Encore: Good Old Boys

In 2019, Malcolm just wanted an excuse to hang out with Randy Newman so they sat down at the piano together and tried to answer the question: If you disagree with someone — if you find what they think appalling — is there any value in talking to them? Get ad-free episodes to Revisionist History by subscribing to Pushkin+ on Apple Podcasts or Pushkin.fm. Pushkin+ subscribers can access ad-free episodes, full audiobooks, exclusive binges, and bonus content for all Pushkin shows. Subscribe on Apple: apple.co/pushkin http://apple.co/pushkin Subscribe on Pushkin: pushkin.fm/plus https://www.pushkin.fm/join-pushkin See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:28Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 1:57Speaker 03

  This episode contains explicit language.

• 2:06Malcolm Gladwell?

  There are all kinds of reasons for wanting to do a podcast episode. You want to tell a specific story. You want to make an argument, make sense of a particularly powerful piece of tape. But the simplest, and let's be honest, the most selfish reason, is that you want an excuse to hang out with someone you love. And this was the origin of the Randy Newman episode. I am one of the very large group of music lovers who think that Randy Newman is a genius and that his best albums, like Sail Away or Good Old Boys, are basically as good as pop music ever gets. So I tracked him down, actually to his son. Thanks, Amos. Booked a flight to Los Angeles. And on the plane ride, I asked myself, "Okay, of all the million things I could possibly talk to Randy Newman about,

• 2:51Malcolm Gladwell?

  what would make for the best story?" And somewhere over, I'm sure, Nebraska, I realized, "Oh, it's obvious. I need to talk to him about his song, "Rednecks." And so I did. And if you're listening, Randy, and you want to have me over again, just say the word.

• 3:10Malcolm Gladwell?

  In the fall of 1974, the musician Randy Newman released an album called Good Old Boys. The most beautiful song on the record is the third song on the first side. Wait, can I prevail on you to just do a little bit of "Marie"?

• 3:24Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 3:25Malcolm Gladwell?

  Sorry, I love that song so much.

• 3:27Speaker 04

  Well, thank you very much.

• 3:41Speaker 04

  You looked like a princess.

• 3:44Speaker 04

  The night we met. With your hair piled up high, I will never forget.

• 3:54Malcolm Gladwell?

  My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History, my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. This episode is about Randy Newman's "Good Old Boys," one of the most remarkable albums of its era. I listened to it for the first time years ago, but then I happened to listen to it again very recently and realized that "Good Old Boys" is not an album you can hear just once and hope to do it justice. Because it's not just remarkable, it's unsettling. I don't think an album like this could be made today. And by the end of this episode, I suspect you'll agree with me. I decided to go to California, sit down with Randy Newman, and create a listener's guide

• 4:37Malcolm Gladwell?

  to one of the most perplexing works of music that I have ever encountered.

• 5:09Malcolm Gladwell?

  Newman is in his 70s, still writing music, tall and slightly intimidating. He's Hollywood royalty. His uncle Alfred was a composer who was nominated for an Academy Award 44 times, won nine times. Newman has had a second career writing for the movies as well, like "You've Got a Friend in Me" for Toy Story. Newman is unusual among songwriters because he writes in character. And the narrator of "Good Old Boys" is a creation of Newman's. He's called Johnny Cutler, a steelworker from Birmingham, Alabama, 30 years old. The song "Marie" is about Johnny Cutler coming home late after a night out with the boys and gazing, lovestruck, at his sleeping wife.

• 5:52Speaker 04

  I like the idea, very much about being...

• 5:57Speaker 04

  Inarticulate without, that's not the right word, inarticulate, but be unable to have the words unless you drink something. You know, I can't say this to you. And maybe to lack the ability to say those kind of words.

• 6:14Malcolm Gladwell?

  But he's, the fact that he has been drinking and you realize he can only say what he's saying because he's drunk and because she's asleep.

• 6:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:24Malcolm Gladwell?

  Right?

• 6:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:26Malcolm Gladwell?

  But then even, that makes me, humanizes him and even more, I sort of feel so sorry.

• 6:32Speaker 04

  He certainly loves her. I mean, it would seem that that isn't drink, but it might be.

• 6:38Malcolm Gladwell?

  Mm-hmm.

• 6:39Speaker 04

  Is this a good guy? And my answer to that is, I don't know. I mean, I'm suspicious of this, oh, I'm drunk right now, baby, but maybe when I'm awake, I might knock the shit out of you sometime.

• 6:53Malcolm Gladwell?

  Randy Newman wrote, Marie, he created Johnny Cutler. He dreamt up a beautiful love song for him, but he doesn't know if he understands him or even if he likes him. As if Johnny Cutler came from his imagination, but is now somehow independent of it. It makes you wonder, who's in charge of this song?

