Hello In There: The Songs Of John Prine Quiz

Answer: Korean War

From about 1970, John Prine began to make his mark on the music scene, initially in his native Chicago.

In his early days, some people labelled Prine as "a protest singer". They were missing the point, he said.

"A lot of people when I started out thought I was singing protest songs, only because I was singing about social issues, but it just so happened that was what was going on.

"At the time, things around were very political. It's not that I was trying to be political - but that was what people were talking about and that's what the songs were about."

Prine has always only sung his own songs. In a newspaper review in the "Chicago Sun-Times" in October 1970, Roger Ebert quoted lyrics from "Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore" and commented: "Lyrics like this are earning John Prine one of the hottest underground reputations in Chicago these days. He's only been performing professionally since July, he sings at the out-of-the-way Fifth Peg, 858 W. Armitage, and country-folk singers aren't exactly putting rock out of business. But Prine is good.

"He appears on stage with such modesty he almost seems to be backing into the spotlight. He sings rather quietly, and his guitar work is good, but he doesn't show off. 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."

This was the first newspaper review of a John Prine performance and resulted in increased audiences at his shows.

Prine's biggest break came when Steve Goodman took Kris Kristofferson and Paul Anka to see a show.

Kristofferson later said his first impression was: "He's 24 years old and he writes like he's 220."

John Prine was born at Maywood, Illinois, on October 10, 1946, and died in Nashville, Tennessee, on April 7, 2020 from complications arising from the Covid-19 virus.

Answer: Bonnie Raitt

"I am an old woman named after my mother
My old man is another child that's grown old
If dreams were lightning thunder was desire
This old house would have burnt down a long time ago

"Make me an angel that flies from Montgom'ry
Make me a poster of an old rodeo
Just give me one thing that I can hold on to
To believe in this living is just a hard way to go..."

"Time" noted: "Bonnie Raitt's rich, raw cover made the song famous and didn't hurt her career either; in 2000 she told Performing Songwriter magazine, 'I think 'Angel from Montgomery' probably meant more to my fans and my body of work than any other song.'"

While "Time" did not rank the 100 songs they listed, in other places this has been listed as the best cover of any John Prine song.

Answer: Flag decal

"While digesting Reader's Digest in the back of a dirty book store
A plastic flag, with gum on the back fell out on the floor
Well, I picked it up and I ran outside, slapped it on my window shield
And if I could see old Betsy Ross I'd tell her how good I feel.

"But your flag decal won't get you into Heaven anymore
They're already overcrowded from your dirty little war
Now Jesus don't like killin', no matter what the reason's for
And your flag decal won't get you into Heaven anymore..."

"Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore" was on Prine's first album in 1971.

In 2017 in a Billboard feature on "John Prine's 10 Best Songs: Critic's Picks", the song was listed at number four.

"Billboard" noted this remained a divisive song: "His more conservative fan base will sometimes walk out of performances when he does this Vietnam protest number, while many have cheered in agreement over the years."

Answer: Iris De Ment

Prine wrote the song to go over the closing credits of the movie "Daddy And Them", in which he starred with Billy Bob Thornton, Laura Dern, Andy Griffith, Walton Goggins, and Jamie Lee Curtis.

In concert performances, he said he had Iris DeMent in mind as the co-singer when he wrote the lyrics. He said her reaction when he told her that was "You probably couldn't get nobody else."

As Prine acknowledged some of the lyrics were somewhat "questionable".

The song was from the album of the same name that was to be Prine's best performer in the Billboard 200 album charts, number three in August 1999.

Three others charted: "The Tree Of Forgiveness" was number four in May 2018; "The Missing Years" was number six in July 1991; "For Better Or Worse" was number 13 in December 2016.

Prine won a Grammy for "The Missing Years".

That chart place for "The Tree Of Forgiveness" was all the more remarkable because Prince has twice been diagnosed with cancer. In 1996, he was diagnosed with squamous cell cancer and a large portion of diseased tissue was removed from the right side of his neck. After that operation and subsequent chemotherapy, he was able to continue singing, albeit with a changed, grittier, sound. Typically, Prine was upbeat and he told Terry Gross of nprmusic in 2018 that he thought the surgery had improved his voice.

In 2013 he was treated for lung cancer.

Answer: Paradise

In the chorus:
"And daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in asking
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away..."

This, as "Time" noted, was another example of Prine writing from what he knew.

