speaker 6: Boy back and said my admirs. You haven't apologized yet,
• 28:07
  Speaker 6: and you got fifteen six.
• 28:11
  Speaker 7: All right, now, let me use those fifteen seconds. I
• 28:13
  Speaker 7: apologize for suggesting that a bigot would be the way
• 28:17
  Speaker 7: of characterizing all of your admirers. Wait a minute, Wait
• 28:23
  Speaker 7: a minute, there's more time.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: And less dramatic storms off the set. Oh oh, and
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: I haven't even mentioned that the writer Truman Capodi then
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: shows up. He's then at the height of his celebrity, tiny, fastidious,
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: wearing purple tinted round sunglasses.
• 28:42
  Speaker 9: You know.
• 28:43
  Speaker 11: Curiously enough, I had a cousin who lived in Atlanta
• 28:47
  Speaker 11: that I went to visit and who took me to
• 28:50
  Speaker 11: this restaurant that he ran. It was called Picareb or
• 28:53
  Speaker 11: something like that, you know, well mar and he was
• 29:00
  Speaker 11: always at the door with guns, you know, to keep
• 29:03
  Speaker 11: any any food of negroes out of the restaurant. But
• 29:07
  Speaker 11: I went there with this cousin because he was near
• 29:10
  Speaker 11: the campus, the college campus. And he wasn't bad, but
• 29:13
  Speaker 11: it wasn't finger lick him good.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: The whole thing is so Banana's the Cavit feels the
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: need to apologize to his audience.
• 29:26
  Speaker 7: I'm sorry the governor has left. I went outside just
• 29:29
  Speaker 7: during the break and he's out there with his hat
• 29:31
  Speaker 7: and coat on, and asked him if he would please
• 29:32
  Speaker 7: come back and use the last minutes to say whatever
• 29:34
  Speaker 7: he I would like to say, because he felt that
• 29:38
  Speaker 7: I guess that he was insulted. I did not mean
• 29:42
  Speaker 7: to insult him at that moment. I have to say this,
• 29:45
  Speaker 7: and I hope I don't feel it doesn't come off
• 29:47
  Speaker 7: sounding I don't know what, but I found him in
• 29:51
  Speaker 7: spite of the fact that I would probably despise his
• 29:54
  Speaker 7: feelings about segregation if I were actually clear and what
• 29:59
  Speaker 7: they are a likable man. Would anyone go along with this?
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: Would you agree?
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: The audience is not having it?
• 30:07
  Speaker 7: Why is it what? I'm not backing down. Shut up,
• 30:11
  Speaker 7: I'll tell you what. I'm backing down.
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: We'll be back after this.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: It was a farce. What was the point except to
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: allow a segregationist to play the victim. What good is
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: there in getting someone like that a platform? Except Randy
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: Newman was watching whose imagination has a mind of its own?
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: So were you a regular Dick Cavot watcher in those years?
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: Not that I recall I was, but I would watch
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: and if I was up, i'd watch it. Yeah, And
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: I think I was usually up in those days.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: And stereotypically, you are the Dick Caviot audience, right.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: I am. Yeah. It seemed like half an hour, you
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: know where they were just yelling and yelling and yelling.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: It was.
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was so alien that I felt sorry for him.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: He didn't dismiss that whole exchange or shrug or change
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: the channel. He reacted to it. He imagines what a
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: supporter of Lester Maddocks would think watching Lesterra Mattocks storm
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: off the stage.
• 31:17
  Speaker 6: Dick, I'm gonna give you. I'm gonna give you one minute,
• 31:20
  Speaker 6: so cle Jacksons be for you. Call big, I said, George,
• 31:22
  Speaker 6: I'm gonna Aavey show.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: Now you do whatever you won't do back. He gives
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: that imaginary supporter a name, Johnny Cutler, a home Birmingham, Alabama,
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: a job steel worker. He imagines Johnny Cutler coming home
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: one night drunk, gazing at his sleeping wife, and then
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: he imagines him turning on the television.
• 31:42
  Speaker 4: Last night I saw less Domatics on the TV show
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: with some smart ass New York jew and the jew
• 31:53
  Speaker 4: laugh less dematics, and the autist laughed less dematics too.
• 32:02
  Speaker 5: Will it may.
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: So smart at New York too. That's good last, that's
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: the man. That's pretty good. Click a clicker, clicker.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: That became the first song on Good Old Boys. It's
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: called Rednecks. When I first heard that, I didn't know
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: listra Max was. I didn't even know that it was.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: But that idea of the Southerner going to New York
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: and sitting down.
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: Thinking as Jewish too fantastic.
• 32:31
  Speaker 5: Well, it may be.
• 32:32
  Speaker 9: A fool, but it's awfool.
• 32:36
  Speaker 12: Have to think the better than him.
