John Prine(1971)– The Classics

John Prine, as most folks now know, includes some of the classic John Prine songs, and some of the most often played John Prine songs to this day. It’s an embarrassment of riches. “Illegal Smile,” “Spanish Pipedream,” “Hello in There,” “Sam Stone,” “Paradise” and seven more indelible songs. This is a debut album that should have gone gold within a week of its release. But who knew John Prine then? I didn’t. And neither did most of the John Prine fans who exist today.

The story that led to this John Prine debut has a few main characters. Among them: Dave Prine, Roger Ebert, Steve Goodman, and Kris Krisofferson.

Dave Prine was John’s oldest brother. John also had an older brother, Douglas, and a younger brother, Billy. They grew up in Maywood, Illinois—a suburb of Chicago. As is well-documented, John was not a great student, and, as he once said: “I couldn’t concentrate on anything besides daydreaming. My brother saw this … and he saw music as a way of getting through to me.” So Dave Prine taught John a few chords on the guitar. “From there,” John said, “it was me sitting there alone in a room singing to the wall.”

Roger Ebert was a movie critic for theChicago Sun-Times in 1970. Of course, he eventually became one of the best-known movie critics in the country. As the story goes, Roger Ebert left a movie theater in October of 1970 because the popcorn was too salty. Finding comfort in a nearby bar in Chicago—the Fifth Peg—he stumbled upon his first John Prine show. In his review of the show, Ebert explains: “He starts slow. But after a song or two, even the drunks in the room begin to listen to his lyrics. And then he has you.” After that review, John said that he never again played to an empty seat at the Fifth Peg.

Steve Goodman and John Prine met around 1970.Rolling Stone Magazine called Goodman “the impish, jubilant yin to Prine’s prematurely craggy, sardonic yang.” Steve and John would perform at folk clubs in the Chicago area together. Then, in e