John Prine,Gordon,Jim Cuddy,bio author-N.Jennings-house concert-DEATH of Prine-Apr/20
John Prine doing a house concert in Toronto - House of Strombo - Brad Wheeler - (Globe & Mail) , tweets - ''Just caught John Prine at the House of Strombo. Gord Lightfoot in the crowd. Jim Cuddy only the third best songwriter in the room.''
Nicholas Jennings (LIGHTFOOT bio author) - ''John Prine singing “Far From Me” directly to Gordon Lightfoot (his favourite Prine song) at the House of Strombo. Magic.'' andMeanwhile in Toronto - John Prine doing a house concert in Toronto - @House of Strombo - and ''Everyone in the House getting to play kazoo with Prine on “When I Get to Heaven” was incredibly special too. Thanks Strombo!'' |
Re: John Prine, Gordon Lightfoot & Jim Cuddy...house concert
Everyone has a mobile device and no photos?
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Re: John Prine, Gordon Lightfoot & Jim Cuddy...house concert
lol... it was a 'no photo' event apparently...
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Re: John Prine, Gordon Lightfoot & Jim Cuddy...house concert
working on it...
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Re: John Prine, Gordon Lightfoot & Jim Cuddy...house concert
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Re: John Prine, Gordon Lightfoot & Jim Cuddy...house concert
Awesome Char. Two of the greats!
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Re: John Prine, Gordon Lightfoot & Jim Cuddy...house concert
Matt Sauls on TWITTER:
Somehow found myself sitting next to Gordon Lightfoot in @strombo's living room yesterday, watching John Prine (!) play a set for 40-50 people. I'm so incredibly grateful for that beautiful moment, words can't describe. Thank you all! https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4857/...8009f02e_o.jpgjohn prine-house of strombo-g.l.matt sauls photo by char Westbrook, on Flickr |
Re: John Prine, Gordon Lightfoot & Jim Cuddy...house concert
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Re: John Prine, Gordon Lightfoot & Jim Cuddy...house concert
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Re: John Prine, Gordon Lightfoot & Jim Cuddy...house concert
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Re: John Prine, Gordon Lightfoot & Jim Cuddy...house concert
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Re: John Prine, Gordon Lightfoot & Jim Cuddy...house concert
Listening to the radio show now... 1971 - Riverboat - first time Prine played there and his ''songwriting hero'' was sitting at the front table with 3 girls... Strombo asked, "Do you remember it like that Gord?" Gord said, ''yes!".. After the show Gordon was out in the middle of Yonge St. with Prine singing the chorus of Prine's "Far From Me", Gordon's favourite Prine tune..
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Re: John Prine, Gordon Lightfoot & Jim Cuddy...house concert
and coming soon to YOUTUBE - the whole thing!!
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Re: John Prine, Gordon Lightfoot & Jim Cuddy...house concert
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5Rk...ature=youtu.be
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5Rkm...e=youtu.beJohn Prine, “Crazy Bone (Strombo Sessions)” John Prine, “Far From Me (Strombo Sessions)” John Prine, “Speed Of Sound And Loneliness (Strombo Sessions)” John Prine, “Sam Stone (Strombo Sessions)” John Prine, “Summer’s End (Strombo Sessions)” John Prine, “Ramblin Fever (Merle Haggard Cover) (Strombo Sessions)” John Prine, “Christmas In Prison (Strombo Sessions)” John Prine, “When I Get To Heaven (Strombo Sessions)” |
Re: John Prine, Gordon Lightfoot & Jim Cuddy...house concert
VIDEO of the night.. great shots of Gordon, Kim and Meredith....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5Rkm...ature=youtu.be https://youtu.be/w5Rkm_dqm7A |
Re: John Prine, Gordon Lightfoot & Jim Cuddy...house concert
Songwriter John Prine floors one Lightfoot, impresses another.