• 8:09Malcolm Gladwell?

  The story behind good old boys begins with a man named Lester Maddox. Maddox was governor of Georgia from 1967 to 1971. Now, he's mostly forgotten, but in his day, he was notorious.

• 8:23Speaker 05

  I think you're supposed to act for real. I don't look at myself as one of the very smart people. So, I try to act like Lester Maddox, like insight I feel and think and believe.

• 8:35Malcolm Gladwell?

  Maddox grew up in the Depression in Atlanta. His father was an alcoholic.

• 8:40Speaker 05

  My dad never made hardly any money. We, times we didn't even have a bathroom in the house. We had four rooms and a bath, rather than four rooms and a bath. We didn't have electricity.

• 8:51Malcolm Gladwell?

  Maddox dropped out of high school, got a job as a steelworker to help support his five younger siblings, married his childhood sweetheart, Virginia, and after the war, he started a diner near Georgia Tech. The house specialty was skillet fried chicken. He called his place The Pick Rick.

• 9:09Speaker 05

  So, I wanted a name no one else had. And I came on the name, upon the name Pick Wick. And I found out really that Wick doesn't mean anything except what you know it to be, wick. That's what Webster will even tell you that, wick. And someone had already used the name Pick Wick in England. So, I couldn't use that. So, it was about 3 o'clock one morning. I'd been working on it for weeks.

• 9:30Malcolm Gladwell?

  Maddox was one of those people who you can't do a cartoon version of because he already looks like a cartoon version of himself. He's skinny with an oversized head, bald dome, black plastic glasses, always in a black suit, moves with a kind of loose-limbed floppiness, like a clown. There are so many oral history interviews with Lester Maddox floating around the state of Georgia that he must have spent as many hours reminiscing about his time as governor as he actually spent serving as governor. The man liked to talk.

• 10:05Speaker 05

  See, the pick means to fastidiously, to pick out, to choose, to select. And rick means to pile up the heap or the mass. So I named my restaurant Pick Rick and said if you'd picnic at the Pick Rick and pick it out, we would rick it up. And we did, and that's why it was named Pick Rick. I've never heard anything else been named Pick Rick.

• 10:24Malcolm Gladwell?

  Maddox advertised the Pick Rick in the Saturday edition of the Atlanta Journal in a column with the title "Pick Rick Says: Lots of One-Liners in Maddoxisms," like the 1950s version of tweets.

• 10:36Speaker 05

  I talked about Christmas, I talked about marriage, I talked about the monkey house at Grant Park, I talked about weather, I talked about fishing in my ads.

• 10:47Malcolm Gladwell?

  But soon his column "Pick Rick Says" becomes more and more political. Because this is Atlanta in the mid-1950s, one of the birthplaces of the civil rights movement, and Pick Rick is a 10-minute drive from Auburn Avenue, where Martin Luther King and Andrew Young and Vernon Jordan and everyone else are starting to stir things up. And Lester Maddox is not at all happy with that. He's a segregationist, and the more strident Maddox gets in his weekly ads, the more popular Pick Rick Says becomes. People start buying the Atlanta Journal on Saturday just to read what Maddox is up to. Maddox decides to run for mayor of Atlanta. He has no organization, no money, he drives himself around, and he loses, but the race is closer than you'd think.

• 11:32Malcolm Gladwell?

  So he runs again and loses, and runs a third time and loses. But then the wave of desegregation protests hits Atlanta in the early 1960s. The public schools are integrated first, then the lunch counters, then the restaurants. And since the Pick Rick restaurant does not admit black people, the civil rights protesters come knocking.

• 11:57Speaker 05

  Well, the first time it was about

• 12:00Speaker 05

  four whites and three blacks came in. And Virginia and I were about to eat our lunch Saturday afternoon. They told me what they're going to do, and I told them you're not going to do any such things.

• 12:11Malcolm Gladwell?

  What they were going to do was eat a pickrick with the television cameras as witness.

• 12:16Speaker 05

  I said, "You've never been here before. You just want to fuss and fight." So I grabbed two of them. I think one of them was John Lewis or Brown or somebody. And I just about had them out the door when they happened to remember they're supposed to lay down on the floor. If they hadn't thought about that, I'd had them both out.

• 12:33Speaker 05

  And they got on the floor, and I couldn't drag them, so I called my black employees out of the kitchen. And I said, "These people are trying to destroy our business. They don't want to eat with us. They just want to create a problem. They've got the television and radio and everyone with them." And I said, "I'm going to give you $10 for each one of them you throw out

• 12:54Speaker 05

  in the next 30 seconds."

