One of my favorite Randy Newman songs,
where he sings from the persona of a guy trying to talk some Africans into
coming to America, soft pedaling the whole slavery thing.
…in
America you get food to eat
Don’t
have to run through the jungle and scuff up your feet
You
just sing about Jesus and drink wine all day
It’s
great to be an American.
It reminds me of his appearance on
the original Soundstage on PBS back in the mid-1070s. He introduced the song
with a story about how it was written for a planned movie with different
directors contributing parts to a whole, like Martin Scorsese, and some others
he named, but it all fell through because the cocaine bill was too high (this
was back when you could joke about drugs and not get labelled a druggie).
I wish I could be clearer on my
recollection, but I can’t find the audio tape I have somewhere that I recorded
from the FM simulcast that used to accompany “stereo” broadcasts before there
were stereo TVs. The tape has Randy Newman on one side and Harry Chapin’s
appearance on Soundstage on the other.
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