B.Wheeler.Globe and Mail. Dec.14,2018. Link below text. Last week at an exclusive house concert recorded for George Stroumboulopoulos’s show on CBC Music, a fan of the songwriter John Prine passed out during the performance. We can call it faint praise for Prine, but not the damning kind. In fact, quite the opposite. Prine, 72, performed eight songs at Stroumboulopoulos’s downtown Toronto home, where 100 or so fans and well-known musicians squeezed into a living room and kitchen for a midday serenading taped for a Dec. 16 broadcast. Jim Cuddy was there as a VIP guest, but the Blue Rodeo star was only the third-best songwriter in the room, because Gordon Lightfoot was in attendance as well. As was Hamilton folk-rocker Terra Lightfoot (no relation to the Sundown icon). Suffering from a cold, she had knocked back some over-the-counter medication to suppress the symptoms. Apparently the remedy was past its expiry date. Soon after swallowing a dose, Lightfoot felt “a little weird.” Later, as Prine sang his 1971 song Sam Stone, she sank like a rock in the sea, hitting the floor, briefly unconscious. “My vision blurred, and everything just went black,” she later told The Globe and Mail. “When I came to, people were saying my name. Just like in the movies.” Waiting for the song to finish, a recovered Lightfoot discreetly left the room, not willing to risk any possible distraction. Because the collapse happened behind Prine, the revered American songster hadn’t realized anything was amiss. Later, though, after being informed of the incident, he took Lightfoot’s brief wooziness as a compliment. “I heard we made a girl faint,” he good-naturedly told Stroumboulopoulos. “We haven’t done that in 30 years.” Twenty years ago, Prine was diagnosed with cancer on the right side of his neck. Though he recovered, the successful surgery left him with a gravelly voice. Unhampered, he continues to record and perform. Prine was in Toronto for a concert at Sony Centre in support of The Tree of Forgiveness, his first album of original material in more than a dozen years. Before The Strombo Show taping, Prine privately met with the other Lightfoot, Gordon, in the basement of Stroumboulopoulos’s comfortable (but by no means grandiose) home. The two talked songwriting and recalled a beery night together in Toronto back in the 1970s. “It was kind of like being in a museum and watching Mona Lisa talk to the statue of David," Stroumboulopoulos told The Globe, about witnessing the two songwriters casually chat. “I think sometimes Canadians, particularly young Canadians, forget just how big a deal Gordon Lightfoot is.” Prine forgets nothing of the sort. During the taping, with his old friend sitting a few feet away, Prine told a story about first meeting Lightfoot at the old Riverboat folk club, where Prine gave a string of concerts in 1971. “The second night I was there, my songwriting hero came, Gordon Lightfoot,” Prine recalled. “Sitting down at the front table there, right in front of me. It was intimidating as hell, you know?” One can imagine. But, then, one didn’t really need to imagine anything, because there was the 80-year-old Lightfoot sitting again at Prine’s feet, this time in Stroumboulopoulos’s living room instead of the Riverboat. In recognition of the occasion, Prine played Far From Me, a breakup song and apparently Lightfoot’s favourite Prine composition. Later, when Prine sang Sam Stone, as sad a song as has ever been written, you could have heard a pin drop. Or a Lightfoot drop. Luckily there was a spare. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts...esses-another/ |
Re: John Prine, Gordon Lightfoot & Jim Cuddy...house concert
That was all great--thanks for posting Char. Makes me wonder if Lightfoot might consider a Prine cover to fill out the new album? Perhaps "Far from Me".
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Re: John Prine, Gordon Lightfoot & Jim Cuddy...house concert
great photos, char! thanks for sharing... I did not recognize George
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Re: John Prine, Gordon Lightfoot & Jim Cuddy...house concert
Just stumbled on the video. What a hoot! So, I logged on to corfid for the first time in a very long time. Knew it would be discussed here. If anybody remembers me, "Hi". I'm now living in Fort Collins, CO and loving it. Craft beer capital of the world!
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Re: John Prine, Gordon Lightfoot & Jim Cuddy...house concert
Hi Steve- glad you could log in.. some folks are having problems logging in and/or registering. And Florian is nowhere to be found! This house concert is so epic. I love Prine and having him once again stand in front of his songwriting hero at this stage of their lives, both survivors of serious medical issues and watch Gordon in all of his beautiful quiet humility accept the praise (humble and humility combined) gets to my heart every time I watch it..
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Re: John Prine, Gordon Lightfoot & Jim Cuddy...house concert
I really didn't know Prine until a Lightfoot weekend at Melissa's in Cedar Park, TX. They started doing Prine songs and I was very impressed. Have been a fan every since. Melissa got us access to the PBS studio in Austin and we recorded some songs on the Austin City Limits stage. What a great weekend it was!
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Re: John Prine, Gordon Lightfoot & Jim Cuddy...house concert
Wow, Hi, Steve! It's been a long time! Hard to believe that gathering was 15 years ago, back at the old house that was actually IN Austin.....before we moved out here to the burbs. Back then, I didn't know much Prine either - just the few tunes I'd heard on the radio many years ago - Illegal Smile, Dear Abby. Plus, I'd heard John Denver do several - Paradise, Angel from Montgomery, Blow Up Your TV. But it was our buddy, Ed, who got our little group really going into the Prine tunes. I've seen Prine in concert 6 or 7 times now, and he still does an awesome show. I would have given a lot to have been at that little house concert in TO. I still can't get over seeing Gord sitting there with closed eyes, mouthing the lyrics to "Far From Me." That's been my favorite Prine tune for a long time, and now it's even more special.
