Well, we wound up with almost 6 inches of snow yesterday.
Today, everything looks like a Christmas card.
You know, like a winter wonderland.
In 1983, folk singer Steve Goodman released “Artistic Hair,” a compilation LP of live performances. It isn’t a Christmas record but it has a most wonderful rendition of “Winter Wonderland.”
Steve takes a request from the audience to play it, then realizes he’s not sure he knows the lyrics.
“You gonna feed me the words?”
They do, and he rolls on. Then he slips in a confession.
“It’s kind of absurd/when you don’t know the words/to sing/
walkin’ in a winter wonderland!”
Then the big finish!
“I am no longer blue/because I made it through/
walkin’ in a winter wonderland!”
“Winter Wonderland,” Steve Goodman, from “Artistic Hair,” 1983.
Steve might have been asked to play “Winter Wonderland” by the folks in Appleton, Wisconsin, just down the road. It was one of seven places from which songs were chosen for this record. He’d played there in 1979 and 1981.
I like to think he sang it here in Wisconsin, where we often look like a winter wonderland, but it apparently came in Austin, Texas, during a taping of PBS’ “Austin City Limits.” That program aired in 1978, early in its third season.
I met Steve Goodman in 1983, a year and a half before he died much too soon of leukemia, just 36. He was touring to support “Artistic Hair.” I bought that record after his April 13 show in Madison, Wisconsin. Paid $6 for it. He autographed it this way: “Joe — Hello, Steve Goodman.”
That’s a story in itself, one I’ve long considered a wonderful gift from Steve Goodman.