The music career of Sadie Goodson spanned almost the entire 20th century. She was only 16 years old when she began playing piano with New Orleans jazz bandleaders such as Buddy Petit and was closing in on 100 years old when she took the stage at the Copenhagen Jazz Festival in 1998. Despite this remarkable longevity, even more interest is generated by the Goodson family itself. There were six sisters, all of whom played piano and at least half of whom also sang. The best known of the sisters was born as Wilhelmina Billie Goodson but changed her name to Billie Pierce following her marriage to trumpeter and vocalist De De Pierce. The rest of the sisters hung on to their original surname: there were also Ida Goodson, Edna Goodson, Mabel Goodson, and Della Goodson, listed in order of least obscurity. Sadie Goodson attached the names of at least two of her husbands to some credits, showing up at gigs and on recordings as both Sadie Goodson-Colar and Sadie Goodson Peterson.

The family is without a doubt the most important musical dynasty from the Pensacola, FL, area. Local historians referring to the Goodson Sisters, however, usually limit the list to the three most famous and active sisters: Billie, Ida, and Sadie. At least that was the perspective offered by a 2002 stage show entitled +The Goodson Sisters: Pensacola's Greatest Gift to Jazz, a combination of dramatized historical narrative and musical performances. Like Billie Pierce, Sadie Goodson backed up classic blues stars Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey in the early days and between the '60s and the '90s received a great deal of exposure internationally as part of the rotating lineup of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Her earliest important gig had been with the Petit band, lasting into the Roaring Twenties and including a stint on the S.S. Madison riverboat in which the band included a musician who may have been her first husband, Chinee Foster.

There are many examples of the sisters working together in various combinations over the years. In the '20s Sadie Goodson accompanied Edna Goodson, at that point concentrating on her vocalizing, in a touring revue known as the Mighty Wiggle Carnival. Many years later the former sister performed together with Ida Goodson at festivals in both the United States and abroad. Apparently in their youth, all of the sisters trekked around the Gulf Coast to get in on jazz opportunities in New Orleans and surrounding environs, to the great horror of parents who had provided them with piano training with the hope that careers in gospel music would follow.

For Sadie Goodson it was pretty much the opposite, mainly holding forth at many raunchy so-called cabarets with players including Kid Rena, Chris Kelly, and Alex Bigard. In an action-packed senior moment -- she was more than 80 years old at the time -- she married the illustrious Kid Sheik, apparently one of her childhood sweethearts. During the mid-'90s the couple relocated to Detroit. While Ida Goodson has provided lengthy and important information in interviews concerning the sisters' backgrounds, Sadie Goodson is the sibling who came up with what seems like a most succinct historical philosophy. When asked in 1993 by a journalist what it been like backing up Bessie Smith, Goodson reportedly snarled "Buy the records!" ~ Eugene Chadbourne, Rovi