April 20, 2020

In the past I have written blogs about John Prine who is in my opinion is the best songwriter and storyteller in the world. Steve Goodman was a good musician and friend of John's who would have to be the second best. John Prine lyrics are just amazing and to think he wrote some of his early material during his six years as a mailman in Maywood, Illinois!

John passed away on April 7, 2020 at 74 years old. It put tears in my eyes and I'm sure a lot of other people felt the same way.  COVID-19 was stronger than John and took him to heaven. He is now with his buddy Steve Goodman who passed in 1984. When they did a show together it was really a fun time with many great songs and stories.

I had the pleasure of photographing John twice, in 1972 and then again in 1974 when I worked for the Bugle American newspaper. I have seen him probably six or seven times and every performance was just great.

My photographs of John are some of my favorite images. In 1974 when he played at Milwaukee's Summerfest Schlitz Country stage, I gave him a photo from the Milwaukee PAC 1972 show and had a few Schlitz beers with him backstage. It was called the Schlitz Country Stage after all so we had to have some Schlitz beer and it was flowing pretty good and I was only 19! John loved the photo and we joked about the 1972 photos where he had Pabst beer on his stool and now it was Schlitz! I always wanted to get a photo autographed by him and never did after all these years...

The 1974 photographs are fun to look at because it was about 100F and the Summerfest Skyglider ran almost right above the stage. John was talking to the people up there and they were talking to him which made for some interesting banter.  It also made for some great photographs of him looking up at them talking and playing around.

John had some health issues and could not smoke anymore and he LOVED to smoke cigarettes! He often said that when someone would lite up a cigarette he'd rush over to get a whiff of that first puff! He even wrote a song about going to heaven and smoking a nine mile long cigarette.

My heart goes out to his family and to our Milwaukee promoter, Peter Jest and his wife Karen who became very good friends of John.

We lost a good one on April 7th.  He will be sadly missed.

Thanks,

Rich Zimmermann