• 12:56Malcolm Gladwell?

  Maddox's employees threw them out, but the protesters came back. This time Maddox met them at the door, with the television cameras rolling and a crowd starting to gather.

• 13:06Speaker 05

  My property, you know. I own this property. You're not going to ever eat here now. You want to own my business?

• 13:12Speaker 06

  What did the court say, Mr. Maddox?

• 13:13Speaker 05

  I said, "You're not going to ever eat here now."

• 13:15Malcolm Gladwell?

  There's Maddox in front of the pickrick with his black suit and bald head, protesters shouting, cameras all around. He's in heaven.

• 13:23Speaker 05

  I'll use ax candles. I'll use guns. I'll use paint. I'll use my fists. I'll use my customers. I'll use my employees. I'll use anything at my disposal. This property belongs to me, my wife, and my children. It doesn't belong to anybody else. I'll throw out a white one, or a black one, or a redheaded one, or a baldheaded one. It doesn't make any difference.

• 13:44Malcolm Gladwell?

  Maddox gets hauled into court because the Civil Rights Act has been passed and what he's doing is illegal. He's given a choice: integrate or shut his doors. And he decides to shut the pickrick. One of the most popular and successful restaurants in Atlanta, the business that he has spent his lifetime building, that made him famous. And to every Southerner angry at the way the world is turning, he becomes a hero. A friend says to him, "You know, maybe you should run for governor." And Maddox says, "Okay." And in 1966, he wins.

• 14:20Malcolm Gladwell?

  A white nationalist in the hospitality business, who came to public attention writing pithy, politically charged statements in a widely read media forum, runs against the political establishment and pulls off an upset victory. And by the way, it's a very close race. Maddox doesn't actually get as many votes as his opponent, but he wins when the election is thrown to the legislature. Oh, and a huge part of Maddox's rhetoric is how the media can't be trusted. He's constantly accusing newspapers of lying about him. In fact, in the corner of his official governor's portrait, there's a little table with a dead fish on it, wrapped in a copy of the Atlanta Journal. A white nationalist in the hospitality business, who wrote pithy statements on a media platform,

• 15:05Malcolm Gladwell?

  runs against the political establishment, accuses the news media of running fake news about him, doesn't get as many votes as his opponent, and nonetheless takes over the highest executive office. I mean, when does that ever happen?

• 15:22Malcolm Gladwell?

  Maddox serves four years, has to step down because of term limits. Jimmy Carter takes over as governor of Georgia, as the state, you might say, returns to its senses. And Maddox consoles himself with running for and winning the job of lieutenant governor. He is well on his way to obscurity. And then he gets a call from New York, from The Dick Cavett Show, the great late night talk show of the 1970s. They want him as a guest. That's when we return.

• 15:57Speaker 00

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• 16:34Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 17:16Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 18:01Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 18:49Speaker 07

  In America, you get food deep.

• 18:56Speaker 07

  Won't have to run through the jungle and scuff up your feet.

• 19:01Malcolm Gladwell?

  The first Randy Newman song I ever heard was Sail Away.

• 19:04Speaker 07

  You just sing about Jesus and drink wine all day. It's great to be an American.

• 19:15Malcolm Gladwell?

  Sail Away is the title track of the album Randy Newman made right before he wrote Good Old Boys. I was a kid when I first heard it, and I had the same experience I would later have with Newman's other songs. I didn't get it at first. I'm not sure I even paid attention to the words. I just loved how grand it was.

• 19:36Speaker 07

  Ain't no lion or tiger, ain't no mama snake.

• 19:43Speaker 07

  Just a sweet war melon and a buckwheat cake.

• 19:50Speaker 07

  Everybody is as happy as a man can be.

• 19:57Speaker 07

  Climb aboard, little wog, sail away with me.

• 20:02Malcolm Gladwell?

  But then I got a little older, and as I heard Sail Away, I said, wait a minute. Everybody is as happy as a man can be. Climb aboard, little wog, sail away with me? Wog, really offensive British colonial slang for someone who's not white. It's the N-word, basically. I noticed some interesting story at behind Sail Away, the song.

• 20:27Speaker 04

  Oh, it was a guy was gonna make a movie, and he was gonna give 10 minutes to five or six pop people, Van Morrison, I remember, and Hendrix, to do 10-minute thing. And I came up with this thing. It had a sort of a sea shanty before it, you know, very Irish kind of yo-ho, you know, there. And then this guy be standing in a clearing.

• 20:56Speaker 04

  In the jungle and singing this song. And that was what I was gonna do with my 10 minutes.