Glad you're getting along well up in Colorado, Steve! Melissa |
Re: John Prine, Gordon Lightfoot & Jim Cuddy...house concert
https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/434...sts/1203134509
Sony Pictures Classics has acquired all rights worldwide to the John Prine documentary tentatively titled “John Prine: Hello in There,” which is in post-production. SPC is planning a theatrical release. The film tells the story of the singer/songwriter who has “notoriously been very mysterious to much of the public,” SPC said. Prine broke through with an album he wrote as a mailman in the Chicago suburbs, and went on “to create some of the strangest, funniest, most surreal and most enduring songs of our time.” The moviemakers began filming Prine as he prepared to release his first album of new songs in 13 years, and follows him throughout a resurgence that has taken him from Radio City Music Hall to the Songwriters Hall of Fame. The film, made with the support of Prine’s family, includes interviews with his friends and peers, including young songwriters he helped shape, such as Sturgill Simpson, Jason Isbell and Margo Price. The film was co-written by Zachary Fuhrer and Patrick Doyle, produced by Doyle and directed by Fuhrer. RadicalMedia is a production partner on the film. “Spending time with John Prine over the last year, we’ve learned that he is just as insightful — and hilarious — in everyday life as he is in his songs… There is nobody better at spellbinding a room,” Doyle said. “For the last 50 years, he’s been a voice for the overworked, underpaid and forgotten, and our current political times have made his songs even more relevant.” Fuhrer added: “As John’s band members like to say, ‘There are two types of people: those who love John Prine and those who haven’t heard of him yet.’ John’s philosophy on life — finding comedy in tragedy — is the heart of the film; his stories are a daily reminder that there’s always a way to laugh at your own misfortune.” |
Re: John Prine, Gordon Lightfoot & Jim Cuddy...house concert
Gordon has a message for fellow Songwriters Hall of Fame member John Prine. https://www.facebook.com/JohnPrine/v...1870628790622/
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TOm Rush and John Prine-covid
Both have covid - 19.
John was hospitalized on the 26th and intubated on the 28th. his situation is critical. |
Re: TOm Rush and John Prine-covid
Sending prayers for both of them.
Gail |
Re: TOm Rush and John Prine-covid
Terrible news! I just heard about John, Tom just has symptoms, not hospitalized. Love them both sooooo much!
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Re: TOm Rush and John Prine-covid
John's wife Fiona was diagnosed and recovered and today John is not critical but stable..
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Re: TOm Rush and John Prine-covid
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RIP, John Prine
So very sad with the loss of John Prine today.
At first, I thought, "....this post doesn't belong in this section of the Corfid site, because it's not directly related to Gordon...." Then I realized, "yes it does, and yes it is." And, if you don't believe me, watch the look on Gord's face as he mouthed the lyrics to "Far From Me" as John sang it at the Strombo house concert. What a huge loss in the world of REAL music. There will never be another John Prine. Ever. Melissa |
Re: John Prine,Gordon,Jim Cuddy,bio author-N.Jennings-house concert-DEATH of Prime-Ap
TWITTER: Gordon Lightfoot
@Lightfoot365 @JohnPrineMusic John was a legendary artist and a good friend. He will live on through his music. |
Re: John Prine,Gordon,Jim Cuddy,bio author-N.Jennings-house concert-DEATH of Prime-Ap
https://americansongwriter.com/john-...+Digest+1+8+20
In seventy-three short years, iconic singer-songwriter, Mr. John Prine, chronicled the human experience through song. Prine spoke to the world in common verse. A true poet for the masses. Familiar elements in each of his songs guide his millions of listeners through a shared experience. Respected as an industry patriarch but loved as a goofy uncle, fans will remember John Prine for the humor and ease with which he approached life and country music. Stylistically poignant, and respectfully jocular, he made it all look so easy, despite his trials along the way. The recipient of the Grammy 2020 Lifetime Achievement Award’s idea of fancy was the Christmas Tree he notoriously left up year-round or a Tuesday Meatloaf Special at Arnold’s Country Kitchen. From humble beginnings in rural Illinois, Prine emerged as a leading member of the Chicago folk revival in the late 1960s. Previously, Prine, an army veteran, worked as a mailman. On the side, he wrote songs such as “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore,” a witty social commentary on misguided American loyalty during Vietnam. Prine was discovered by Kris Kristofferson in the Windy City and invited onstage at his show at New York’s Bitter End in 1971. The following day, Prine received a deal offer from Atlantic Records. Prine made his self-titled debut that same year with a classic album. John Prine examined not-so-sexy themes, like middle-aged Southern housewives (“Angel From Montgomery”), the destruction of archaic Kentucky farmland (“Paradise”), and the loneliness of senior citizens (“Hello in There”), taking on subjective emotion with clever prudence. The audible hesitation from his breakout album is a stark contrast to 1973’s Prine found on the cover of Sweet Revenge; boots-in-your-face, cigarette hanging from the corner of his smirk, making a throne for himself across the front seat of a Porsche convertible. As he came into himself, the music continued to pour out of him and pooled into one of the most impressive catalogs of his generation of songwriters. His trans-genre approach threw off the rigidity of major labels. This friction marked the beginning of his own independent record label, Oh Boy Records. Following this milestone was a footloose decade spent, as Prine described, “daydreaming.” His marriage to his third wife and manager, Fiona, in 1996 brought him back down to earth. “I didn’t know that I was missing that until I found it,” he explained to Rolling Stone. “All of a