Good Old Boys was initially envisioned as a
concept album about a character named Johnny Cutler, an
everyman of the
Deep South. Newman made a
demo of these songs on February 1, 1973: they were released as the bonus disc for the 2002 reissue, titled '''''Johnny Cutler's Birthday'''''. 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 stridently on the opening song "
Rednecks", a satire of both
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". Preceding an original song, "Kingfish," which recounts achievements and slogans of
Louisiana politician
Huey "The Kingfish" Long, Newman performs with members of the
Eagles on a song written by Long himself, "
Every Man a King". As with all of Newman's early albums, some material Newman wrote had been previously recorded by other artists. In this case, "Guilty" had been initially recorded and released by
Bonnie Raitt on her 1973 album ''
Takin' My Time''. A lengthy analysis of
Good Old Boys, including a detailed description of the
Dick Cavett Show broadcast that inspired "Rednecks", is included in Steven Hart's essay "He May Be a Fool But He's Our Fool: Lester Maddox, Randy Newman, and the American Culture Wars", included in the collection
Let the Devil Speak: Articles, Essays, and Incitements. In 2014, Turntable Publishing released the ebook ''Song of the South: Randy Newman's ''Good Old Boys, by David Kastin, a full-length critical study of the album's sources, evolution, and reception. In the Sixth Edition of his classic
Mystery Train,
Greil Marcus cited Kastin's book as an "effectively-illustrated...excavation of the entire severed corpus of the work and a deep dive into the history—musical, social economic, sectional, and water-born—Newman both drew from and recast." ==Singles==