eJazzNews Archive

Jay Graydon & Randy Goodrum Interview, October 2008

Originally published on eJazzNews · · By Will Minting · Interviews

On November 1, 2008, eJazzNews published Will Minting’s interview with guitarist and producer Jay Graydon and songwriter Randy Goodrum, conducted in October 2008 for the release of Scene 29, the first album by their duo JaR. The eJazzNews page itself was not preserved, but Wikipedia’s article on Goodrum’s song “It’s Sad to Belong” still cites it. Graydon was still active in 2026, and in April 2026 he wrote that he was about to start mixing the long-delayed second JaR album.

What the interview covered

Only fragments of the text can be traced today. Graydon’s official site lists the conversation among his interviews and quotes Minting’s opening: he called it an honour to interview the pair for the release of Scene 29, said the album had exceeded his expectations, and began by asking how the two had met and when they decided to write and record together. The site links to a PDF of the full interview hosted on the JaR website; an archived copy from January 2009 exists in the Internet Archive.

Wikipedia cites the interview in its article on “It’s Sad to Belong,” the 1977 hit by England Dan & John Ford Coley that Goodrum wrote, next to the statement that the song was one of the earlier pop hits of his career; the citation has been tagged as a dead link since January 2026. Minting had interviewed Graydon once before, in December 2005, for the Toto fan community TOTO99, about his friendship with guitarist Steve Lukather; that earlier interview is published on Graydon’s site.

JaR and Scene 29

JaR stands for Jay and Randy. According to Graydon’s site, the two had written songs together for years, including “Who’s Holding Donna Now” for DeBarge and material for Al Jarreau and Dave Grusin, before deciding to form a band and release their own records. Scene 29 came out in 2008 on their own label, JaRZONE Records, and its songs were added to iTunes in December 2008.

Who Jay Graydon and Randy Goodrum are

Graydon, born in Burbank, California, in 1949, worked as a Los Angeles session guitarist from the late 1960s through the 1970s. His best-known solo is the one on Steely Dan’s “Peg” from Aja (1977), recorded after several other top guitarists had tried the part. As a songwriter he shares the Grammy for Best Rhythm & Blues Song for George Benson’s “Turn Your Love Around,” written with Bill Champlin and Steve Lukather, and he co-wrote Earth, Wind & Fire’s “After the Love Has Gone.” He produced several albums for Al Jarreau, including Breakin’ Away, and formed the band Airplay with David Foster in the late 1970s.

Goodrum, born in Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1947, worked as a studio pianist in Nashville while building a songwriting career. His songs include Anne Murray’s “You Needed Me,” Michael Johnson’s “Bluer Than Blue” and Steve Perry’s “Oh Sherrie,” which he co-wrote with Perry. “It’s Sad to Belong” reached No. 21 on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the Easy Listening chart for five weeks in 1977. He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2000.

What happened next

A second JaR album, titled Code, has been in progress for years. Graydon’s news page traces the delay through repairs to his analog Neve console and other projects, and in April 2026 he wrote that he was gearing up for about three months of mixing. He has stayed active in other ways: his site notes that he appeared in HBO’s 2024 documentary Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary, and through 2026 he has been posting studio and guitar videos to his YouTube channel, All Things Music.

Sources

This page is based on an article from the original eJazzNews archive (2001 to 2018), with background and sources added in 2026. The original text is not republished here.
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