sudden, I felt normal with a capital N.” The happiness he found later in his life inversely correlated with the number of songs he wrote. “The one thing I can’t remember about writing songs is just how fucking simple it is,” the legendary songwriter shared. In true John Prine fashion, he began crafting the narrative of life without John Prine, long before he left us. Songs like “Paradise,” “Please Don’t Bury Me,” and finally, “When I Get To Heaven,” transcended his earthly life to catch a glimpse of what laid ahead. With a somewhat scientific balance between reverence and humor, Prine was able to make light the darkness of the unknown. His definitively graveled voice told a story of survival. In the late 1990s, a surgery to remove cancer from his neck left him hunched over and changed the tone of his voice. Prine reflected later with gratitude on the deepening that resulted in his trademark timbre. After beating cancer once, Prine hopped back into the ring, battling it again in his left lung. He drew strength and alleviated pain through laughter. Prine understood imitation was among the highest forms of flattery and made dear friends with artists who covered his work over the years. These artists included Johnny Cash (“Sam Stone”), Bette Midler (“Hello in There”) and Bonnie Raitt (“Angel From Montgomery”), Miranda Lambert (“That’s the Way the World Goes Round”) and Todd Snider (“All The Best”). Additionally, he is an uncredited co-writer on “You Never Even Call Me by My Name,” made famous by David Allan Coe and recorded by countless others. Leading up to the release of what would be John Prine’s final record, he spoke with Rolling Stone about religion, a natural inclination in the sunset years of life. He shared that he did believe in God, but jaded by the way Christians used their holy book as a political weapon. “I think of the Bible as an unauthorized biography,” explained Prine. “I think that the disciples were all trying to vie for their personal time that they spent around Jesus. If I wrote anything, I would go toward that.” With no formal indication that his 2018 release would be his last, the revered songwriter closed out the ultimate Tree of Forgiveness with a whimsical meditation on the afterlife. The album is named loosely for a restaurant, The Tree of Idleness, in his wife’s home country of Ireland. “When I Get to Heaven” places Prine at the pearly gates, peeking in on beloved bad habits he dropped for his health, and all the loved ones he hasn’t seen in so long: “When I get to heaven, I’m gonna shake God’s hand/Thank him for more blessings than one man can stand/Then I’m gonna get a guitar and start a rock-n-roll band/ Check into a swell hotel; ain’t the afterlife grand?” Jovial instrumentation introduces the first chorus line: “And then I’m gonna get a cocktail: vodka and ginger ale/ Yeah, I’m gonna smoke a cigarette that’s nine miles long/I’m gonna kiss that pretty girl on the tilt-a-whirl /’Cause this old man is goin’ to town.” Prine recorded “When I Get to Heaven” with producer Dave Cobb, who shared, “there are few people on the planet with his command of a pen, so my concept with him was just to get out of the way of his lyrics.” A party of devoted fans who became friends and three generations of his family joined in on the production, singing along in the background at Nashville’s historic Studio A. “He came up to me and said, ‘You know what this song needs?’ Cobb recalled with Uncut Magazine. “‘Kazoos’! Oh boy. You can hear everybody having fun when they’re singing along and all playing those kazoos. You can’t help but laugh.” On one kazoo was songwriter and longtime fan, Brandi Carlile. “We were just having a good time drinking, dancing, and singing along, and I started the yodeling to make John laugh,” Carlile recalled. “I didn’t know it would end up on the record!” Jason Isbell, and his songwriter wife, Amanda Shires, joined Carlile on set, both insistent of the continued honor of sharing the stage with the legendary songwriter. The track features his grandson’s giggling in the background, a timestamped legacy of the Prine family. “He’s giggling ’cause his dad is chasing him around the room,” Prine shared with NPR. “And if you listen really carefully, you can hear Jody (his son) go, ‘Don’t break anything expensive,’ and I start laughing. That was going on while we were cutting that song, but we had such a good cut that we didn’t want to take it off there. To hear a kid, a baby, giggling when you’re talking about heaven — it all kinda made sense, you know?” With characteristically dark humor, Prine paints a picture of the promised land that replaces fear with hilarity and mystery with longing. “My sense of humor has saved me more than a couple of times in my life,” Prine remarked. “If I can make myself laugh about something that I should be crying about, that’s pretty good.” Prine discussed his audience doubling over the last decade with CBS This Morning. “It took some of them 45 years to get the joke,” he laughed, “and I’m still around to reap the benefits.” His untimely passing leaves an indubitable hole in this grief-stricken world. Yet, the bountiful gifts he left behind bring peace. Each track from his expansive eighteen-album catalog will continuously uncover new meaning, re-introducing the magic of Mr.Prine to generations to come. |
Re: John Prine,Gordon,Jim Cuddy,bio author-N.Jennings-house concert-DEATH of Prime-Ap
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/m...sl_tcLyEtUb718
