John Prine—The Songwriter as Poet (2024)

John Prine lust starting out at the 5th Peg Pub in front of a banner that misspelled his name.

Ordinarily,we don’t think much of it, but songlyrics—literally verses—are poems set to music. Perhaps that is because when it comes to modern popular music the words are secondary to other elements of the song—the melodyor hook, beat, harmonies, arrangements and orchestrations,instrumentals, even, increasingly, theatrical stage or video presentation. Lyrics have to be exceptionally strong to stand out.But a lot are as disposable asused Kleenex, clichéd restatementsof convenient and comfortable tropes. It may not seem as corny as the Moon/June/Moon of vaudeville era pop standards,but from Nashville to Rap and all of the stops in between, there is plenty of plug-in-here familiarity to mix with vocal trills and tricks tomake earworm music that is easy to love.

Butin most songs, if you plunk the words down on paper to readwithout the music they don’t have legsto stand on their own. Back in theday Steve Allen, the late night TV host and comedian who was also a jazz aficionado, composer, self-proclaimedintellectual, and, lets face it, something of a musical snob, could always get laughs by pulling out the lyrics toone of the new rock and roll songs andreading them with mock seriousness.

Wellbe-bop-a-lula she’s my baby,

Be-bop-a-lulaI don't mean maybe.

Be-bop-a-lulashe’s my baby

Be-bop-a-lulaI don’t mean maybe

Be-bop-a-lulashe's my baby doll,

Mybaby doll, my baby doll.

Wellshe’s the girl in the red blue jeans.

She’sthe queen of all the teens.

She’sthe one that I know

She’sthe one that loves me so.

Saybe-bop-a-lula she’s my baby,

Be-bop-a-lulaI don’t mean maybe.

Be-bop-a-lulashe's my baby doll

Mybaby doll, my baby doll

Let’srock!

—Gene Vincent

I’veprobably seen a half a dozen comics dothe same thing with everything from heavymetal to hip-hop to Rascal Flats.

Ofcourse it was not always its way. Musicand poetry were inseparable from birth. From drumchants around Neolithic fires,to Psalms, Homer, and Medieval ballads what we now think of agreat poems were sung by bards and minstrels to long-lost melodies. In the 18th and 19th famous poems were routinely set to music becoming the basis ofeverything from Protestant hymnals,romantic ballads, patriotic anthems,to German Lieder songs. Then TinPan Alley and the three minutesong—dictated by the capacity ofa Victrola disk—and snappy came roaring into fashion. A lotof wonderful songs with catchy patterand the foundation of what wouldbecome known as the Great American SongBook. But the words on their ownwere seldom great poetry.

Therewere some exceptions, of course,moving forward in the 20th Century thearchly playful words of Cole Porter were as clever as anything by Dorothy Parker. The Germanexile Kurt Weil brought his Europeanathetic and paired with great writers who produced real poetry to go alongwith his songs—Berthold Brecht, OgdenNash (Speak Low), and Maxwell Anderson (September Song, Lost in the Stars.) RichardRogers could rise to the occasion.And there were some smokey saloonsongs from the film noir era, anti-lovesongs mostly, that hit the mark.

Theballad—the story telling not justany slow tempo love song—wasrelegated to the edges of popular music—hillbillybegetting country and western, and folkmusic through various waves ofrevivals. Now it has even been bled out of modern radio dictatedcountry hits radio which prefers what is basically rock and roll with a nasal twang.

Butin folk music, the words were always the thing.Stripped down the accompanimentof a single guitar or a handful of acoustic instrument, voices sweet and perfect or raw and real, the lyrical content was front andcenter.

WhenI was in High School a hip English teacher had us study thelyrics of Simon and Garfunkle aspoetry in an APP class for smarty pants nerds. Everyone knew Bob Dylan was a poet. Leonard Cohn was a poet before Judy Collins almost literally pushedhim on stage. Non-folk singer/songwriters like Laura Nyro were also writing lyricsthat could be—and were—published comfortably as quality poetry.

