Joe Goode was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in 1937. In 1959 he moved to Los Angeles, California, where he attended the Chouinard Art Institute until 1961.
First recognized for his Pop Art milk bottle paintings and cloud imagery, Goode's work was included along with Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Jim Dine, Phillip Hefferton, Robert Dowd, Edward Ruscha, and Wayne Thiebaud, in the 1962 ground-breaking exhibit New Painting of Common Objects, curated by Walter Hopps at the Pasadena Art Museum (now Norton Simon Museum). This historical exhibition was the first museum Pop Art exhibition in the United States.