The coronavirus death count keeps climbing in the US – over 1,000 were recorded yesterday, Tuesday, April 7, 2020.
One hit hard – John Prine.
While I was never a John Prine fanatic, I was aware of him almost from the beginning, playing the eponymous first album over and over again. There was something magical about this album – written, as Kris Kristofferson noted on the album’s liner notes, as an over-achiever: Twenty-four years old and he writes like he’s two-hundred and twenty.
Look at the songs on this one, first album by a 24-yearl old: Sam Stone, Angel from Montgomery (which Bonnie Raitt made her own), Paradise, and – last but certainly not least – Hello In There.
(NOTE: I usually have bad luck embedding YouTube videos on this blog – I put them up and YouTube seems to cancel them the next day. But here’s a brilliant version of Hello In There by Natalie Merchant, Michael Stipe and Billy Bragger performing the song is Glasgow, Scotland.)
Prine’s more recent work didn’t do as much for me, but the first hall-dozen or so albums are beauts.
I had a chance to see him in the late 1970s – around the time of the Steve Goodman produced Bruised Orange. I didn’t know the city (Chicago) that well at the time, and I can’t ever recall where he was playing, except it was a club – Earl of Old Town? Old Town School of Folk Music? Probably Amazing Grace, but I really don’t recall.
I do recall the music and, especially, the lyrics:
There’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the money goes,
Jesus Christ died for nothin I suppose.
— Sam Stone
Well, I sat there at the table and I acted real naive
For I knew that topless lady had something up her sleeve
— Spanish Pipedream
If dreams were lightning, thunder were desire
This old house would have burnt down a long time ago
…
How the hell can a person go to work in the morning
And come home in the evening and have nothing to say?
— Angel From Montgomery
Dear Abby, dear Abby
Well I never thought
That me and my girlfriend would ever get caught
We were sitting in the back seat just shooting the breeze
With her hair up in curlers and her pants to her knees
Signed just married
— Dear Abby
Who is going to write with this wit, empathy and down-to-earth humor?
Who is going to fill the shoes of Maywood, IL’s most famous postal carrier?