It feels cos­mi­cal­ly iron­ic that Great Amer­i­can Song­writer John Prine died of COVID-19 in ear­ly April, just before the U.S. response to the virus was devel­op­ing into what may well be the Great­est Polit­i­cal Fol­ly most Amer­i­cans have ever wit­nessed in their life­times. Mass death for prof­it and pow­er, colos­sal stu­pid­i­ty and bul­ly­ing ignorance—these were just the kinds of things that got Prine’s wheels turn­ing. His thoughts became folk poet­ry with teeth.

Prine’s tar­gets includ­ed the con­ser­v­a­tive demo­niza­tion of sin­gle moth­ers in “Unwed Fathers,” who “can’t be both­ered,” he sang, “They run like water, through a moun­tain stream.” In 1971, he told bel­liger­ent Amer­i­can nation­al­ists “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You into Heav­en Any­more,” in a song he’d actu­al­ly writ­ten in the late 60s, call­ing out America’s “dirty lit­tle war.” He revis­it­ed this ever­green anti-war theme in 2005’s “Some Humans Ain’t Human,” a song that angered many fans. While Prine’s explic­it­ly polit­i­cal songs are only a small part of his cat­a­logue, his lyri­cism always clear­ly reflect­ed his beliefs.

“Bestow­ing dig­ni­ty on the over­looked and mar­gin­al­ized was a com­mon theme through­out Prine’s career,” writes Annie Zales­ki in an NPR Music trib­ute. “He became known for detailed vignettes about ordi­nary peo­ple that illus­trat­ed truths about soci­ety.” His mas­tery of this form made him the ulti­mate songwriter’s song­writer. But while he won two Gram­mys and sev­er­al oth­er dis­tin­guished awards, “induc­tions into mul­ti­ple song­writer halls of fame,” notes Eli Enis at Con­se­quence of Sound, “and gush­ing praise from peers like Bob Dylan, Bruce Spring­steen, and Tom Pet­ty,” Prine nev­er had a No. 1 hit, until now—in a final irony he would have appreciated—with his posthu­mous release, “I Remem­ber Every­thing.”

The song came out on June 11 and this week “debuted at the top of the Rock Dig­i­tal Song Sales chart, mak­ing it the high­est-chart­ing sin­gle of the late legend’s entire career.” It show­cas­es Prine’s abil­i­ty to make the per­son­al reflect larg­er social real­i­ties he may nev­er have seen com­ing but some­how tuned into nonethe­less. In this case, the sub­ject is a man who knows he’s out of time and wants to savor every mem­o­ry before he goes. Writ­ten with long­time col­lab­o­ra­tor Pat McLaugh­lin, the lyrics are gor­geous­ly bit­ter­sweet, touch­ing the depths of loss and reck­on­ing with mor­tal­i­ty.

Prine’s per­for­mance at the top was record­ed last year by Gram­my-win­ning pro­duc­er Dave Cobb. “Giv­en that Prine passed away back in April fol­low­ing a bat­tle with coro­n­avirus, the song’s life-span­ning, self-reflec­tive lyrics are aching­ly pre­scient,” writes Enis. And it’s “almost too on-the-nose that the track was pre­sent­ed in a home per­for­mance con­text, months before that set­up would become nor­mal­ized for a world in quar­an­tine.” Prine always had an “uncan­ny abil­i­ty to address (if not pre­dict) the soci­etal and polit­i­cal zeit­geist,” Zales­ki wrote in April. No mat­ter how ugly the zeit­geist was, he nev­er let it dull his wit or cloud his eye for beau­ty.

I Remem­ber Every­thing

I’ve been down this road before
I remem­ber every tree
Every sin­gle blade of grass
Holds a spe­cial place for me
And I remem­ber every town
And every hotel room
And every song I ever sang
On a gui­tar out of tune

I remem­ber every­thing
Things I can’t for­get
The way you turned and smiled on me
On the night that we first met
And I remem­ber every night
Your ocean eyes of blue
How I miss you in the morn­ing light
Like ros­es miss the dew

I’ve been down this road before
Alone as I can be
Care­ful not to let my past
Go sneak­ing up on me
Got no future in my hap­pi­ness
Though regrets are very few
Some­times a lit­tle ten­der­ness
Was the best that I could do

