RIP John Prine [VIDEOS]

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Courtesy Pixabay

While watching one of my doctor shows last night, my phone vibrated. My young friend Preston told me, ‘John Prine has died. Thought you’d want to know for tomorrow.” My tv show became a blur.  Rest in peace John Prine 10-10-46 to 4-7-2020.

John Prine was an Illinois-born singer and songwriter. He carried the US mail for years in Chicago. At night, he played area folk clubs with his friend Steve Goodman and others. Goodman got Kris Kristofferson to come hear Prine play one night. Kristofferson later said that ‘His performance was unlike anything I’d heard before.” Shortly afterward, Prine visited New York City. He caught Kristofferson performing in a Greenwich Village club. Kristofferson invited John to come up on the stage, to play and sing with him. From then on, John Prine’s life was forever changed.

I first heard John Prine in the late 70’s, at college in Batesville, Arkansas. I was playing everything from Willie Nelson to Todd Rundgren on my stereo. One day, my Jersey friend Doug came by my dorm room, with an album in hand. “What’cha got there, Doug? Another Bruce Springsteen album?” “Nope. Another guy. As much as you like some country, you’ll love this guy. His name is John Prine.”

The album was simply titled ‘John Prine.’ I listened to such great songs, including ‘Paradise’, ‘Angel From Montomery’, ‘Hello in There’, and the very sad song about a Vietnam veteran, ‘Sam Stone’. Alternately, I smiled and cried as I listened. That was the day I became a John Prine fan for life.

John Prine lost his battle with COVID-19 complications yesterday in a Nashville hospital. He and his wife Fiona had apparently picked up the virus in Europe several weeks ago, which really upsets me. Not that they had the novel coronavirus, so much as John fought cancer twice and won. Knowing that, makes me feel cheated somehow. He was 76. I know that he had so many songs to write and sing.

As my friend Cris Bookout would say, ‘Thank you for the music, sir.’ Yes. Thank you, John Prine.

I could play John Prine all day long. I just might, too. Tomorrow: songs that John Prine wrote for others, or had a hand in.

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