• 21:02Malcolm Gladwell?

  Randy Newman wrote a song about an American slave trader, standing somewhere in West Africa, giving his sales pitch to potential recruits. Come to America. You're gonna love this little cotton plantation that I've lined up for you.

• 21:18Speaker 04

  Ain't no lion or tiger, ain't no mamba snake. Just a sweet watermelon and a buckwheat cake, you know? It's a nose laugh.

• 21:29Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yeah. The character is so kind of outrageous.

• 21:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:33Malcolm Gladwell?

  But we're not laughing along with him. We're horrified by him. I mean, it's-

• 21:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, but people laugh at that in a nervous way, at the watermelon joke and the sit around, think about Jesus, drink wine all day.

• 21:48Malcolm Gladwell?

  Now, there's a way to do that song so that it's not so shocking.

• 21:53Speaker 04

  In America-

• 21:54Malcolm Gladwell?

  Like the cover version done later the same year by Bobby Darin, who was one of the biggest pop stars of the 1960s.

• 22:04Speaker 04

  Bobby Darin is happy, yeah.

• 22:06Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yeah.

• 22:07Speaker 04

  Come to America, little one. You know, they got rid of the wog.

• 22:10Malcolm Gladwell?

  Oh, he did? Oh, my God. But that's like blastering.

• 22:21Malcolm Gladwell?

  In Bobby Darin's version, the line, "Climb aboard, little wog, sail away with me," which is crucial in establishing how vile the narrator is, becomes, "Climb aboard, little one, sail away with me." But I'm sorry, I can't get past this so quickly. That's unbelievable.

• 22:39Speaker 04

  That he did a happy version?

• 22:41Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yes. It's this-

• 22:43Speaker 04

  It isn't. And there it is.

• 22:46Malcolm Gladwell?

  The thing is, Newman liked Bobby Darin. He knew him, and he didn't know what to think. I mean, there is a world of difference between wog and one. Also, if I'm not mistaken, Bobby Darin substitutes the words "mamba snake" with "mama snake." Ain't no lions and tigers and no nurturing mama snake.

• 23:08Speaker 04

  You know, he was, "Oh, I'd like to do that." And it's like, "Come to America," you know? "Come to America."

• 23:16Malcolm Gladwell?

  This song is like this-

• 23:18Speaker 04

  He's not a dumb guy either.

• 23:20Malcolm Gladwell?

  This song is like a, it is a wallop. It is emotional wallop. It is a searing song about the darkest moment in America's past.

• 23:29Speaker 04

  It's a jaw drop. It's like springtime for Hitler in a way. Little one, I'm bored, little one, come away with me. You know, just was so right. His showbiz instincts couldn't restrain himself.

• 23:46Malcolm Gladwell?

  How did you feel when you first heard that version?

• 23:48Speaker 04

  I felt, you know, oh my Jesus Christ, and that was it.

• 23:53Malcolm Gladwell?

  The original intention of Sail Away was to make the listener uncomfortable. Newman takes a familiar figure, a salesman, an entrepreneur, a patriot, and gives him a rollicking sea shanty. But then, he forces you to acknowledge that underneath all that, there lurks a monster. Bobby Darin chickened out. He couldn't do it. He didn't want us to be uncomfortable. And so "Wog" became one, and Sail Away became a glorified nursery rhyme. I don't mean to single Bobby Darin out, because I think that most of us take the easy path in these situations too. But the particular genius of Randy Newman is that he won't do that. He can't.

• 24:44Malcolm Gladwell?

  So, it's 1970. Lester Maddox gets a call from Dick Cavett. "Come on our show." He flies to New York. And who tunes in that night? Randy Newman.

• 24:56Speaker 08

  Ladies and gentlemen, Dick Cavett.

• 25:03Malcolm Gladwell?

  Dick Cavett is a year into his legendary late night show on ABC, up against Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. Cavett's show was like a highlight reel of the 1970s. He did the greatest ever interview with Jimi Hendrix. Groucho Marx was a regular. So was Muhammad Ali. He once had Salvador Dali on the same show as the legendary pitching great Satchel Paige. The famous debate between Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer? That was on Dick Cavett.

• 25:31Speaker 06

  Listen, we have a very good show tonight, and I want to move right into it. Excellent show, I think. I don't know. How do I know? I haven't seen it. It might be a big dud. Why do people say that at the beginning of a show?

• 25:43Malcolm Gladwell?

  Cavett looks like Paul Newman's baby brother. No more than five foot six, impish, big polka dotted tie. His first guest is a woman named Alice Gray, an entomologist from the American Museum of Natural History. Cat eye glasses, hair in a bun, who brings a box full of cockroaches to the set.

