Good Old Boys

Limited 150 gram vinyl LP pressing. Good Old Boys is the fifth album by Randy Newman, released in September 1974 on Reprise Records. It was Newman's first album to obtain major commercial success. Initially envisioned as a concept album about a character named Johnny Cutler, an everyman of the Deep South. The kernel of this concept survived into the released album, although as Newman's take on viewpoints from the inhabitants of the Deep South in general, rather than from a single individual character. As on his previous release, Newman addressed generally taboo topics such as slavery and racism, most stringently on the opening song "Rednecks," a simultaneous satire on institutional racism in the Deep South and the hypocrisy of the northern states in response. Newman also incorporates actual historical events into the album, remarking upon the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 on "Louisiana 1927" and a plea to Richard Nixon to alleviate poverty as a result of the recession of the mid-1970s on "Mr. President (Have Pity on the Working Man)".