A Photographic Retrospective By John Robert Rowlands
John Prine
An acclaimed singer/songwriter whose
literate work flirted with
everything from acoustic folk to rockabilly to
straight-ahead
country, John Prine was born October 10, 1946 in
Maywood,
Illinois. Raised by parents firmly rooted in their rural
Kentucky
background, at age 14 Prine began learning to play the guitar
from
his older brother while taking inspiration from his grandfather,
who
had played with Merle Travis. After a two-year tenure in the
U.S.
Army, Prine became a fixture on the Chicago folk music scene in
the
late 1960s, befriending another young performer named Steve Goodman.
Prine's compositions caught the ear of
Kris Kristofferson, who
was instrumental in helping him win a recording
contract. In 1971,
he went to Memphis to record his eponymously-titled
debut
album; though not a commercial success, songs like "Sam Stone," the
harsh tale of a drug-addled
Vietnam veteran, won critical approval. Neither
1972's Diamonds in the Rough nor 1973's Sweet
Revenge fared any better on the
charts, but Prine's work won great renown among his fellow
performers; the
Everly Brothers covered his song "Paradise," while both Bette Midler and Joan
Baez
offered renditions of "Hello in There."
Photograph of John Prine at the Riverboat in Toronto's Yorkville by John Robert Rowlands