LINKS to videos and other articles are in above link of this article. John Prine, One of America’s Greatest Songwriters, Dead at 73 Grammy-winning singer who combined literary genius with a common touch succumbs to coronavirus complications. Stephen Betts and Patrick Doyle John Prine, who for five decades wrote rich, plain-spoken songs that chronicled the struggles and stories of everyday working people and changed the face of modern American roots music, died Tuesday at Nashville’s Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He was 73. The cause was complications related to COVID-19, his family confirmed to Rolling Stone. Related: 25 Essential Songs Prine, who left behind an extraordinary body of folk-country classics, was hospitalized last month after the sudden onset of COVID-19 symptoms, and was placed in intensive care for 13 days. Prine’s wife and manager, Fiona, announced on March 17th that she had tested positive for the virus after they had returned from a European tour. As a songwriter, Prine was admired by Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson, and others, known for his ability to mine seemingly ordinary experiences — he wrote many of his classics as a mailman in Maywood, Illinois — for revelatory songs that covered the full spectrum of the human experience. There’s “Hello in There,” about the devastating loneliness of an elderly couple; “Sam Stone,” a portrait of a drug-addicted Vietnam soldier suffering from PTSD; and “Paradise,” an ode to his parents’ strip-mined hometown of Paradise, Kentucky, which became an environmental anthem. Prine tackled these subjects with empathy and humor, with an eye for “the in-between spaces,” the moments people don’t talk about, he told Rolling Stone in 2017. “Prine’s stuff is pure Proustian existentialism,” Dylan said in 2009. “Midwestern mind-trips to the nth degree.” RELATED John Prine John Prine: The Secrets Behind His Classic Songs The Last Word: John Prine on Fatherhood, Johnny Cash, Why Happiness Isn't Good for Songwriting Prine was also an author, actor, record-label owner, two-time Grammy winner, a member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the recipient of the 2016 PEN New England Song Lyrics of Literary Excellence Award, a honor previously given to Leonard Cohen and Chuck Berry. Prine helped shape the Americana genre that has gained popularity in recent years, with the success of Prine fans such as Jason Isbell, Amanda Shires, Brandi Carilie, to name a few. His music was covered by Bonnie Raitt (who popularized “Angel From Montgomery,” his soulful ballad about a woman stuck in a hopeless marriage), George Strait, Carly Simon, Johnny Cash, Don Williams, Maura O’Connell, the Everly Brothers, Joan Baez, Todd Snider, Carl Perkins, Bette Midler, Gail Davies, and dozens of others. Though he was an underground singer-songwriter for most of his career, Prine had a remarkable final act. In 2018, he released The Tree of Forgiveness, his first album of original material in 13 years. The album went to Number Five on the Billboard 200, the highest debut of his career, and he played some of his biggest shows ever, including a sold-out tour kickoff at New York’s Radio City Music Hall. The album was released on Oh Boy Records, the independent label Prine started with his longtime manager, business partner, and friend Al Bunetta. In recent years, Prine, his wife, and son Jody ran the label out of a small Nashville home office. Prine’s string of acclaimed solo albums began with his self-titled 1971 debut on Atlantic Records, featuring a tracklist that reads like a greatest-hits compilation: “Illegal Smile,” “Spanish Pipedream,” “Hello in There,” “Sam Stone,” “Paradise,” “Donald and Lydia,” “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore,” and “Angel From Montgomery” among them. Throughout his career, Prine explored a wide variety of musical styles, from hard country to rockabilly to bluegrass; he liked to say that he tried to live in a space somewhere between his heroes Johnny Cash and Dylan. Prine was born in the Chicago suburb of Maywood, Illinois. His father was a tool and die maker and the president of the local steelworkers union, and raised John and his three brothers on the music of Jimmie Rodgers, the Carter Family, Hank Williams, and other heroes of Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry. Though he was a poor student, Prine was a natural songwriter; two songs he wrote when he was 14, “Sour Grapes” and “The Frying Pan,” ended up on his LP Diamonds in the Rough, more than 10 years later. Prine had a restless imagination — “I would go to class and just stare at something like a button on the teacher’s shirt,” he said — but he excelled at hobbies he focused on, like gymnastics, which he was inspired to take up by his older brother, Doug. “Here was something I had no natural ability in, and I could do it well,” Prine said. After graduating high school in 1964, Prine took the advice of his oldest brother, Dave, and became a mailman. Wandering around the Chicago suburbs, Prine wrote many of his classic early songs. During his postman years, he wrote “Donald and Lydia,” about a couple who “make love from 10 miles away,” and “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore,” a humorous indictment of misguided patriotism, after he noticed that locals were posting American flag decals that were included in an issue of Reader’s Digest around the neighborhood. Prine was forced to take a hiatus from his postal career when he was drafted into the Army in late 1966, just as the Vietnam War was heating up. But instead of being sent to Vietnam, Prine lucked out and was sent to Stuttgart, West Germany, where he worked as a mechanical engineer. Prine played down his military service, describing his contribution as “drinking beer and pretending to fix trucks,” as he told Rolling Stone. But the experience did bring him to write maybe his greatest song: “Sam Stone.” The ballad is about a soldier who comes home from the war mentally shattered, turning to morphine to ease the pain. “There’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the money goes,” Prine sings in the chorus, “Jesus Christ died for nothin’, I suppose.” part 2..next post |
Re: John Prine,Gordon,Jim Cuddy,bio author-N.Jennings-house concert-DEATH of Prime-Ap
“I was trying to say something about our soldiers who’d go over to Vietnam, killing people and not knowing why you were there,” Prine told Rolling Stone in 2018. “And then a lot of soldiers came home and got hooked on drugs and never could get off of it. I was just trying to think of something as hopeless as that. My mind went right to ‘Jesus Christ died for nothin’, I suppose.’ I said, ‘That’s pretty hopeless.’ ” When Johnny Cash covered the song, he rewrote the chorus, changing “Jesus Christ died for nothin’, I suppose,” to “Daddy must have hurt a lot back then, I suppose.” (“If it hadn’t have been Johnny Cash,” Prine said, “I would’ve said, ‘Are you nuts?’”)
