Editing Steve Goodman (section)

==Personal life==
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Goodman was born on Chicago's North Side to a [[American middle class|middle-class]] [[Jew]]ish family.  He began writing and performing songs as a teenager. He graduated from [[Maine East High School]] in [[Park Ridge, Illinois]], in 1965, where he was a classmate of [[Hillary Clinton]]. During high school he began his public singing career by leading the junior choir at Temple Beth Israel in Albany Park. In the fall of 1965, he entered the [[University of Illinois]] and pledged the [[Sigma Alpha Mu]] fraternity. In college he formed a cover band called The Juicy Fruits, with Goodman on lead guitar, Ron Banyon on rhythm guitar, Steve Hartmann on bass, and Elliot Englehardt on drums. He left college after one year to pursue his musical career. In the early spring of 1967, Goodman went to New York, staying for a month in a Greenwich Village brownstone across the street from the [[Cafe Wha?]], where he performed regularly.

Returning to Chicago, he intended to restart his education. In 1968 Goodman began performing at the [[Old Town, Chicago|Earl of Old Town]] and The Dangling Conversation coffeehouse and attracted a following.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.cobo.org/goodman/sg.html#stobit |title=Steve Goodman Obituary |author=Harlan Draeger |work=[[Chicago Sun-Times]] |date=September 22, 1984 |access-date=December 12, 2005 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050722082757/http://www.cobo.org/goodman/sg.html#stobit |archive-date=July 22, 2005 |url-status=dead }}</ref> By 1969, Goodman was a regular performer in Chicago, while attending [[Lake Forest College]]. During this time Goodman supported himself by singing advertising jingles. It was during this time<ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Browne |first1=David |title=Looking Back on John Prine Buddy Steve Goodman |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/looking-back-on-john-prine-buddy-steve-goodman-860284/ |magazine=Rolling Stone|date=July 19, 2019 }}</ref> he discovered the cause of his continuous fatigue was actually [[leukemia]]. This led him to drop out of school again to pursue his music full time.

In September 1969 he met Nancy Pruter (sister of [[Rhythm and blues|R&B]] writer [[Robert Pruter]]), who was attending college and working as a waitress. They were married in February 1970. Though he experienced periods of remission, Goodman never felt that he was living on anything other than borrowed time, and some critics, listeners and friends have said that his music reflects this sentiment. His wife, writing in the liner notes to the posthumous collection ''No Big Surprise'', characterized him this way:

<blockquote>Basically, Steve was exactly who he appeared to be: an ambitious, well-adjusted man from a loving, middle-class Jewish home in the Chicago suburbs, whose life and talent were directed by the physical pain and time constraints of a fatal disease which he kept at bay, at times, seemingly by willpower alone.... Steve wanted to live as normal a life as possible, only he had to live it as fast as he could.... He extracted meaning from the mundane.</blockquote>