• 26:01Speaker 06

  What can we do about them? What can we learn about them? Are they our friends?

• 26:05Speaker 09

  No, they're not exactly our friends, but they're certainly our companions

• 26:13Speaker 09

  in all our doings. And I'm rather fond of them. They have a distinguished lineage. How many of us could meet our ancestors of 300 million years ago and recognize them? The cockroaches can.

• 26:24Speaker 06

  They go back that far?

• 26:25Speaker 09

  They go back that far.

• 26:26Speaker 06

  That's older than the dinosaurs.

• 26:27Speaker 09

  Twice as old as the dinosaurs. All the way back to the coal age. They were already recognizably cockroaches.

• 26:34Speaker 06

  That's amazing. It's always the people you don't like who are the last to leave, isn't it?

• 26:40Speaker 09

  They'll be here long after we have quit this earth, I'm sure.

• 26:43Malcolm Gladwell?

  Cavett does a good 10 minutes on cockroaches.

• 26:46Speaker 06

  Are these your cockroaches or some of ours?

• 26:50Malcolm Gladwell?

  The cockroach lady finally leaves the stage. And then...

• 26:54Speaker 06

  My next guest tonight is Governor Lester Maddox.

• 26:59Malcolm Gladwell?

  Out comes Maddox, the gleaming bald head, the black suit.

• 27:03Speaker 06

  Governor Maddox, I still call you Governor, don't I?

• 27:07Speaker 05

  Call me most anything you want to. Everybody else does. Tip your saft, Dick.

• 27:11Speaker 06

  Have you ever followed bugs before?

• 27:13Speaker 05

  Yes, a few moments ago on your program, Sid.

• 27:15Speaker 06

  That's the only time.

• 27:16Malcolm Gladwell?

  That's the only time? God, I love Dick Cavett. They shake hands, they take their seats. Rust colored swivel loungers atop a gray shag carpet. Cavett shows the audience a photograph of Maddox holding his ax handle outside the pickrick restaurant. And Maddox then corrects him and says, "No, it's not an ax handle, it's a pick handle." And goes off on one of his long, endless digressions about the meaning of the pickrick.

• 27:43Speaker 05

  The pick denotes hard work. And we had in the restaurant some of these pick handles, two kegs of them by a big old fireplace where we burned hickory wood. There were six of them in each of the kegs. And they were dark red because that was the... It looked something similar to a chicken leg, a pick handle does. Not like the ax handle that the news media talks about.

• 28:04Malcolm Gladwell?

  And Cavett, who must be wondering, what on earth, simply says,

• 28:09Speaker 06

  Well, I've certainly learned a lot.

• 28:12Malcolm Gladwell?

  Cavett brings on his next guest, the football player Jim Brown, then one of the most famous professional black athletes in the country. Brown settles down next to Maddox, who is literally half his size, and gives him a polite smile. And Cavett says to the two of them,

• 28:29Speaker 06

  Do you feel separate but equal?

• 28:34Malcolm Gladwell?

  I realize that's 1960s civil rights humor, but I still think it's hilarious. Maddox turns to Brown and says, I thought you was the singer. He thought Jim Brown was James Brown. He then volunteers his personal definition of what being a segregationist really means.

• 28:53Speaker 05

  A segregationist is a person that loves his race enough, or other races enough, has enough of racial pride and integrity to want to preserve them. And I think a racist is one that doesn't care enough for his race or another race to where they would, don't care whether they're amalgamated or destroyed or not.

• 29:08Malcolm Gladwell?

  Amalgamated? Good lord.

• 29:14Malcolm Gladwell?

  Now, think about this for a moment. Maddox is no longer governor. Georgia has come to its senses and elected nice, safe, modern, non-racist Jimmy Carter. Maddox is a footnote. So what point is there in having him on a mainstream talk show like Dick Cavett? The magazine where I work, The New Yorker, had a case like this recently. Donald Trump's Svengali, Steve Bannon, was invited to speak at the magazine's annual literary festival. And everyone flipped out. The New Yorker's writers took to Twitter. A bunch of high-profile celebrity invitees to the festival dropped out. And the argument that was made about Bannon is an argument that could as easily have been applied to Maddox years ago. What's the point of giving someone like that a platform?

• 29:57Malcolm Gladwell?

  I mean, what could possibly be learned from listening to them talk?

• 30:04Malcolm Gladwell?

  And sure enough, what happens over the course of the next hour of the Dick Cavett Show? Exactly what you would think.

• 30:10Speaker 10

  I think what we're really talking about in this country is economic development of black people.

• 30:14Malcolm Gladwell?

