Long
before the awards and accolades, all the concerts and many, many
albums, John Prine trudged through snow in the cold Chicago winters,
delivering mail across Maywood, his childhood suburb. "I always likened
the mail route to a library with no books," says John Prine. "I passed
the time each day making up these little ditties."
On October 25th, 2011, Oh Boy Records (founded in 1981 by Prine and manager Al Bunetta) will release
The Singing Mailman Delivers.
This two-disc archival release features the earliest studio and live
recordings from Prine dating back to 1970, one year before his prolific,
self-titled, debut album.
In August 1970, John Prine went to
Chicago's WFMT Studios to be interviewed by Studs Terkel. "I asked after
the show if it were possible to stick around and tape all the songs I
had written up until then," Prine continues. These studio recordings
were simply and sincerely recorded with Prine's trademark guitar
finger-picking and early vocal style. The disc closes with the
unreleased track titled "A Star, A Jewel, And A Hoax," a brief and
whimsical look into an often-overlooked cranny of everyday life.
The
live performance was recorded at the Fifth Peg in Chicago in November
1970, where Prine would play three nights a week, while still delivering
mail during the day. Prine says, "I still maintain that Chicago winters
and postman-hungry dogs finally drove me to songwriting."
With
just his acoustic guitar, some audience banter and a friend on bass,
24-year old Prine takes the live audience through 12 of his classic
tunes, a few of which already sound like crowd favorites. "I was just
learning how to sing a full set of my songs and still manage to talk in
between without getting shot or anything thrown at me," he admits. The
one cover track is a Hank Williams medley that Prine learned for his
father with the songs "Hey Good Lookin'" and "Jambalaya (On The Bayou)."
This fall marks the 40th anniversary of that first album, John Prine, and these amateur recordings on
The Singing Mailman Delivers
truly show Prine as a poet whose consummate songs were refined since
inception. Even the then-titled "Great Society Conflict Veteran's
Blues," his studio and live versions of "Sam Stone," bestow the listener
an intricate sense of understanding and compassion from a humble and
unassuming songwriter who wrote such words to pass time on his mail
route.
Oh Boy Records will begin a presale for
The Singing Mailman Delivers on Wednesday, September 21 via John Prine's official online store
MusicFansDirect.com. The full tracklisting for the album is as follows:
Disc One - Studio Performance:1. Hello In There
2. Souvenirs
3. Great Society Conflict Veteran's Blues (early "Sam Stone")
4. Paradise
5. Blue Umbrella
6. Aw Heck
7. Illegal Smile
8. Flashback Blues
9. The Frying Pan
10. Sour Grapes
11. A Star, A Jewel, And A Hoax
Disc Two - Live Performance:1. Flashback Blues
2. Hello In There
3. Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore
4. The Great Compromise
5. Blue Umbrella
6. Illegal Smile
7. Angel From Montgomery
8. A Good Time
9. Hey Good Lookin' > Jambalaya (On The Bayou)
10. Quiet Man
11. Paradise
12. Great Society Conflict Veteran's Blues (early "Sam Stone")
13. Spanish Pipedream
IS WITHOUT A DOUBT THE BEST FOLK SONG WRITER OUT THERE! I JUST SET UP HIS CONCERT IN CASINO NB IN MONCTON NEW BRUNSWICK, CANADA