Whichbrings us at long last to today’s subject.

Prine in 2014

Justlast week a short news item floating around the web caught myattention from the Boston Globe.

PEN NewEngland will honor songwriter John Prine with its Song Lyrics of Literary Excellence Award,an accolade that has been previously upon Kris Kristofferson, RandyNewman, Chuck Berry, and LeonardCohen. PEN New England hasn’t officially announced the selection, andit’s possible a second songwriter will be honored in addition to Prine. Welearned of Prine’s selection by way of Rosanne Cash, who serves on thecommittee that chooses the honoree and spilled the beans to a NewYork Times reporter who wrote a profile of Prine last week. Prine, 69, has never enjoyed a lot ofcommercial success, but his songs, which range from wry acoustic folk tocountry, are much admired by his peers. The award ceremony will be held at the JFK Library, though the date has yet to be announced.

Sothere you have it. No less an august body than a section of PEN, theinternational organization of writers, will bestow its blessing on Prine and his words.I guess that makes ‘em officiallypoetry if anything does.

AroundChicago the legend of the MaywoodMailman is well known and time honored.In May 1970 Prine, a skinny guy with a mop of brown hair, was hanging around the 5th Peg Pub a saloon andfolk club operated by Ray Tate, the chief instructor at the OldTown School of Folk Music just across the street on Armitage. Prine was in theaudience of a weekly Monday night openmic that featured mostly teachers and students from the school. Fueled, perhaps, by an extra drink or two, hemay have made a disparaging commentabout some fledgling songwriter’seffort which supposedly resulted in an “Oh, yeah, I’d like to see you dobetter,” dare. Prine borrowed a guitar and took to thestage. He sang five original songs, every one of which was a masterpiece destined to become a revered classic including Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You into HeavenAny More, Hello in There, Sam Stone, Paradise, and Angel from Montgomery. The audience sat in stunned silence beforebursting into cheers.

Prinekept coming back to the open mic in the weeks that followed and word of mouth spread through the close knit Chicago folk musicscene. The place was jammed week afterweek. Tate gave Prine a steady Sunday night slot in July where he wasgreeted with a backdrop banner that misspelled his last name. Nomatter. Soon he was so popular he wasgiven Friday and Saturday slots as well. The small club with virtually no advertising was turningpeople away at the doors week after week.It was about that time that I first saw him, the 5th Peg being one ofseveral regular watering holes thenon my rounds of dives.

Moreimportantly in November Chicago SunTimes movie critic RogerEbert caught him there and was so awe struck that he rushedback to the paper and pounded out a virtual paean of a column—Prine’s first ink.

He appears onstage with such modesty he almost seems to be backing into the spotlight. Hesings rather quietly, and his guitar work is good, but he doesn't show off. Hestarts slow. But after a song or two, even the drunks in the room begin tolisten to his lyrics. And then he has you… You hear lyrics like these,perfectly fitted to Prine’s quietly confident style and his ghost of a Kentuckyaccent, and you wonder how anyone could have so much empathy and still belooking forward to his 24th birthday on Saturday.

Best buddies Steve Goodman & Prine at the Earl

After that Prine was an official Chicagosensation. He played to top folkclubs—the Saddle Club on North Avenue, Richard Harding’s second QuietKnight location on Belmont, TheBulls on Lincoln, and later Somebody Else’s Troubles and Holstein’s further up Lincoln. But he made the established folk Mecca The Earl of Old Town an unofficial homebase and was the center there of a fabulous scene that included his good buddy Steve Goodman, Bonnie Koloc, Jim Post, Fred Holstein, and others. He also worked with established folk legend Bob Gibson and mandolinist Jethro Burns of HomerJethro. When he added electric sets to his repertoire Jethro’s son Johnny Burns traded riffs withhim.

