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Encore: Good Old Boys · Revisionist History

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