  At one point, Jim Brown says something thoughtful and reasonable, that he thinks the priority for black people ought to be economic development. And Maddox jumps on him.

• 30:25Speaker 05

  Economic development of all people.

• 30:26Speaker 10

  What we're talking about, underprivileged people.

• 30:28Speaker 05

  How come you're just black people? How come you just want to do it for black people? How come you don't want to do it for white people?

• 30:31Speaker 10

  Well, I'll tell you. I'll tell you why.

• 30:33Speaker 05

  Huh? How come you want to do it for everybody? How come they're always black people? Why don't you talk about all people?

• 30:37Speaker 10

  Can I give you an answer?

• 30:38Speaker 06

  I think we understand the question.

• 30:39Speaker 05

  Please.

• 30:40Speaker 10

  Can I give you an answer? Do you mind?

• 30:42Speaker 05

  Now, go ahead. If you're ready, I'll give you time.

• 30:44Speaker 10

  Okay, Governor. What I'm really saying is that there are some people that have suffered in this country, poor people generally, but let's say that we have various ethnic groups in this country that have attained a certain kind of equality. Black people are more or less, along with the Indians, on the last rung of the ladder. Can I finish, Governor?

• 31:01Speaker 05

  Foy.

• 31:02Speaker 10

  Can I finish? Okay. Do you mind?

• 31:05Speaker 06

  The governor said.

• 31:06Speaker 10

  Now, what I'm really saying is that I feel that the way to bring about equality of black people in this system is through economic.

• 31:13Speaker 05

  What about equality of white people now? I'm not going to interrupt you. I'm telling you, you can't call them black people. What about equality of all people?

• 31:18Speaker 10

  If you interrupt me, Governor, I can't talk to you.

• 31:20Malcolm Gladwell?

  Then Maddox starts going on and on about all the things he's done for black people in the state of Georgia. And Jim Brown turns to him with genuine curiosity and asks if he's had any blowback from white bigots.

• 31:33Speaker 10

  Do you have any problems with the bigots in the South?

• 31:35Speaker 05

  Have any problems with that?

• 31:36Speaker 10

  From the white bigots because you did so much for the black man.

• 31:39Malcolm Gladwell?

  Which is kind of a great question. Because if Maddox has, in fact, been this great friend of black people, then you'd think he would have angered all the hardcore segregationists and everyone else who was opposed to the civil rights movement, right?

• 31:53Speaker 06

  Mr. Brown asked you, Governor Maddox, if you'd had any trouble from your white admirers for the fact that you have done some things for...

• 31:59Speaker 05

  He didn't say admirers, sir.

• 32:00Speaker 06

  No, he said bigots.

• 32:01Speaker 05

  Well, why didn't you say it like he said?

• 32:04Speaker 06

  You have me there.

• 32:05Speaker 05

  Why didn't you say it? Now see that what I'm talking about, Dick?

• 32:08Speaker 06

  I do see it, yes.

• 32:09Speaker 05

  You take words and push them around and you mislead the people in the audience. No. You ought to start being honest, all of you, with your words and what you're saying to people. You said admirers and he said bigots. A lot of differences, isn't there?

• 32:19Malcolm Gladwell?

  The last half of the show is just Maddox getting more and more agitated, Dick Cavett trying to calm him down, and Jim Brown looking over at Maddox like he's a misbehaving child. Maddox asks Cavett to apologize. Cavett refuses. The audience makes astonished noises. Maddox stands up and starts to walk off the stage. Cavett says, "Come on, sit down." Maddox says, "I'll sit down when you apologize." So Cavett says...

• 32:46Speaker 06

  If I called any of your admirers bigots, who are not bigots, I apologize.

• 32:52Malcolm Gladwell?

  This is insane. What was Dick Cavett thinking inviting this guy on his show?

• 32:57Speaker 05

  Why don't you apologize to people of Georgia, those friends of mine for calling them bigots?

• 33:02Speaker 06

  I think I made clear...

• 33:03Speaker 05

  Now either you do it or I'm gonna leave now, Dick. Which...

• 33:06Speaker 06

  Wait a minute, wait a minute. Please don't leave. I'd like to ask...

• 33:10Speaker 05

  Well, your father lies to people of Georgia. And he owes them an apology, too. The only bigots that I know...

• 33:16Speaker 06

  Oh, wait, oh, wait, oh, wait, oh, wait.

• 33:17Malcolm Gladwell?

  Maddox gives Cavett an ultimatum. One minute to take it back, or he'll walk out for good. At which point, Jim Brown pipes up, "Wait, what about me? How much time do I have? It's a circus."

