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As a songwriter, John Prine commands praise as one of the most consistent storytellers of the past 30 years, having emerged from the Chicago scene in the early 1970s as an almost-instant favorite, penning memorable tunes by the bushel that quickly entered the decade’s coffeehouse lexicon. Some of the songs, like “Hello in There,” became so popular in the repertoires of other singers that their overt sentimentality came to overshadow their emotional sensitivity and clever wordplay.
But just as it is hard to imagine a certain kind of Nashville songwriter persona without Prine’s example, it’s also worth noting that he has reinvented himself on at least a couple of occasions. It’s pretty cool how he snagged a 1991 Grammy Award for The Missing Years, an album of irreverent songs about Jesus, released on Prine’s own Oh Boy label, and that he was able to bounce back from surgery for throat cancer in 1998 to record four more albums and win more Grammys.
Like his good friend and supporter Kris Kristofferson, Prine’s been outspoken politically. Let’s hope he plays “Some Humans Ain’t Human,” which stabs at George W. Bush with typically deft humor. However, fans will likely clamor for songs that were more topical, um, 37 years ago, like “Sam Stone,” a tragic Vietnam War-era saga that sports the chorus: “There’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the money goes/Jesus Christ died for nothin’ I suppose.” Come to think of it, the song is as relevant now as then.
