Countless tributes of John Prine have been written. It sure doesn’t seem fair that this corona virus thing took him. No words can truly express our sympathies to his wife and family.
When I graduated from college in 1971, I was asked to give the commencement speech as a student. I must have heard John Prine’s “Spanish Pipedream” and it must have stuck in my brain since I remember that I used some lines about going out into the world sans TV and raising peaches.
Prine really wasn’t fully in my life again until Don Breen, a guy I used to work with, gave me a couple of boot-legged albums, oh, I’d say 20 years ago. I had obviously heard of Prine, probably through the MIdnight Special radio show in Chicago. I did hear more Steve Goodman and Fred Holstein, but Prine was leaving town about the same time I moved to finish school in Wisconsin. I suppose that if he, and I, had stuck in Chicago longer, I would have heard of him more, but would have the rest of the world?
That first full, more than fleeting, encounter with him, though, left an indelible mark on me. I will be forever grateful to Don. In that collection the quirky “Dear Abby” made me laugh out loud. “Hello in There” left me crying. To hear most Prine fans talk, he had that effect on almost everyone.
I can’t say I have a favorite John Prine song. There are so many. It is interesting that so many other performers readily pick songs to cover in the tributes abounding since his death. Susan and I cover four of his songs when we do gigs as Wattle & Daub.
Those are:
Angel of Montgomery
Paradise
That’s the Way the World Goes Around
In Spite of Ourselves
We like to say in our gigs that Prine wrote that last one just for us. We’re kind of silly that way. Prine used to tell a story that he wrote the song to run during the closing credits of a Billy Bob Thornton film that was never released. He also told the story of a lady who asked him to sing the “Happy Enchilada” song. “You know,” she told him. “It’s a happy enchilada and you think you’re gonna drown.” I’ve heard Prine tell that story a number of times in shows.
Susan and I were lucky enough to see him as the closer at the Newport Folk Festival in 2017.
You can hear it here.
The festival has a nice montage of that concert in this video:
I’m not sure why, but Prine’s death has affected me as much as Pete Seeger’s did in 2014. It was the year after my first wife passed away. I had picked up the guitar again, one that had sat idle during her long illness. I started playing the old songs I used to know and some new ones. I liked when people sang along, the way Pete made them do.
Pete always wanted people to sing. He once said, “There is something about participating; it is almost my religion. If the world is still here in 100 years, people will know the importance of participating, not just being spectators.”
Pete had lots of causes and demanded that people at least pay attention. He taught us the words, and taught us that we are stronger when we sing together. And, good teacher that he was, he provided a moral guide post for us all.
Prine’s songs had people singing along, too. Probably because they knew all the words already. He didn’t have to teach us the words. We learned them by ourselves. We laughed, we cried, they became a part of us.
We got to participate when we heard these guys, probably more than we even realized. Pete was our conscience. John Prine was our soul.
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