• 33:30Speaker 06

  I would say that I phrased the question in a way that was not exactly accurate in the sense that he did say bigots. Have any white bigots been upset because you have done certain things for the blacks?

• 33:41Speaker 05

  But you came back and said my admirers. You haven't apologized yet and you got 15 seconds.

• 33:45Speaker 06

  All right, now let me use those 15 seconds. I apologize for suggesting that a bigot would be the way of characterizing all of your admirers.

• 33:56Speaker 05

  No, sir. Good night.

• 33:58Speaker 06

  Wait a minute, wait a minute, there's more time.

• 34:00Speaker 05

  Good night, sir.

• 34:02Malcolm Gladwell?

  And Lester Maddox storms off the set.

• 34:07Malcolm Gladwell?

  Oh, oh, and I haven't even mentioned that the writer Truman Capote then shows up. He's then at the height of his celebrity, tiny, fastidious, wearing purple tinted round sunglasses.

• 34:19Speaker 11

  You know, curiously enough, I had a cousin who had lived in Atlanta that I once went to visit and who took me to this restaurant that he ran that was called Picker Rib or something like that. And, um, you know, well, it was called Picker Rib, Nicker Rib, something there. And he was always at the door with guns, you know, to keep any, any sort of Negroes out of the restaurant. But I went there with this cousin of mine because it was near the campus, the college campus, and it wasn't bad, but it wasn't finger licking good.

• 34:58Malcolm Gladwell?

  The whole thing is so bananas that Cavett feels a need to apologize to his audience.

• 35:02Speaker 06

  Uh, I'm sorry the governor has left. I went outside just during the break and he's out there with his hat and coat on and I asked him if he would please come back and use the last minutes to say whatever he would like to say because he felt that, I guess, that he was insulted. I did not mean to insult him at that moment. I have to say this and I hope I don't feel, it doesn't come off sounding, I don't know what, but I found him in spite of the fact that I would probably despise his feelings about segregation if I were actually clear on what they, what they are. A likable man. Would anyone go along with this? Would you agree?

• 35:41Speaker 08

  No.

• 35:42Malcolm Gladwell?

  The audience is not having it.

• 35:43Speaker 06

  Why is it? What?

• 35:45Speaker 08

  I'm backed down, man.

• 35:46Speaker 06

  I'm not backing down. Shut up, I'll tell you when I'm backing down. We'll be back after this.

• 35:53Malcolm Gladwell?

  It was a farce. What was the point, except to allow a segregationist to play the victim? What good is there in giving someone like that a platform, except Randy Newman was watching, whose imagination has a mind of its own?

• 36:12Speaker 00

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• 36:49Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 37:30Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 39:02Malcolm Gladwell?

  So were you a regular Dick Cavett watcher in those years?

• 39:06Speaker 04

  Not that I recall. I was... But I would watch, you know, if I was up, I'd watch it. And I think I was usually up in those days.

• 39:15Malcolm Gladwell?

  And stereotypically, you are the Dick Cavett audience, right?

• 39:20Speaker 04

  I am, yeah. It seemed like half an hour, you know, where they were just yelling and yelling and yelling.

• 39:26Malcolm Gladwell?

  He was, yeah.

• 39:27Speaker 04

  He was so alien that I felt sorry for him.

• 39:32Malcolm Gladwell?

  He didn't dismiss that whole exchange, or shrug, or change the channel. He reacted to it. He imagines what a supporter of Lester Maddox would think, watching Lester Maddox storm off the stage.

• 39:44Speaker 05

  Dick, I'm gonna give you, I'm gonna give you one minute to apologize to people you called bigger than Georgia. I'm gonna leave the show. Now you do whatever you want to do about it.

• 39:52Malcolm Gladwell?

  He gives that imaginary supporter a name, Johnny Cutler. A home, Birmingham, Alabama. A job, steelworker. He imagines Johnny Cutler coming home one night, drunk, gazing at his sleeping wife. And then he imagines him turning on the television.

• 40:09Speaker 07

  Last night I saw Lester Maddox on a TV show with some smart-ass New York Jew. And the Jew laughed at Lester Maddox. And the audience laughed at Lester Maddox, too.

• 40:30Speaker 04

  Lester Maddox on the TV, so smart as New York Jew, that's good. And then Lester Maddox, the audience laughed at Lester Maddox too. That's pretty good.

• 40:39Malcolm Gladwell?

  It's pretty good.

• 40:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, that really is go clicker, clicker, clicker.

• 40:42Malcolm Gladwell?

  That became the first song on Good Old Boys. It's called "Rednecks." When I first heard that, I didn't know Lester Maddox was...

• 40:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:49Malcolm Gladwell?

