The folk songs of singer-songwriter John Prine "have the natural grace and universality one hears only from a born storyteller," asserted Don Heckman in the New York Times. Prine, a former mail carrier from Chicago, burst onto the national folk scene in the early 1970s, performing original melodies and lyrics that poetically sketched the lives of grass-roots, working-class Americans. His 1971 debut album John Prine was widely praised by critics, and he has since recorded several albums that have secured his reputation as a distinctly gifted storytelling songwriter, in addition, his compositions have been recorded by numerous other artists, including Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson, John Denver, Joan Baez, Carly Simon, and Bette Midler. According to Ed McCormack in Rolling Stone, Prine's songs are "wholly and unmistakably in the American grain, jukebox songs, barroom songs, blue neon light songs, liquor store songs, hobo songs … songs like early-American primitive paintings, bittersweet and filled with humor and gothic irony."
Prine was raised in a working-class family with strong country roots. He grew up in Maywood, Illinois, a blue-collar suburb of Chicago, where his father worked in the steel mills. Prine's family had moved to Chicago from Muhlenberg County in western Kentucky, deep in the heart of strip-mining coal country, where his grandfather played guitar with such country artists as lke Everly and Merle Travis. Prine learned the guitar at the age of fourteen from his grandfather and his older brother and soon was composing his own melodies and lyrics, many of which displayed his country heritage. While growing up, Prine spent his summers in Kentucky, and his classic song "Paradise" evokes his family's hometown. He told Time: "Until I was 15, I didn't know that the word paradise meant anything other than the town in Kentucky where all my relatives came from."
John Prine died April 7, 2020, of complications from COVID-19 in the coronavirus pandemic of 2019-2020.
