Wrigley Field's bleachers and scoreboard, the ballpark where some of Steve Goodman's ashes were scattered in 1988. Photo: SecretName101 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Steve Goodman wrote one of the most-covered train songs in American music and one of the best-known baseball songs in Chicago. He was also a regular at a counterculture coffeehouse in Evanston, where the crowds were loyal enough to help him buy a house.
A Chicago kid with a guitar
Goodman was not an Evanston native. He was born July 25, 1948, on Chicago’s North Side and graduated from Maine East High School in Park Ridge in 1965. He enrolled at the University of Illinois, left after a year and later attended Lake Forest College before leaving to play music full time. He worked the Chicago folk clubs in the late 1960s, including the Earl of Old Town and The Dangling Conversation.
In 1969 he learned that his persistent fatigue was caused by leukemia. He married Nancy Pruter in February 1970. He had periods of remission over the years that followed.
The song that made a career
In 1971 he signed with Buddah Records. He also played "City of New Orleans" for Arlo Guthrie, who recorded it. Guthrie’s 1972 version reached the top 20, and the royalties let Goodman make music his full-time living. The song became a standard, recorded by Johnny Cash, Judy Collins and Willie Nelson. Nelson’s recording earned Goodman a posthumous Grammy for Best Country Song in 1985.
Amazingrace, from campus basement to Chicago Avenue
Amazingrace Coffeehouse is where Goodman’s story touches Evanston most directly. It began in 1971 as a Northwestern student project in the basement of Scott Hall at 601 University Place, after the university closed the Scott Hall Grill following the 1970 campus strike. It moved to the larger Shanley Hall in 1972, where it seated about 200 and began booking touring national acts. In late 1974, after Northwestern grew uneasy about the club’s use of campus space, the collective split from the university and opened at The Main, 845 Chicago Ave., in a building that held almost 400 people.
The Daily Northwestern notes that the room had no bar, so it was open to all ages, and that it drew nationally known acts, including the Grateful Dead. Odetta, Phil Ochs, John Prine, Steve Martin and Allen Ginsberg also performed there.
Goodman figures in the club’s lore. When he needed money to buy a house, he booked four sold-out shows that became known as the "Let’s Buy Steve a House" gig. Afterward his road manager bought the collective a new washing machine, which was dubbed the "Steve Goodman Memorial Washing Machine." Goodman also headlined the final weekend before The Main closed. The last show was on July 31, 1978.
Accounts differ on some details, such as when Amazingrace was founded, with the Daily Northwestern placing its start in 1970. The broad outline is consistent: a student-run room that grew into one of the Chicago area’s notable folk and rock venues.
The Cubs songs and the end
Goodman was a lifelong Cubs fan. He wrote "A Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request" in 1981 and "Go, Cubs, Go" in 1984. He wrote the second after then-general manager Dallas Green called the first too depressing.
Goodman died of leukemia in Seattle on Sept. 20, 1984, at age 36. The Cubs played their first postseason game since 1945 on Oct. 2 that year, and Jimmy Buffett sang the national anthem in his place, dedicating it to Goodman. Some of his ashes were scattered at Wrigley Field in April 1988. His posthumous album Unfinished Business won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album that year.
Illinois Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn declared Oct. 5, 2007, Steve Goodman Day, and in 2010 a law renamed the Lakeview post office for him.
The Daily Northwestern says S.P.A.C.E., a live music venue that opened in Evanston in 2008, was created to carry on the Amazingrace tradition. Goodman’s songs, meanwhile, still travel the way the train in his best-known one does.
Thomas Brennan covers property taxes, real estate, transit and the local economy for The Evanston Edge.
