#149 John Prine, 'John Prine' (1971)

Previously #452

“There's a hole in daddy's arm where all the money goes.” The first line in the chorus of ‘Sam Stone’ stopped me in my tracks. What an incredible lyric. Its vivid imagery and sombre reality that invoke feelings of such sadness and pathos really sum this album up in 11 words. John Prine was a storyteller, not just a singer-songwriter. His songs, and the songs on this album in particular, tell stories of real, everyday people. ‘Hello In There,’ a staple of his live sets, was his tribute to older people; “Well, it'd been years since the kids had grown/A life of their own, left us alone,” lyrics that most older parent can relate to. A song about growing older, and a song about growing lonely; “You know that old trees just grow stronger/And old rivers grow wilder every day/Old people just grow lonesome/Waiting for someone to say, "Hello in there, hello."

‘Sam Stone’ is about a soldier that has returned from war, and as is so common due to the horrors of war, has developed a drug addiction. ‘Paradise,’ a song that has been covered by so many artists, including the likes of Johnny Cash, John Fogerty, The Everly Brothers, and so many others, is a song written for his father. It’s a song about coal mining, a song about his youth and a song that has become a Bluegrass standard. The album is filled with songs like the above, songs about people and their stories. It’s worth a few listens, and careful attention should be paid to the lyrics, because they are what Prine is about. I stand to be corrected, but I think Prine is the first artist on this list to have passed away due to COVID. He sadly died last year.

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