Don't you know her when you see her?
She grew up in your back yard
Come back to us Barbara Lewis
Hare Krishna Beauregard
Can't you picture her next Thursday?
Can you picture her at all?
In the Hotel Boulderado
At the dark end of the hall
John E. Prine
Songwriter visited Colorado early and often
By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com
Though his roots were, of course on the mail route in Chicago and coal country of Kentucky, at the very start of his career John Prine spent a considerable amount of time in Colorado. You hear it in the details of lyrics written about characters and places like "Barbara Lewis" and the "Hotel Bolderado."
Prine himself explained in liner notes:
"That came about while traveling around Colorado with Ramblin' Jack Elliott. At that time, there were a lot of people who were leftover hippies who never made it all the way to California, as if they got to the Rockies and went, "God, I can't get over that," and just settled in. "
Also, "I had different friends of mine who went through the '60s, from being totally straight or greasers, then turned into hippies, and then into a religious thing. So I created this character who had done all those different things. I got the name Barbara Lewis from the R&B singer ("Hello Stranger," 1963; "Baby, I'm Yours,"1965). The rest of the name of the character just came from that same place as "Yes I Guess They Oughta Name A Drink After You"- it just falls off the tongue really nicely. I often try to match a syllable for each note; I call it the Chuck Berry School of Songwriting. He's got it so dead-on that you can just read his lyric, and that would be a melody."
"Prine first visited Colorado’s Front Range in 1972, performing at Marvelous Marv’s in Denver and Tulagi in Boulder, forging a reputation as a songwriter and performer through songs that were simultaneously detailed, cynical and funny," notes Colorado Musical Experience.
"The prime Prine was found on John Prine, his acclaimed debut album—“Sam Stone” (about the abuse of Vietnam vets), the wry ballad “Donald and Lydia,” “Illegal Smile” (an ode to recreational pot smoking), the anti-war song “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You into Heaven Anymore” and the much-covered “Paradise,” a nostalgic anthem against strip mining in rural Kentucky (where his folks had lived), says Colorado Music Experience.
According to a piece about his death by Dylan Owens of theknow@denverpost.com:
"Prine was — and this is rare, talking to musicians — every ounce the man you’d hope him to be. He laughed at my worst jokes, spoke at length about his love of pork chops and rattled off 30-year-old anecdotes with a poetic attention to detail.
"Case in point: I asked him about his first show in Colorado, at Tulagi’s in Boulder, opening a week of shows for comedian George Carlin.
“I was there for a week. The walls looked like the Flintstones. The girls looked like they were in The Playboy Club — real skimpy pseudo leather,” Prine said. “George called the audience beehives and bowties.”
Prine recounted how he’d played most small towns throughout the state early in his career, thanks to his friendship with Colorado promoter Chuck Morris. (“I wish he’d stop wearing his golf clothes,” Prine joked to me about Morris. “I’ve been on him for years trying to tell him checks and stripes don’t go together.”)
His memories of his first tour were as colorful as you’d imagine.
“Colorado had a reputation. Smoke a lot of dope, lot of pretty girls. It was a fun place to play,” Prine said. “Me and Ramblin’ Jack Elliot covered 12 cities in a broken-down RV full of strange characters. It was like Ken Kesey’s bus.”
Beat Generation writer Ken Kesey, of course, also had ties to the state and was born in La Junta, Colo.
In the early days, of the "singing mailman," Prine garnered early attention by critic Roger Ebert.
The following was published in the Sun-Times on Oct. 9, 1970.
While “digesting Reader’s Digest” in a dirty book store, John Prine tells us in one of his songs, a patriotic citizen came across one of those little American flag decals.
He stuck it on his windshield and liked it so much he added flags from the gas station, the bank and the supermarket, until one day he blindly drove off the road and killed himself. St. Peter broke the news:"
Your flag decal won’t get you into heaven anymore;
It’s already overcrowded from your dirty little war.
"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," wrote Ebert, back then.
Prine settled into a regular routine of recording and touring in his early career, slowly building an audience, says Prine biographer Eddie Huffman in his 2015 book "John Prine: In Spite of Himself."
"In the summer of 1973, he did a summer tour "little ski towns" in the Rockies with one of his early heroes, Ramblin' Jack Elliott. Elliott had authenticity as a folksy, down-to-earth country boy, despite being a Jewish doctor's son from Brooklyn. It was the off season for tourist, so the crowds were small."
"Jack showed up with this Winnebago and had a couple of interesting character acters with him," according to Prine. "A 'black and gay' comedian named Kelly Green opened the shows. "He would go out and sing 'Old Cowhand' (From the Rio Grande).'"
"A lot of the cowboys down on the front row – I don't know if they liked that or not."
Prine also appeared that summer at Willie Nelson's fourth of July Picnic outside of Austin. The lineup mixed country and rock artists, such as Nelson, Kris Kritofferson, Tom T. Hall, and Leon Russell.
On March 19, 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, Prine's wife Fiona revealed that she had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 and had been quarantined in their home apart from him. He was hospitalized on March 26 after experiencing COVID-19 symptoms. On March 30, Fiona tweeted that she had recovered and that John was in stable condition but not improving. Prine died on April 7, 2020, of complications caused by COVID-19 at the age of 73.
Souvenirs, ___ John E. Prine
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