Prine became an immediate sensation on the Chicago folk scene. On the day before his 24th birthday, he was performing at Chicago’s Fifth Peg when the now-iconic Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert walked in. Ebert’s headline, ‘Singing Mailman Delivers a Powerful Message in a Few Words,’ led to sold-out rooms. Soon, Prine’s friend and musical partner Steve Goodman convinced Kris Kristofferson and Paul Anka to drop by to see Prine play at the Earl of Old Town in the summer of 1971. “It was too damned late, and we had an early wake-up ahead of us, and by the time we got there, Old Town was nothing but empty streets and dark windows,” Kristofferson later wrote in the liner notes for Prine’s first album. “And the club was closing. But the owner let us come in, pulled some chairs off a couple of tables, and John unpacked his guitar and got back up to sing. … By the end of the first line we knew we were hearing something else. It must’ve been like stumbling onto Dylan when he first busted onto the Village scene.” Kristofferson invited Prine onstage at New York’s legendary Bitter End. The next day, Atlantic Records President Jerry Wexler offered Prine a $25,000 deal with the label. With Anka serving as his manager, Prine cut the majority of his self-titled album at American Sound in Memphis, with the studio’s house band, the Memphis Boys, famed for their work with Elvis Presley, Dusty Springfield, Bobby Womack, and others. Though Prine lamented how nervous he sounded on the recording, and it did not make a major dent on the charts, it is now considered a classic, a touchstone for everyone from Bonnie Raitt to Steve Earle to Sturgill Simpson. In January 1973, Prine was nominated for a Grammy as Best New Artist, and Bette Midler included “Hello in There” on her debut LP, The Divine Miss M. Midler recently called Prine “one of the loveliest people I was ever lucky enough to know. He is a genius and a huge soul.” “He was incredibly endearing and witty,” Raitt told Rolling Stone in 2016. She met Prine in the early Seventies and first covered “Angel From Montgomery” in 1974. “The combination of being that tender and that wise and that astute, mixed with his homespun sense of humor — it was probably the closest thing for those of us that didn’t get the blessing of seeing Mark Twain in person.” While Prine may have been signed to Atlantic Records, he did not conform to pop music’s rules. His follow-up to his self-titled album, 1972’s Diamonds in the Rough, was a stripped-down acoustic album that paid homage to his Appalachian bluegrass roots, which he recorded with his brother Dave for around “$7,200 including beer.” Prine likened the major-label system to a bank “for high-finance loans. You could go to a bank and do the same thing for less money and put a loan behind your career instead of a major label throwing parties for you and charging you, and giving you the ticket and not asking what you want to eat.'' Feeling that the label could have done more to promote the hard-edged 1975 album Common Sense, he asked co-founder Ahmet Ertegun to let him out of his contract. Ertegun agreed, and Prine moved to David Geffen’s smaller Asylum label for 1978’s excellent Bruised Orange, which was produced by Goodman, with classics like “That’s the Way That the World Goes Round” (later covered by Miranda Lambert) and the heartbreaking “Sabu Visits the Twin Cities Alone,” a meditation on loneliness from the point of view of 1930s film star Sabu Dastagir. “When I wrote that one and ‘Jesus the Missing Years,’ ” Prine recently told Rolling Stone, “I was afraid to sing them for somebody else. I thought they were going to look at me and say, ‘You’ve done it. You’ve crossed the line. You need the straitjacket.’ But if I let it sit for a couple weeks and it still affects me, it’s something I would like to hear somebody say, then I figure, my instinct is as good as a normal person. I would like to hear that somebody do that, so I just go ahead and jump into it.” Prine’s offbeat odyssey continued with Pink Cadillac, a rockabilly album he made with Sam Phillips and Phillips’ sons Jerry and Knox. By 1982, Prine decided to follow the path of his friend Goodman and start his own label, Oh Boy Records, with Bunetta. Following a Christmas single, “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”/”Silver Bells,” Prine’s first LP release was 1984’s Aimless Love. The business model, with fans sending in checks by mail, was a success, and early proof that singer-songwriters could survive without the support of a major label. “He created the job I have,” said songwriter Todd Snider, who released his early albums on Oh Boy. “Especially when he went to his own label, and started doing it with his own family and team. Before him, there was nothing for someone like Jason Isbell to aspire to, besides maybe Springsteen.” In 