Song of the Day 12/23: John Prine, “Christmas in Prison”
In the five years I’ve been writing the Song of the Day feature, nobody has compiled more page views than John Prine. Prine loved Christmas – he told Rolling Stone once that he used to keep a Christmas tree up all year – but when he finally released a Christmas album in 1993, it was a ragtag collection of songs, some having nothing at all to do with the holiday, and a few live tracks, including this one, which originally appeared on his 1973 LP “Sweet Revenge.”
The song isn’t really about Christmas – face it, a lot of so-called Christmas songs aren’t really about Christmas, ever listened to “Last Christmas”? – and it’s not about prison, either. Prine once explained, “It’s about a person being somewhere like a prison, in a situation they don’t want to be in. And wishing they were somewhere else.”
Bright Eyes, the band of one-time child prodigy Conor Oberst, covered the tune this year, with a spoken middle section featuring Prine himself. It was released on Prine’s label, Oh Boy Records.
The spoken section is from the last cut on Prine’s Christmas LP. Here’s the whole track. It starts with Prine singing the first line of “Pretty Paper,” the Willie Nelson tune that was a hit for Roy Orbison in 1963.
For my wife Karolyn and I, married 51 years now, it is another John Prine song we venerate, “In Spite of Ourselves” featuring a guest appearance by Iris Dement. Heck of a tribute to those who have stuck it out. Always makes us smile, or burst into giggles.