Self-effacing, but with a sharp eye and a keen ear for the tiny details and ineffectual concealments that reveal far more of human truth than we like to imagine, John Prine, who has died at the age of 73 from Covid-19 complications, was the songwriters’ songwriter. Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson (who played a key part in launching Prine’s career) and Bruce Springsteen all revered him. Younger artists — Lambchop, Bright Eyes, Alison Krauss, Bon Iver and Kacey Musgraves among them — were similarly in his thrall. Dylan regarded him as his equal, once commenting: “Prine’s stuff is pure Proustian existentialism. Midwestern mind trips to the nth degree.”
With a thin, rasping singing voice and a songwriting style that rarely strayed far from the
