33 1/3 #160

Ten Miles West -- Down by the Green River -- We Come for to Sing -- A Winning Hunch -- The Singing Mailman -- And Then He Has You -- The Earl -- The Best Damned Songwriter -- The Bitter End -- Thinking and Feeling -- Midwestern Mindtrips

"Marking the 50th anniversary of the album's release, John Prine offers a chronicle of the singer-songwriter's roots in Middle America, a soulful framework filled with rich imagery and unique perspectives. John Prine's time in Chicago is often regarded as a footnote in his larger biography, which discounts its deep and lasting influence. Through a series of original interviews, exhaustive research and personal insight, author Erin Osmon, for the first time, paints an in-depth portrait of Prine's beginnings in the Chicago folk music scene, and the history and impact of his childhood in Western Kentucky and suburban Maywood, Illinois. An adopted daughter of Chicago, with a similar family lineage in Western Kentucky, Osmon's perspective as a rural soul in the big city closely mirrors Prine's own provenance. She takes readers on a journey through the city's neighborhoods, characters and clubs of the 1960s and 70s, a formative and magical period in Prine's life, before he was a figurehead of the Nashville scene. It's a love letter to Prine's self-titled debut, and to John Prine's Chicago, which incubated the burgeoning songwriter in its outsider's embrace"--