1989, Sony offered to buy Oh Boy, an offer Prine turned down. Two years later, he scored one of the biggest successes of his career with 1991’s The Missing Years. Produced by Howie Epstein of Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers, it featured guest appearances by Petty, Springsteen, and Raitt. The title track, “Jesus the Missing Years” is one of Prine’s most ambitious songs, attempting to fill in the 18-year gap (from age 12 to 29) in Jesus Christ’s life unaccounted for in the Bible. It won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album. Prine was married three times. He married his high school sweetheart, Ann Carole, in 1966, and they stayed together until the late Seventies. He wed songwriter and bassist Rachel Peer, who he met at Cowboy Jack Clement’s Nashville studio, in 1984. In 1988, Prine was in Ireland when he met Fiona Whelan, a Dublin recording-studio business manager. She soon moved to Nashville and they married in April 1996. By then, she had given birth to their two sons, Jack and Tommy. “It brought me right down to earth,” Prine said. “I was a dreamer. I learned real fast I don’t know anything except songwriting.” Prine also adopted Jody Whelan, Fiona’s son from a previous relationship. Jody and Fiona would eventually become Prine’s co-managers, overseeing the most commercially successful moment in his career. This idyllic chapter of Prine’s life was complicated in 1997 when, during the sessions for In Spite of Ourselves — a successful duets album with women, including Iris DeMent, Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams, Patty Loveless — Prine discovered a cancerous growth on his neck. It was stage 4 cancer. “I felt fine,” Prine said later. “It doesn’t hit you until you pull up to the hospital and you see ‘cancer’ in big letters, and you’re the patient. Then it all kind of comes home.” In January 1998, doctors removed a small tumor, taking a portion of the singer’s neck with it, altering his physical appearance. Prine thought he might never sing again. However, after a year and a half, he returned to performing, with a small show in Bristol, Tennessee. “The crowd was with me. Boy, were they with me,” he said. “And I think I shook everybody’s hand afterward. I knew right then and there that I could do it.” The next decade brought Prine another Grammy for 2005’s Fair & Square. That year, Prine joined Ted Kooser, 13th Poet Laureate of the United States, becoming the first artist to read and play at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Prine saw his already formidable influence reach another generation of artists, including Jason Isbell, Sturgill Simpson, Margo Price, and Kacey Musgraves. In 2013, Prine was again sidelined briefly, diagnosed with a spot on his left lung. Six months after the cancer was removed, he was back on the road. Following Buntta’s 2015 death, Prine became sole owner and president of Oh Boy Records, which has also been home to recordings by Snider, Dan Reeder, R.B. Morris, and Heather Eatman, among others.His last studio album, The Tree of Forgiveness, was released in April 2018, just six months after he was named the Americana Music Association’s Artist of the Year. Rolling Stone said the album had “all the qualities that have defined him as one of America’s greatest songwriters.” Prine attended the Grammys in January, where he received a Lifetime Achievement Award. The singer could be seen on television with his family, grinning and wearing sunglasses, as Bonnie Raitt sang “Angel From Montgomery.” Last year, Prine was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Onstage, he summed up why he chose a life as a songwriter: “I gotta say, there’s no better feeling than having a killer song in your pocket, and you’re the only one in the world who’s heard it.” |
Re: John Prine,Gordon,Jim Cuddy,bio author-N.Jennings-house concert-DEATH of Prime-Ap
VIDEO of Bonnie Raitt at GRAMMY awards - Nov.2019 -https://www.billboard.com/video/bonnie-raitt-john-prine-tribute-8549270 http://www.billboard.com/video/bonni...ribute-8549270 |
Re: John Prine,Gordon,Jim Cuddy,bio author-N.Jennings-house concert-DEATH of Prime-Ap
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Re: John Prine,Gordon,Jim Cuddy,bio author-N.Jennings-house concert-DEATH of Prime-Ap
''Prine “wrote rich, plain-spoken songs that chronicled the struggles and stories of everyday working people and changed the face of modern American roots music,” Stephen L. Betts and Patrick Doyle write for Rolling Stone. “Prine helped shape the Americana genre that has gained popularity in recent years,” and “explored a wide variety of musical styles, from hard country to rockabilly to bluegrass; he liked to say that he tried to live in a space somewhere between his heroes Johnny Cash and Dylan.” He said his “songwriting hero” was Gordon Lightfoot.''
