John Prine
October 10, 1946 — April 7, 2020
John Prine was an American country and folk singer-songwriter from Chicago whose deceptively simple songs — about Vietnam veterans, coal mining families, old people longing to be seen, and the vanishing American heartland — made him one of the most beloved and influential songwriters of the past fifty years: a poet in a flannel shirt who made the difficult appear effortless.
A Mailman Who Wrote Songs
Born John Edward Prine on October 10, 1946, in Maywood, Illinois (his family was from Paradise, Kentucky), he grew up in a working-class neighborhood west of Chicago. He taught himself guitar as a teenager, was drafted into the Army in the late 1960s, and spent two years in West Germany with an artillery unit. On returning, he worked as a postman while playing open mic nights at a Chicago folk club. In 1970, film critic Roger Ebert wrote a review of Prine's first open mic performance under the headline "Singing Mailman Who Delivers a Powerful Message" — a review so enthusiastic it changed Prine's life. Shortly after, Kris Kristofferson brought him to the attention of Atlantic Records, which signed him immediately.
The Songs That Mattered
Prine's debut album (1971) contained "Sam Stone" (about a Vietnam veteran's heroin addiction), "Angel from Montgomery" (a middle-aged woman wishing she could escape her life), "Hello in There" (about elderly loneliness), and "Paradise" (about coal strip-mining his family's Kentucky homeland). All four became standards. The album was one of the most celebrated singer-songwriter debuts of the era. Bob Dylan reportedly told friends that Prine "started out better than me" — saying "everything he touches seems to turn to stone." Prine's gift was making listeners feel they had always known these songs.
Did You Know?
In 1998, John Prine was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma of the neck — his treatment removed a portion of his neck and left him with the slightly slurred, weathered voice that characterized his later recordings and became oddly beloved by fans. He recovered and kept writing and performing. In 2020, he caught COVID-19 and was hospitalized. He died on April 7, 2020, at age 73 — one of the earliest high-profile American cultural figures to die from the disease, with tributes pouring in from virtually every corner of American music.
Legacy
Prine won his first Grammy Awards in 2019, at age 72 — a Lifetime Achievement Award and Best American Roots Song — after a career spanning 48 years. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2003. Artists as varied as Bonnie Raitt, Emmylou Harris, Johnny Cash, Kacey Musgraves, and Brandi Carlile recorded his songs. He founded Oh Boy Records in 1981, one of the first successful artist-owned labels, and ran it until his death. His last album, The Tree of Forgiveness (2018), reached number five on the Billboard 200 forty-seven years into his career. He was the songwriter many other songwriters wanted to be.