It was at the Earl that Kris Kristofferson,as noted no slouch as a songwriter and lyricist himself, heard Prine andhelped him get a deal with Atlantic Records. JohnPrine came out in 1971 and never got above number 154 on the Billboardcharts. But it was a passed-from-hand-to-hand cult hit amongfolkies and Nashville rebels. Half thealbums must have been sold to other awestruck musicians many of whom covered his songs and clamored to play withhim on stage. Even Bob Dylan himself climbed on the stage of Prine’s first New York City gig to anonymously blow back-up harp. I was then on the staff of the old Chicago Seed underground newspaper andgot to write one of the first reviews of the album, an unapologetic rave.

Prine hated his first album cover where his label posed him on hay bales.

Prine was born in Maywood, Illinois, awestern working class Chicago suburb on October 10, 1946. His fatherand mother, William Prine and the former VernaHamm were from Paradise, Kentucky in Muhlenberg County and had joined the migration from Appalachia tothe North for industrial jobs in the Waryears. His grandfather was a former coal miner and sometimes preacher who also played music professionally including stints with Merle Travis,writer of the coal mining classics Dark as a Dungeon and SixteenTons and Ike Everly, fatherof the Everly Brothers. Stories about Kentucky and occasionalsummer trips “home” kept the Appalachian experience alive for the boy.

When his first album came out Prine wasupset that the label posed him on bales of hay for the cover in anattempt to win a country musicaudience. Prine protested he hadnever sat on hay in his life. His people“were miners, not farmers.” He flatlyrefused to wear a cowboy hat.

Music always played a part in the familylife. When John was 15 his older brotherDave, a banjo, fiddle, and guitar player, taught him how to play theguitar. He became inseparable from hisinstrument and was diddling around with making up songs while still attending Proviso East High School in Maywood.

After graduation Prine went into the Army and was lucky enough to draw posting to Germany rather the Vietnam. That narrow escape haunted him somewhat and he always felt a kinship with the guys whowent to war—many of them classmates andbuddies.He would write about them in SamStone and other songs and would always have an anti-war and anti-establishmentstreak that would carry forward into songs about George W. Bush and his wastefulwars decades later.

Out of the Army Prine returned home, married his sweetheart Ann Carole and settled down with a good job—carrying the mail inWestchester, another westernsuburb. He was scribbling song ideas andnoodling on the guitar at night and on weekends. After seeing Ray Tate interviewed on TV, heshowed up at the Old Town School, which he had never previously heard of, andenrolled in classes. So perhaps thelegend of taking the stage on a dare at Tate’s club, was a bit apocryphal.Tate knew what a talent he had and just needed to find him a way toget him in front of an audience.

Prine was more than a little shy and hisfirst public appearance earlier thatspring at a Maywood Village festival had not gone well. The festival was fun, rowdy, and beer soaked. The audience didn’t care a thing about or knowfolk music. They wanted to rock.Prine felt like a failure in his home town.

With success that shyness faded andPrine became comfortable on stage, especially when he could share it withbuddies like Steve Goodman. He liked thecamaraderie of music, the drinking, and the weed. John and his pals knewhow to party.

Through the 70’s while keeping a base inChicago, Prine began to tour nationally. Albums followed almost yearly, eachwith memorable gems. On Atlantic he putout Diamondsin the Rough, Sweet Revenge, and Common Sense which finally brokeinto the Top 100 albums of 1975 at#66. He moved on to Assylum for three more albums but was dropped from the label in 1980for lack of commercial success.

Prine and Kristofferson in Las Vegas, 2015.

For four years despite continued success as a touring act andthe unanimous esteem of the best musicians not only in folk andcountry music, but in rock and roll as well, Prine could not find a recordlabel. So in 1984 he started his own—Oh Boy Records. The master of his own fate, he has nowreleased 15 albums on that label. Somehave cracked various Billboard album categories—1999’s In Spite of Ourselves hit#21 on the Country Chart; Fair and Square in 2005 and StandardSongs for Average People in 2007 hit #2 and #37 on the Indie list; In Person On Stage in 2010 got to #27 on the Rock Chart and #1 in Folk; an 2011’s Singing Mailman Delivers hadwide appeal at #20 Indie, #22 Rock, and #4 Folk.

