Winston Watusi Music Plus

I guess it was inevitable that writing these columns during a worldwide pandemic would mean some of them turning into obituaries.

And so it is right now when I was planning to extol the lockdown virtues of listening to Alabama 3 at massive volume.

That will have to wait because this week two Americans who had a huge effect on my musical life died.

The first, whom you've probably heard about by now was the great folk/country songwriter and singer John Prine. The other, more obscure as his main musical contributions to making the world a brighter place were in the role of producer, was Hal Willner.

Hal Willner was for many many years the Music Supervisor for Saturday Night Live but it was his own projects, the albums he produced, eccentric eclectic labours of love, that cemented his place in the music world.

He produced albums for both Marianne Faithful (herself now in hospital – good luck Marianne, a raft of good wishes are coming to you from all round the world!) and Lou Reed, Strange Weather and Ecstasy respectively, both high points for the artists, but he was invited to do that on the strength of his own unique projects.

Tributes

Hal Wilner.

Hal Willner knew everyone, and when he had an idea he wasn't afraid to ask them to be part of it. Willner specialised in 'Tribute albums”. He found an artist or subject he was interested in and then persuaded his many famous friends to contribute. His first album was songs from the films of Federico Fellini. Then it was Thelonious Monk, Charlie Mingus and songs from Disney films. He was still working on a T-Rex Tribute.

All these albums were brilliant. They were surprising, shocking, beautiful, and it is simply a thing of wonder that they exist at all. The Monk set - That's The Way I Feel Now - includes the likes of Donald Fagan, Dr John, Joe Jackson, Peter Frampton, Gil Evans and a host of other greats; the Mingus album – Weird Nightmares – includes both Leonard Cohen and Keith Richards, I suspect the only disc that can boast those two names.

Meanwhile the Disney album – Stay Awake - assembled possibly his most extravagant cast, including Tom Waits, Bonnie Raitt, Aaron Neville, Suzanne Vega, James Taylor, Sinead O'Connor, Sun Ra and a pile of others...

The more I listen to music the more I value the unique. It's rarer than you think. So thank you Hal Willner for supplying such a joyful measure of it – you made the world more interesting to live in.

John Prine

And so did John Prine. I've always thought that John Prine's greatest gift, amongst more than a few, was his ability to remain John Prine.

It's easy to lose your quirkiness, especially with the burdens that accompany success, but John Prine stayed the same silly, funny, honest, heartfelt writer that he was way back on his first self-titled album in the 1970s.

He used to say his favourite word was 'goofy” (check out his delightful song It's A Big Old Goofy World) and it kinda suited him. He was a bit goofy in his writing, happily following idiosyncratic little ideas to their goofy conclusions. Have a listen to Jesus The Missing Years or The Lonesome Friends Of Science from last year's album, the peerless Tree Of Forgiveness.

That final release was a fitting farewell, a short album but one from which every song will be sung in folk clubs around the world for the next 50 years. They're all gems to be treasured.

STORIES

I was trying to persuade a friend to listen to it but he was resistant. He had seen John Prine live many years back, in the days when Prine was battling the bottle, and said the show had been a complete mess, the singer too drunk to perform properly and nearly falling off the stage. So he refused to listen to his music any more.

I pointed out that if it had been a regular show he would have had one, just one, enjoyable night. But now he should be thanking John Prine for giving him a story he could tell over and over for the rest of his life...

If you were a fan you will have your own memories and moments of your life when John Prine's music made a difference to you. He really was something special. And at his best he could produce a lyric that was as good as any writer out there. I leave you with a verse from Paradise, a song about the coal town in Kentucky where his mother was raised, from the self-titled album that all those years ago first introduced the world to John Prine:

The coal company came with the world's largest shovel
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land
Well, they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man