  I didn't even know that it was... But that idea of the southerner going to New York and sitting down...

• 40:55Speaker 04

  And thinking Dick Cavett is Jewish too, it's great.

• 40:57Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yeah, which is fantastic.

• 41:12Malcolm Gladwell?

  You want to sing along, don't you? It's like "Sail Away" all over again.

• 41:22Malcolm Gladwell?

  But then comes this.

• 41:42Malcolm Gladwell?

  It's 1970, the South is in upheaval. Lester Maddox has just been humiliated by some smart-ass New York Jew. What do you think Johnny Cutler's gonna say?

• 42:13Malcolm Gladwell?

  How did people respond to that song at the time?

• 42:17Speaker 04

  I played it in Lafayette.

• 42:22Speaker 04

  Louisiana, and they loved it. I got a letter, the only one I ever got, on this song from somebody, and he said, "Dear sir, I was in the audience in Lafayette when you played this song." He's a black kid, and he said, "I don't know where you're coming from." But there I was, and I was enjoying the concert up to then, and all of a sudden, I'm sitting in the middle of 1,500 white guys yelling, "Rednecks, we're rednecks," you know. And he said, it made him very uncomfortable, and he wanted to let me know.

• 43:06Speaker 07

  (singing) We're rednecks, we're rednecks, and we don't know our ass from a hole in the ground. We're rednecks.

• 43:17Malcolm Gladwell?

  Southern audiences started yelling for it so they could sing along with the chorus. Did it become, was it taken over by, didn't become a kind of southern anthem for a certain kind of, or did?

• 43:30Speaker 04

  When I thought that that was happening, I stopped playing it, you know, in the South.

• 43:36Malcolm Gladwell?

  He had to stop singing it. Many radio stations wouldn't play it, and you definitely wouldn't hear that song on the radio today. It even feels strange to play it here. We've become, appropriately, uncomfortable with the N-word in almost any context. You can only play "Rednecks" now if you explain where it came from and who Johnny Cutler was. But you can't not play it just because it makes you feel uncomfortable. Because Johnny Cutler in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1970 absolutely wanted to keep the niggers down, and we can't gloss over that fact if we're being honest. Oh, and by the way, Johnny Cutler wasn't done.

• 44:19Speaker 07

  (singing) Down here we too ignorant to realize.

• 44:27Malcolm Gladwell?

  He then names every slum in every northern city.

• 44:56Malcolm Gladwell?

  He says to all those smug northerners, "When you drive with your windows up and your doors locked through the projects of your own inner cities, are you still sure you're better than me?"

• 45:09Malcolm Gladwell?

  You have to play that, too. Because if you're going to be honest about who Lester Maddox really was, you have to be honest about his critics, too. Did you ever hear from Lester Maddox?

• 45:23Speaker 04

  He sent me an axe handle.

• 45:24Malcolm Gladwell?

  He didn't, really?

• 45:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:27Malcolm Gladwell?

  Oh, that's fantastic.

• 45:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, from his store. He sold axe handles.

• 45:31Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yeah, yeah, pick handles. Lester Maddox listened to a song about racial hatred, and he sent the man who wrote it a pick handle as a token of his gratitude.

• 45:53Malcolm Gladwell?

  Revisionist History is produced by Mia Labelle and Jacob Smith with Camille Baptista. Our editor is Julia Barton. Flan Williams is our engineer. Fact checking by Beth Johnson. Original music by Luis Guerra. Special thanks to Carly Migliore, Heather Fain, Maggie Taylor, Maya Koenig, and Jacob Weisberg. Revisionist History is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. I'm Malcolm Gladwell.

• 46:25Malcolm Gladwell?

  By the way, there's a great essay on this subject in the 2014 book Let the Devil Speak by Stephen Hart. Hart writes that "In Sail Away, Randy Newman showed one of America's greatest lies being crafted." In his next album, Newman would show how the lie soaked into America's bones.

• 46:50Malcolm Gladwell?

  Cover board, little one.

• 46:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:57Malcolm Gladwell?

  Ben, what, you can't?

• 46:59Speaker 04

  I think this is sort of happy. I mean, certainly the voices make it that way. You can't do it.

• 47:05Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yeah, it's lost all its...

• 47:13Malcolm Gladwell?

  If you're not...

• 47:16Speaker 04

  I like that buck we take.

• 47:20Malcolm Gladwell?

  Like it's some kind of delicacy you're getting at this artisanal bakery.

• 47:29Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 48:06Speaker 02

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• 48:16Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 49:01Malcolm Gladwell?

  That's whoop.com for your free month of Whoop.

• 49:05Speaker 12

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