• 32:38
  Speaker 4: They're wrong.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: So when I came to this.
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: Park, I took you want to sing along, don't you?
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: It's like sail Away all over again. He well, I
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: made this song, but then comes this we talk.
• 32:57
  Speaker 12: We are all funded down here, drake too much and
• 33:04
  Speaker 12: we laughed too loud too. Dun't make it in no,
• 33:09
  Speaker 12: all them town keeping nails down.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: It's nineteen seventy. The South is in upheaval. Lester Mattis
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: has just been humiliated by some smartass New York jew.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: What do you think Johnny Cupp is gonna say?
• 33:25
  Speaker 13: College man?
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: It is.
• 33:30
  Speaker 13: When in dumb, come out dumpty, hustling around a lenner
• 33:36
  Speaker 13: in the alligator shoes, they getting drupped every weekend at
• 33:40
  Speaker 13: the barbecues and keeping the nails down.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: How did people respond to that song at the time.
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: I played it in Lafayette? Uh, it was young and
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: they loved it. I got a letter, the only one
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: I ever got on this song from somebody, and he said,
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: dear sir, I was in the audience in Lafayette when
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: you played this song. He's a black kid, And he said,
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: I don't know where you're coming from, but there I was,
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: and I was enjoying the concert up to then, and
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden, I'm sitting in the middle of
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: fifteen hundred white guys yelling red next. We're red next,
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: you know? And he said it made him very uncomfortable,
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: and he wanted to let me know.
• 34:39
  Speaker 12: Weir read, weard, we don't know.
• 34:45
  Speaker 9: I ask normal, holding the ground, we read.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: Southern audiences started yelling for it so they could sing
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: along with the chorus. Did it become was it taken
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: over by didn't become a kind of Southern anthem for
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: a certain kind of.
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: Or did When I thought that that was happening. I
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: stopped playing it.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: You know, in the South, he had to stop singing it.
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: Many radio stations wouldn't play it, and you definitely wouldn't
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: hear that song on the radio today. It even feels
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: strange to play it here. We've become appropriately uncomfortable with
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: the N word in almost any context. You can only
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: play Rednecks now if you explain where it came from
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: and who Johnny Cutler was. But you can't not play
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: it just because it makes you feel uncomfortable, because Johnny
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: Cutler in Birmingham, Alabama, in nineteen seventy absolutely wanted to
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: keep the niggers down, and we can't gloss over that
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: fact if we're being honest. Oh and by the way,
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: Johnny Cutler wasn't done.
• 35:52
  Speaker 9: Down here, we twigger were to realize at the North
• 35:58
  Speaker 9: sent the niaga free.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: He then names every slum in every northern city.
• 36:02
  Speaker 9: Put in a cage in Harlem, in New York City,
• 36:06
  Speaker 9: it's free to be put in a cage. In the south.
• 36:09
  Speaker 9: Out of Chicago, on the West Side, he's free to
• 36:12
  Speaker 9: be putt in a cage. And he Saint Louis and
• 36:15
  Speaker 9: then put a minute cage and Houghing please, and then
• 36:19
  Speaker 9: put a minutic cage filmont Sian Francisco, and then put
• 36:24
  Speaker 9: him in the cage Lenox here.
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: And Boston they gathered.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: He says to all those smug Northerners, when you drive
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: with your windows up and your door is locked through
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: the projects of your own inner cities, are you still
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: sure you're better than me? Now you have to play
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: that too, because if you're going to be honest about
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: who Lester Maddox really was, you have to be honest
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: about his critics too. Did you ever hear from Lester Maddox?
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: He sent me an axe and didn't really know.
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: Oh that's fantastic.
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: From his store he sold the axe handles.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, pickhandless. Lester Maddox listened to a song about
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: racial hatred, and he sent the man who wrote it
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: a pickhandle as a token of his gratitude. Revisionist History
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: is produced by me LaBelle and Jacob Smith with Camille Baptista.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: Our editor is Julia Barton. Flonn Williams is our engineer.
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: Fact checking by Beth Johnson. Original music by Luis Gierra.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: Special thanks to Carle Migliori, Heather Fein Maggie Taylor, Maya Kanigg,
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: and Jacob Weisberg. Revision's history is brought to you by
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries. I'm Malcolm Gladwell. By the way, there's a
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: great essay on this subject in the twenty fourteen book
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: let The Devil Speak by Stephen Hart. Heart writes that
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: in sail Away, Randy Newman showed one of America's greatest
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: lies being crafted. In his next album, Newman would show
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: how the lie soaked into America's bones. Com aboard Little One.
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: And Yeah, then what you can't I think this is
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: sort of happy. I mean, certainly the voices make it
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: that way. You can't do it?
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's lost all of it's you know. I like that,
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: Like it's something of delicacy you're getting at this. Yeah,
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: artisanal bakery.