John Prine, a revered singer and songwriter, dies from coronavirus complications
John Prine, a Grammy-winning folk singer and songwriter, died Tuesday of coronavirus complications at the age of 73.
Prine was hospitalized last month in Nashville’s Vanderbilt University Medical Center after contracting COVID-19, and family members confirmed he died due to complications from the virus, Rolling Stone reported. His death came “on the heels of previous hospitalizations for heart issues, in addition to treatments for throat cancer in 1998 and lung cancer in 2013,” the Los Angeles Times reported.
After entering the American music scene in the early 1970s, Prine became a favorite of much-admired contemporaries like Bob Dylan and Kris Kristofferson, according to the outlet.
“Even as a young man, Prine — who famously worked as a mailman before turning to music full-time — wrote evocative songs that belied his age. With a conversational vocal approach, he quickly developed a reputation as a performer who empathized with his characters,” NPR reported. “Bestowing dignity on the overlooked and marginalized was a common theme throughout Prine’s career; he became known for detailed vignettes about ordinary people that illustrated larger truths about society.”
He continued to be a prolific artist into his later years. According to Billboard, his 2016 album For Better, For Worse was his first to break the top 40. Meanwhile, 2018’s The Tree of Forgiveness, eclipsed even that, ranking No. 5 for the year.
Prine was born Oct. 10, 1946, in Illinois, and was drafted into the Army in 1966. Though he’d been writing music throughout his younger years, he began writing more while stationed in Germany, according to Billboard.
“I’d taken a break, and my dad had told me earlier he didn’t think what I’d done were ‘real’ songs. I started writing songs again when I was over in Germany, so I wrote a song about his hometown, which I knew really well because I’d spent some summers there as a kid,” he told Billboard, discussing ‘”Paradise,” one of his earliest songs. “I knew that if I wrote a song about him, he’d know I was a songwriter. He used to have me sing Hank Williams songs in our kitchen, so I tried to write a country song with him in it.”
Prine’s music is seen by many as not only having helped define the folk genre, but also having defined a generation of artists.
In a 2009 interview with Huffington Post, Bob Dylan said there’s nobody else who can write like Prine.
“Prine’s stuff is pure Proustian existentialism. Midwestern mindtrips to the nth degree,” Dylan said. “And he writes beautiful songs.”
Dylan specified “Sam Stone” as one of his personal favorites, a track off Prine’s 1971 self-titled album, which featured several classic anti-war anthems.
U.S. involvement in Vietnam would continue for another four years from the time Prine started singing about “Sam Stone,” who came home to his family, though “the time that he served, had shattered all his nerves,” so the veteran turns to the needle for peace.
In his song “Flag Decal,” Prine sings, “But your flag decal won’t get you into Heaven anymore, They’re already overcrowded from your dirty little war.”
His other loved songs include “‘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,” The New York Times said.
“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, the Times reported.
Prine this year was given the Recording Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award at the 62nd Grammy Awards ceremony, the Los Angeles Times said. He was elected to the Songwriters Hall of Fame last year.
Fellow musicians took to social media to mourn Prine’s passing. Country music star Toby Keith tweeted, ‘The great John Prine has passed away from the virus. He showed me how to “let it rip” when it comes to songwriting. There’s a huge hole in the music world tonight. John did it best. RIP -T”
Folk artist Jason Isbell tweeted simply, “We love you John.”
He is survived by Fiona Prine — his wife since 1996 — and three sons, three grandchildren, and two brothers.
This story was originally published April 7, 2020 at 7:06 PM with the headline "John Prine, a revered singer and songwriter, dies from coronavirus complications."