Prine's parents were from Western Kentucky and he visited his grandparents there as child. The song came about when his father sent him a newspaper clipping about a mining company buying the town of Paradise.

"Then the bulldozers came in and wiped it all off the map," he told "Performing Songwriter".

Prine once remarked: "I wasn't even going to record it because I didn't think anybody would be able to pronounce Muhlenberg."

The song became a bluegrass standard, but not everyone liked it. In 2015, Peabody Energy, the coal mining company alluded to in the lyrics, took Prine to federal court to have the lyrics removed.

As the "Detroit News" reported: "A federal judge in Wyoming says it's tough luck that the world's largest private coal company doesn't dig a 1970s-era protest song."

Rejecting the claim, US Magistrate Kelly Rankin said that as the lyrics had existed for 40 years, it was difficult to see how they prejudiced the company.

Answer: Phil Spector

In an interview with Terry Gross on nprmusic in 2018, Prine said they wrote the song in about 30 minutes at Spector's house in Los Angeles.

He recalled being taken to meet Spector by Robert Hilburn, music critic of the "LA Times".

While Prine found the experience somewhat strange, he recalled leaving at 1.20am and passing a piano in the hallway. "And he sits down at the piano and hands me an unplugged electric guitar. And we wrote a song called "If You Don't Want My Love" in about - not even - 30 minutes. And when he was doing that, he was totally normal guy - just straight-ahead songwriter doing his craft."

The song appeared on the album "Bruised Orange".

Later they started to write, but did not complete "God Only Knows". Prine admitted he had difficulty completing the song for a long time.

[You can read a transcript of the interview by searching for "John Prine On Music, Cancer And Why He Never Thought He'd Be A Recording Artist" on the npr website.]

Answer: Peaches

It is sometimes credited as "Spanish PipeDream (Blow Up Your TV)".

Prine recorded it on his eponymous 1971 album.

This was one of the first songs Prine wrote after he started performing. He told "Performing Songwriter": "I thought the first song of the show should be up and bouncy. I can only play two rhythms - fast and slow - so this was written to go with my fast bouncy rhythm."

"Spanish Pipe Dream" was the first John Prine song this quiz author ever heard - when it was covered by John Denver on his album "Aerie".

Prine was working as a mailman when he first started singing publicly. At an open mic performance he caught the eye of a club manager and ended up with a regular Thursday night hour-long residency.

The three songs he sang that night were to become staples of concerts down through the years: "Hello In There", "Sam Stone" and "Paradise".

Appearing at the Cambridge Folk Festival in England in 2002, Prine told an interviewer that he had been writing songs as a hobby but had never sung on stage in his life. He was encouraged by his friends to go up and sing, and he did. "I'd had a few beers," he admitted.

Answer: Lake Marie

Prine told the story of an Indian tribe that found two white babies in the woods on the Illinois-Wisconsin border. They called one Elizabeth and the other Marie and gave the names also to the twin lakes they lived on.

Bob Dylan has named John Prine as one of his favourite songwriters and told MTV: "Prine's stuff is pure Proustian existentialism. Midwestern mindtrips to the nth degree. And he writes beautiful songs. I remember when Kris Kristofferson first brought him on the scene. All that stuff about Sam Stone the soldier junky daddy and Donald and Lydia, where people make love from ten miles away. Nobody but Prine could write like that. If I had to pick one song of his, it might be Lake Marie..."

Answer: Souvenirs

The last two lines of the opening verse are"
"I can't forgive the way they rob me
Of my childhood souvenirs."

And the chorus goes:
"Memories they can't be boughten
They can't be won at carnivals for free
Well it took me years
To get those souvenirs
And I don't know how they slipped away from me..."

Prine has spoken in concert of writing the song to add to his set list for a residency in a Chicago club.

Many years later he recalled: "I wrote the lyrics on the way down to the club one night. I wish I could still do that."

Answer: Johnny Cash

Originally in the refrain Prine wrote:
"There's a hole in daddy's arm where all the money goes,
And Jesus Christ died for nothing I suppose...."

Cash changed that line to:
"Daddy must have seen a lot back then, I suppose.

While Prine has spoken of disliking that change, he added that if it meant Johnny Cash was going to sing the song, he wasn't going to put up a fight about it.

Prine served in the US Army in West Germany during the 1960s.

In 2017 in a Billboard feature "John Prine's 10 Best Songs: Critic's Picks", "Sam Stone was listed at number four.