I remem­ber every­thing
Things I can’t for­get
Swim­ming pools of but­ter­flies
That slipped right through the net
And I remem­ber every night
Your ocean eyes of blue
How I miss you in the morn­ing light
Like ros­es miss the dew

How I miss you in the morn­ing light
Like ros­es miss the dew

via Con­se­quence of Sound

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Remem­ber­ing Amer­i­can Song­writ­ing Leg­end John Prine (RIP): “A True Folk Singer in the Best Folk Tra­di­tion”

Bill Mur­ray Explains How He Was Saved by John Prine

An Ani­mat­ed Leonard Cohen Offers Reflec­tions on Death: Thought-Pro­vok­ing Excerpts from His Final Inter­view

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Ornette Cole­man “arrived in New York in 1959,” writes Philip Clark, “with a white plas­tic sax­o­phone and a set of ideas about impro­vi­sa­tion that would shake jazz to its big apple core.” Every big name in jazz was doing some­thing sim­i­lar at the time, invent­ing new styles and lan­guages. Cole­man went fur­ther out there than any­one, infu­ri­at­ing and frus­trat­ing oth­er jazz pio­neers like Miles Davis.

He called his the­o­ry “Har­molod­ics,” a Buck­min­ster Fuller-like meld­ing of “har­mo­ny,” “move­ment,” and “melody” that he coined in the 1970s. The man­i­festo explain­ing his ideas reads like psy­che­del­ic Dada:

—I play pure emo­tion

—In music, the only thing that mat­ters is whether you feel it or not

—Blow what you feel – any­thing. Play the thought, the idea in your mind – Break away from the con­ven­tion and stag­na­tion – escape!

—My music doesn’t have any real time, no met­ric time. It has time, but not in the sense that you can time it. It’s more like breath­ing – a nat­ur­al, freer time. Peo­ple have for­got­ten how beau­ti­ful it is to be nat­ur­al. Even in love.

—Music has no face. What­ev­er gives oxy­gen its pow­er, music is cut from the same cloth.

—It was when I real­ized I could make mis­takes that I decid­ed I was real­ly on to some­thing.

—I have found that by elim­i­nat­ing chords or keys or melodies as being the present idea of what you’re try­ing to feel i think you can play more emo­tion into the music. in oth­er words, you can have the har­mo­ny, melody, into­na­tion all blend­ing into one to the point of your emo­tion­al thought.

—There is a music that has the qual­i­ty to pre­serve life.

Coleman’s 1959 album The Shape of Jazz to Come pre­saged not only what jazz would, and could, become but also out­sider rock, from Cap­tain Beef­heart to The Roy­al Trux, and exper­i­men­tal music of all kinds. Cole­man resent­ed the idea the music should be sub­ject to cat­e­go­riza­tion or for­mal con­straints, or even that musi­cians need­ed have for­mal train­ing at all. All music is sound, he says, and sound is “as free,” he joked with Clark in a 2015 inter­view, “as the gas that pass­es through your butt.”

This irrev­er­ent atti­tude is typ­i­cal of Coleman’s approach to his art. Some of the high­lights of his ear­ly career, as laid out in the Poly­phon­ic video above—recording an entire album with his 10-year-old son on drums; get­ting punched by the drum­mer after his first New York gig—make him sound like jazz’s first punk, before there was any such thing as punk. He would go on to sit for a famous inter­view with Jacques Der­rida and become one of a hand­ful of musi­cians to win a Pulitzer Prize. The enig­mat­ic genius’s “audac­i­ty, vision, and tal­ent” has made him one of the most myth­i­cal fig­ures in music, a rep­u­ta­tion that is more than well-deserved. Get a clos­er look at his lega­cy at the top.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Philoso­pher Jacques Der­ri­da Inter­views Jazz Leg­end Ornette Cole­man: Talk Impro­vi­sa­tion, Lan­guage & Racism (1997)

When Jazz Leg­end Ornette Cole­man Joined the Grate­ful Dead Onstage for Some Epic Impro­vi­sa­tion­al Jams: Hear a 1993 Record­ing

Hear Ornette Cole­man Col­lab­o­rate with Lou Reed, Which Lou Called “One of My Great­est Moments”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.