https://hoptownchronicle.org/john-pr...-rural-america John Prine, a great storyteller through his songs, knew rural America Prine died Tuesday of COVID-19 at a Nashville, Tennessee, hospital. He was 73. Al Cross April 8, 2020 John Prine, who died Tuesday night of COVID-19, was a songwriter for the ages and for our times. He knew rural America. The only full stanza in The New York Times’ obituary was from “Paradise: The coal company came with the world’s largest shovel, And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land; Well, they dug for their coal ’til the land was forsaken; Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man. For many people in America’s coalfields, that said it all. Prine, a Chicago native, wrote it about a town in “Western Kentucky, where my parents were born,” one of his hundreds of plain but unusual lines. But that was the genesis of the story he wanted to tell, and Prine was a superb storyteller: evocative, somber, silly, thoughtful and surprising. His “ingenious lyrics to songs by turns poignant, angry and comic made him a favorite of Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson and others,” William Grimes writes for the Times. Kristofferson and Steve Goodman were the magic slippers of what Prine called his “Cinderella story” of becoming a performer, retold by Adrew Reuter in Billboard. (In an email Wednesday morning to Prine fans, his wife, Fiona Whelan Prine, wrote, “In lieu of flowers or gifts at this time we would ask that a donation be made to one of the following non profits: thistlefarms.org … roomintheinn.org … nashvillerescuemission.org“) Prine “wrote rich, plain-spoken songs that chronicled the struggles and stories of everyday working people and changed the face of modern American roots music,” Stephen L. Betts and Patrick Doyle write for Rolling Stone. “Prine helped shape the Americana genre that has gained popularity in recent years,” and “explored a wide variety of musical styles, from hard country to rockabilly to bluegrass; he liked to say that he tried to live in a space somewhere between his heroes Johnny Cash and Dylan.” He said his “songwriting hero” was Gordon Lightfoot. Prine was “known for his ability to mine seemingly ordinary experiences — he wrote many of his classics as a mailman in Maywood, Illinois — for revelatory songs that covered the full spectrum of the human experience,” Betts and Doyle write, in a story worth reading. They quote Bonnie Raitt, who sang “Angel from Montgomery” into the American canon: “The combination of being that tender and that wise and that astute, mixed with his homespun sense of humor — it probably the closest thing for those of us that didn’t get the blessing of seeing Mark Twain in person.” “He sang his conversational lyrics in a voice roughened by a hard-luck life, particularly after throat cancer left him with a disfigured jaw,” writes Michael Warren of The Associated Press, in a story well-sprinkled with Prine stanzas. But his last album, “The Tree of Forgiveness,” was his biggest hit, and early this year he won another Grammy award, for lifetime achievement. Warren’s piece ends with a stanza from Prine’s “When I Get to Heaven,” which you can see and hear him perform on the “House of Strombo” show in 2018, with Gordon Lightfoot in the audience: When I get to heaven, I’m gonna shake God’s hand Thank him for more blessings than one man can stand Then I’m gonna get a guitar and start a rock-n-roll band Check into a swell hotel; ain’t the afterlife grand? (The Rural Blog is published by the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, based at the University of Kentucky.) |
Re: John Prine,Gordon,Jim Cuddy,bio author-N.Jennings-house concert-DEATH of Prime-Ap
Below is an excerpt from the book “John Prine: In Spite of Himself” by Eddie Huffman (published in 2015). The excerpt relates to an event that was held at the Coolidge Auditorium in the U.S. Library of Congress in March 2005 that featured Prine and U.S. poet laureate Ted Kooser. At the event, Kooser asked Prine about which singer-songwriters Prine was listening to and liking particularly:
“He [Prine] also talked to Kooser about his favorite songwriters, naming Dylan, Van Morrison, Kristofferson and Gordon Lightfoot: “I been listening to a lot of Gordon Lightfoot lately. I always knew Gordon Lightfoot was a really great songwriter, but his stuff sounds better and better and better all the time. It’s just really so good; some of it sounds like that’s what should be in a dictionary next to a really good contemporary folk song, is a Gordon Lightfoot song.”” Here is a link to an 87-minute video of the event ("A Literary Evening with John Prine and Ted Kooser" - Library of Congress - March 9, 2005): https://www.loc.gov/item/webcast-3677/. At 52:15, Kooser asks Prine about which singer-songwriters Prine was listening to and liking particularly. Prine talks about Lightfoot from 52:43 to 53:10. |
Re: John Prine,Gordon,Jim Cuddy,bio author-N.Jennings-house concert-DEATH of Prime-Ap
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Re: John Prine,Gordon,Jim Cuddy,bio author-N.Jennings-house concert-DEATH of Prime-Ap
Such a sad loss. RIP, John Prine.
Gail |
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