Revered singer-songwriter John Prine dies of coronavirus complications at 73
John Prine, who traded his job as a Chicago mail carrier to become one of the most revered singer-songwriters of the last half-century, died Monday of COVID-19 complications, after surviving multiple bouts with cancer. He was 73.
Rolling Stone first reported his death.
Since he broke through onto the folk scene with his 1971 self-titled debut album, Prine was hailed by critics and his musical peers for his keen observational powers, mordant sense of humor and finely wrought portraits of the human condition, from his trenchant tale of a Vietnam vet's downward spiral upon his unceremonious homecoming (“Sam Stone”) to his empathetic expressions of the loneliness of old age (“Angel From Montgomery” and “Hello in There”).
He had been hospitalized on March 26 in Nashville, Tenn., with coronavirus symptoms, on the heels of previous hospitalizations for heart issues, in addition to treatments for throat cancer in 1998 and lung cancer in 2013. Both affected his singing voice, but he continued touring regularly up through last year.
“This is hard news for us to share,” his family said in a statement posted on social media on March 28. “But so many of you have loved and supported John over the years, we wanted to let you know, and give you the chance to send on more of that love and support now. And know that we love you, and John loves you.”
The statement said his symptoms came on suddenly, and he was intubated on March 29, at which time he was listed in critical condition.
Earlier this year Prine was given the Recording Academy's Lifetime Achievement Award at the 62nd Grammy Awards ceremony. Over the years he was nominated for 11 Grammys and won twice. In 2005, at the request of U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser, Prine became the first singer-songwriter to read and perform at the Library of Congress.
In 2019, he was elected to the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Bob Dylan counted Prine among his favorite songwriters, telling an interviewer in 2009: “Prine's stuff is pure Proustian existentialism. Midwestern mind-trips 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-junkie-daddy and ‘Donald and Lydia,' where people make love from 10 miles away. Nobody but Prine could write like that. If I had to pick one song of his, it might be ‘Lake Marie,' ” a reference to a 1995 song from his “Lost Dogs and Mixed Blessings” album.
As Dylan indicated, Prine was championed early by Kristofferson, who touted his songwriting while Prine was still playing folk clubs in Chicago in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
His eponymous debut album included songs that Bette Midler and Bonnie Raitt would soon bring to much broader audiences through hit versions of “Hello in There” and “Angel From Montgomery,” respectively.
That album, and those songs, set the tone for much of his career: gently rolling ballads of striking depth, often set to his own fingerpicked acoustic guitar accompaniment.
Another song from that debut album, “Paradise,” lamented the devastation of the natural beauty of Kentucky by coal mining companies and has become a modern-day bluegrass standard. It has been recorded by dozens of artists, perhaps most notably by the Everly Brothers, who hailed from the same western Kentucky region the song celebrates:
“Daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in asking
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away.”
“Since the rise of Kris Kristofferson, there must have been 150 albums by new artists in roughly the same folk/country tradition,” Los Angeles Times pop music critic Robert Hilburn wrote upon that album's release almost 50 years ago, “but I don't recall any of them being as exciting as the debut album from 25-year-old John Prine.” The album earned him a Grammy nomination for best new artist at the 1973 ceremony.
That album was no fluke - in the ensuing half-century, Prine wrote hundreds of songs and released more than a dozen studio albums, earning himself a place as one of the esteemed practitioners of Americana music.
A new generation of Americana and progressive country singer-songwriters regularly sang his praises, among them Kacey Musgraves (who wrote and recorded a song about her fantasy meeting with him, “Burn One With John Prine”), Jason Isbell, Sturgill Simpson, Margo Price and Brandy Clark.
His songs have been recorded by a phalanx of country, folk and rock stars, from Johnny Cash and Miranda Lambert to John Denver and Carly Simon to 10,000 Maniacs and the Replacements' Paul Westerberg.
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