Atop the 1970 review by Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times that launched John Prine’s career, the headline read “Singing mailman who delivers a powerful message in a few words,” which was as accurate an assessment of Prine’s talent and life situation as anybody needed at the time. The more flowery accolades would come later, as would Prine’s 2007 album with Mac Wiseman, titled Standard Songs for Average People, a playful downplaying of the high craft of an observational and sometimes surreal singer-songwriter who died at age 73 on Tuesday of COVID-19 complications.
Ebert wrote all those years ago that Prine appeared on stage with “such modesty he almost seems to be backing into the spotlight.” Prine never lost his self-effacement, and he never lost his unique ability to craft songs with an elite storyteller’s richness and an aw-shucks simplicity, with material that induced smiles as often as it sobered the listener with its striking melancholy and topical commentary.
This eight-song primer serves as beginner’s guide for those interested in heading down the rabbit hole of Prine’s whimsy, truth and humanity.
Sam Stone: From Prine’s self-titled 1971 debut album, the song, we learn from Ebert’s review, was originally called The Great Society Conflict Veteran’s Blues, which either sounds like a Bob-Dylan-via-Woody-Guthrie composition or a Lyndon Johnson policy proposal. What it actually is is an elegy in F major of an opiate-addicted ex-soldier. “Sweet songs never last too long on broken radios,” Prine sings, on a sad song of the times and one for the ages.
Paradise: Prine was a Chicagoan, but his record label (Atlantic) sold him as a troubadour straight off the farm, sticking him on hay bales for the album cover to his debut release. The song Paradise is fiddled; Prine’s voice is high and lonesome as he takes the listener to his family’s Muhlenberg County of Kentucky roots. Around the same time Joni Mitchell warbled about paved-over utopias, Prine was singing the strip-mining blues. Prine rerecorded a less hick version of song for his 1986 album, German Afternoons.
Angel from Montgomery: As devastating a song about a woman’s existential despair as has been written, the sorrow is doubled (at least) when presented by Bonnie Raitt. “If dreams were lightning, thunder were desire/ This old house would have burnt down a long time ago.” Raitt covered the song on her 1974 album Streetlights. She also sings it with Prine on his delightful John Prine Live from 1988.
Linda Goes to Mars: Prine chronicled the human condition, often in a pricelessly humorous ways. On Linda Goes to Mars, a mook of a husband assumes his wife’s blank-faced indifference to him can only be explained by some sort of alien abduction: “Something, somewhere, somehow took my Linda by the hand, and secretly decoded our sacred wedding band.”
The Oldest Baby in the World (live): The studio version of this co-write with Donnie Fritts is found on 1984’s Aimless Love, but the version on John Prine Live is worth the price of admission for its set-up banter alone. Especially for those of us who grew up reading The National Enquirer, whose “illustrations of UFOs are pretty much on the money,” notes Prine.
Some Humans Ain’t Human: Surgery and treatment for cancer in his neck in 1998 left Prine’s voice gravelled, as heard on his Grammy-winning 2005 album Fair & Square. On a soft bedding of accordion, dreamy slide guitar and a finger-picked acoustic, Prine gently rails against life’s awful people: “You open up their hearts, and here’s what you’ll find: A few frozen pizzas, some ice cubes with hair, a broken Popsicle.”
Egg & Daughter Nite, Lincoln Nebraska, 1967 (Crazy Bone): On song title alone. A co-write, inspired by a fishing buddy’s story, off Prine’s final studio album, 2018′s The Tree of Forgiveness.
When I Get to Heaven: The last song on Prine’s last album, and the last song written for it, too. It’s an offbeat and upbeat itinerary for the afterlife, where kazoos and saloon pianos naturally rule. “Yeah I’m gonna smoke a cigarette, that’s nine miles long,” sings Prine, who quit a heavy lifetime habit after more than one bout with cancer. “I’m gonna kiss that pretty girl on the tilt-a-whirl. Yeah, this old man is goin’ to town.”
Find out what’s new on Canadian stages from Globe theatre critic J. Kelly Nestruck in the weekly Nestruck on Theatre newsletter. Sign up today.