Celebrated icon chronicled the human condition in song
John Prine, the raspyvoiced country-folk singer whose ingenious lyrics to songs by turns poignant, angry and comic made him a favorite of Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson and others, died Tuesday at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. He was 73.
The cause was complications from COVID-19, his family said.
Prine underwent cancer surgery in 1998 to remove a tumor in his neck identified as squamous cell cancer, which had damaged his vocal cords. In 2013, he had part of one lung removed to treat lung cancer.
Prine was a relative unknown in 1970 when Kristofferson heard him play one night at a small Chicago club called the Fifth Peg, dragged there by singer-songwriter Steve Goodman. Kristofferson was performing in Chicago at the time at the Quiet Knight. At the Fifth Peg, Prine treated him to a brief after-hours performance of material that, Kristofferson later wrote, “was unlike anything I’d heard before.”
A few weeks later, when Prine was in New York, Kristofferson invited him onstage at the Bitter End in Greenwich Village, where he was appearing with Carly Simon, and introduced him to the audience.
“No way somebody this young can be writing so heavy,” he said. “John Prine is so good, we may have to break his thumbs.”
Record executive Jerry Wexler, who was in the audience, signed Prine to a contract with Atlantic Records the next day.
Music writers at the time were eager to crown a successor to Dylan, and Prine, with his nasal, sandpapery voice and literate way with a song, came ready to order. His debut album, called simply “John Prine” and released in 1971, included songs that became his signatures. Some gained wider fame after being recorded by other artists.
They included “Sam Stone,” about a drug-addicted war veteran (with the unforgettable refrain “There’s a hole in Daddy’s arm where all the money goes”); “Hello in There,” a heart-rending evocation of old age and loneliness; and “Angel From Montgomery,” the hard-luck lament of a middle-aged woman dreaming about a better life, later made famous by Bonnie Raitt.
“He’s a true folk singer in the best folk tradition, cutting right to the heart of things, as pure and simple as rain,” Raitt told Rolling Stone in 1992.
Dylan, listing his favorite songwriters for The Huffington Post in 2009, put Prine front and center. “Prine’s stuff is pure Proustian existentialism,” he said. “Midwestern mind trips to the nth degree. And he writes beautiful songs.”
John Prine was born Oct. 10, 1946, in Maywood, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, to William and Verna (Hamm) Prine. His father, a tool- and- die maker at American Can Co., and his mother had moved from the coal town of Paradise, Kentucky, in the 1930s.
Prine had a particular gift for offbeat humor, reflected in songs like “Jesus, the Lost Years,” “Some Humans Ain’t Human,” “Sabu Visits the Twin Cities Alone” and the anti-war screed “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore.”
Prine, who lived in Nashville, was divorced twice. He is survived by his wife, Fiona Whelan Prine, a native of Ireland whom he married in 1996; three sons, Jody, Jack and Tommy; two brothers, Dave and Billy; and three grandchildren. In 2017, Prine published “John Prine Beyond Words,” a collection of lyrics, guitar chords, commentary and photographs from his own archive.
In December, he was chosen to receive a 2020 Grammy f or l i f etime achievement.