Prine gathered plenty of accolades and honors in his long career.He has been cited as a favorite songwriter and/or major influence by Kristofferson,Dylan, Elvis Pressley, Johnny Cash, andRoger Waters of Pink Floyd to name just a few. In 1991 The Missing Years pickedup the Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album. In 2003, Prinegot a Lifetime Achievement Award for Songwritingfrom Britain’s BBC Radio 2 and that sameyear was inducted into the NashvilleSongwriters Hall of Fame. He got a second Folk Grammy in 2005 for Fairand Square. The same year he wasalso won the Artist of the Year Awardat the Americana Music Awards andwas invited to be the first songwriter to read and sing at the Library of Congress by Poet Laureate Ted Kooser.

Prine with Poet Laureate Ted Kooser (left) at the Library of Congress.

Despite the plaudits, Prine has faced serioushealth issues. In 1998 surgical and radiation treatment for serioussquamous cell cancer took a lot oftissue and radiation burns altered histenor voice leaving it changed and more gravely. As soon as hewas strong enough, however he wasback on tour and recording some of the strongest material of his career. In 2013 just after I last saw him at the star studded Birthday Salute to EarlPionke—the Earl of Old Town himsel--that was put together by Marina Jason, Prine was diagnosed with an unrelated early detected lung cancer. He seems to have recovered fully fromtreatment for that and is back out on the road like the trouper he is.

Prine now lives primarily in Nashvillewith his third wife Fiona Whelan andhas homes in Galway, Ireland and Gulfport, Florida.

And now for some of those Prine poem/lyrics.

SamStone

Original Title:The Great Society Conflict Veteran’s Blues

Sam Stone came home,
To his wife and family
After serving in the conflict overseas.
And the time that he served,
Had shattered all his nerves,
And left a little shrapnel in his knee.
But the morphine eased the pain,
And the grass grew round his brain,
And gave him all the confidence he lacked,
With a Purple Heart and a monkey on his back.

Sam Stone’s welcome home
Didn’t last too long.
He went to work when he'd spent his last dime
And Sammy took to stealing
When he got that empty feeling
For a hundred dollar habit without overtime.
And the gold rolled through his veins
Like a thousand railroad trains,
And eased his mind in the hours that he chose,
While the kids ran around wearin’ other peoples' clothes...

Repeat Chorus:

Sam Stone was alone
When he popped his last balloon
Climbing walls while sitting in a chair
Well, he played his last request
While the room smelled just like death
With an overdose hovering in the air
But life had lost its fun
And there was nothing to be done
But trade his house that he bought on the G. I. Bill
For a flag draped casket on a local heroes’ hill.

—John Prine

Paradise

—John Prine

SomeHumans Ain’t Human

Some humans ain’t human
Some people ain’t kind
You open up their hearts
And here’s what you'll find
A few frozen pizzas
Some ice cubes with hair
A broken Popsicle
You don’t want to go there.

Some humans ain’t human
Though they walk like we do
They live and they breathe
Just to turn the old screw
They screw you when you're sleeping
They try to screw you blind
Some humans ain’t human
Some people ain’t kind.

You might go to church
And sit down in a pew
Those humans who ain’t human
Could be sittin’

right next to you

They talk about your family
They talk about your clothes
When they don’t know their own ass
From their own elbows

Jealousy and stupidity
Don’t equal harmony
Jealousy and stupidity
Don’t equal harmony

Mmmm Mmmm
Mmmm Mmmm
Mmmm Mmmm
Mmmm Mmmm

Spoken:
Have you ever noticed
When you’re feeling really good
There’s always a pigeon
That’ll come sh*t on your hood

Or you’re feeling your freedom
And the world’s off your back

Some humans ain’t human
Some people ain’t kind
They lie through their teeth
With their head up their behind
You open up their hearts
And here’s what you’ll find
Some humans ain’t human
Some people ain’t kind.

—John Prine