Country music’s Mark Twain, an unbridled satirist and chronicler of the human condition, dies from COVID-19.
In 2009, promoting his most recent album Together Through Life, Bob Dylan submitted himself to a rare interview by rock critic Bill Flanagan. Dylan, while discussing his favourite writers, elaborated on his admiration for them one by one. When arriving at John Prine, Dylan said:
“Prine’s stuff is pure Proustian existentialism. Midwestern mindtrips to the nth degree. And he writes beautiful songs. I remember when Kris Kristofferson first brought him on the scene. All that stuff about “Sam Stone” the soldier junky daddy and “Donald and Lydia,” where people make love from ten miles away. Nobody but Prine could write like that.”
On March 26th, Mr. Prine was hospitalised with COVID-19 and was under intensive care for 13 days. He died, age 73, from complications due to coronavirus. He is survived by his wife and manager, Fiona Whelan Prine, his three sons, two brothers, and three grandchildren. It’s a great blow to the music world. Let’s celebrate who he was and what he’s given us.
John Prine was born in Maywood, Illinois to parents born in Paradise, Kentucky. He learnt guitar at 14, taught by his brother David. For five years, Mr. Prine was a mailman until he joined the army, during which he worked as a mechanic in Germany. Upon returning to America, Mr. Prine spent time in Chicago, attending open-mic nights at the Fifth Peg.
When heard complaining about the performers, one of the musicians challenged him, asking, “You think you can do better?” Mr. Prine accepted the challenge and, after completing a three-song set, was offered a $1,000-a-week residency. Roger Ebert, renowned movie critic, gave Mr. Prine his first review in the Chicago Sun-Times.
“Prine’s songs are all original, and he only sings his own,” Ebert wrote in October 1970. “They’re nothing like the work of most young composers these days, who seem to specialize in narcissistic tributes to themselves. He’s closer to Hank Williams than to Roger Williams, closer to Dylan than to Ochs. “In my songs,” he says, “I try to look through someone else’s eyes, and I want to give the audience a feeling more than a message.””
Mr. Prine was eventually discovered by another American country staple: Kris Kristofferson. When Mr. Prine was in New York some few weeks later, Kristofferson invited Prine to play at The Bitter End. “No way somebody this young can be writing so heavy,” Kristofferson said as he introduced him. “John Prine is so good, we may have to break his thumbs.”
Jerry Wexler, an executive at Atlantic Records, signed Mr. Prine the next day. When music critics heard Mr. Prine, they were eager to label him the next Bob Dylan (who accompanied Mr. Prine on harmonica during a New York club performance), as they had with many others from Leonard Cohen and Bruce Springsteen to Kendrick Lamar and Courtney Barnett. But Mr. Prine was one of those rare contenders that could fill the role. His lyrical style, raspy vocals, and country-tinted accent elevated him amongst his peers as one of the all-time greats of country music.
Mr. Prine released his self-titled debut in 1971 that featured a bevy of Prine standards. Songs like ‘Sam Stone’, ‘Hello in There’, ‘Paradise’, ‘Angel from Montgomery’, and ‘Donald and Lydia’ are some of his most beloved and enduring works. He sang with an unmatched maturity and empathy for a man in his mid-20s, with an innate intuition for, and understanding of, the American mythos.
Ya’ know that old trees just grow stronger
And old rivers grow wilder ev’ry day
Old people just grow lonesome
Waiting for someone to say, “Hello in there, hello”
From there, Mr. Prine released Diamonds in the Rough in 1972, Sweet Revenge in 1973, and Common Sense in 1975, all of which birthed more classics like ‘Souvenirs’, ‘Sweet Revenge,’ ‘Christmas in Prison,’ and ‘Wedding Day in Funeralville’. His 1978 album Bruised Orange is considered by his most ardent followers as the singer’s magnum opus. In ‘Bruised Orange (Chain of Sorrow)’, Mr. Prine offers the height of home-grown, folksy wisdom.
For a heart stained in anger grows weak and grows bitter
You become your own prisoner as you watch yourself sit there
Wrapped up in a trap of your very own
Chain of sorrow
After a stint at Atlantic and Asylum, Mr. Prine founded Oh Boy Records in 1984. While never reaching the same heights as he did in the 1970s, he still held a steady following through the 1980s, and returned to the mainstream with the Grammy-winning The Missing Years in 1991, featuring Springsteen, Tom Petty, and Bonnie Raitt.
In 1998, Mr. Prine was diagnosed with throat cancer. The tumour was removed through surgery; in the process losing a piece of his neck, requiring speech therapy and a year of recuperation in order to perform again. In 2013, Mr. Prine would later be diagnosed with lung cancer that required the removal of his left lung. His physical trainer prescribed an unusual method of recovery: the 66-year-old Mr. Prine had to run up and down the stairs, grab his guitar, and then perform two songs while out of breath to rebuild his stamina.
In an unusual move, John Prine released 1999’s In Spite of Ourselves, a collection of country music covers, barring the titular track which was Mr. Prine’s one original on the album. In Spite of Ourselves was his first album after his battle with cancer. The album was nearly all duets with well-known female artists such as Emmylou Harris, Iris DeMent, Connie Smith, and his wife Fiona Prine. In Spite of Ourselves was praised for its collection of songs and the strength of the duets.
Then came Fair and Square in 2005, another high point in his career. Songs like ‘Safety Joe’ and ‘Some Humans Ain’t Human’ proved themselves as modern classics, with the album also delivering a career highlight with a cover of duct-tape clad country musician Blaze Foley’s ‘Clay Pigeons’.
In 2010, Oh Boy Records released Broken Hearts and Dry Windows: The Songs of John Prine, a tribute album featuring covers by artists such as My Morning Jacket, Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band, Old Crow Medicine Show, and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon. In 2018, Mr. Prine released his first album of originals since Fair and Square, titled The Tree of Forgiveness. Songs like ‘Knockin’ on Your Screen Door’ and ‘Summers End’ stood out as the album’s best songs and some of Mr. Prine’s best work.
In 2016, John Prine received the PEN/Song Lyrics Award, an award bestowed to two songwriters by PEN’s New England chapter, along with Tom Waits and his songwriting partner, wife Kathleen Brennan. The American Currents exhibit opened in 2017 at the Country Music Hall of Fame, featuring the jacket and boots Mr. Prine often wore on stage, one of his guitars, and the original handwritten lyrics to ‘Angel from Montgomery.’
Mr. Prine has won two Artist of the Year Awards at the Americana Music Honors and Awards, in 2005 and 2016. He was also chosen in 2005 by U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser to read and perform at the Library of Congress, the first singer-songwriter to do so. Earlier this year, Mr. Prine was given the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammy’s.
With his death, American music has lost another authentic chronicler of the culture. As music evolved substantially through the 1980s, the popularity of musicians such as Mr. Prine, Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson, and many others waned and faded from the mainstream in favour of artists such as Prince, Madonna, and Michael Jackson. A style of songwriting rapidly disappeared and those artists who knew this style often ephemeral by design.
Soon, those last bastions of this knowledge will be relegated to the history books. But as music continues to transform and evolve, they should be remembered, as we remember the life and music of John Prine. After all, it is where today’s music stems from, the endurance of the invisible republic that was American folk and country music. And no-one could sing country like John Prine.
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