John Prine: In Spite of Himself

By Anita Rao,

Published February 17, 2015 at 2:32 PM EST

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John Prine is a singer and songwriter with a career spanning more than four decades. A new biography "John Prine: In Spite of Himself" documents Prine's music, life and legacy.

Oh Boy Records & Jim Shea

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All that's left of John Prine's ancestral home, Paradise, Kentucky, is a few family cemeteries. He commemorated the song in "Paradise" on his self-titled 1971 debut album.

Eddie Huffman

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John Prine's boyhood home, a worker's cottage on First Avenue in Maywood, Illinois. He lived there with his brothers, parents, and grandparents -- including the grandfather he sang about in "Grandpa Was a Carpenter."

Eddie Huffman

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John Prine's parents gave him his first guitar, a 1960 Silvertone Kentucky Blue archtop -- seen here on display at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville.

Eddie Huffman

Image of John Prine Exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame.

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The exhibit, "John Prine: It Took Me Years to Get These Souvenirs," at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville ran from November 2013 through May 2014.

Eddie Huffman

Photo of plaque at John Prine's high school that honors him.

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The plaque honoring John Prine on the Proviso East Alumni Wall of Fame at his high school in Maywood, Illinois.

Eddie Huffman

Legendary singer-songwriter John Prine is best known for writing "Angel from Montgomery," "Sam Stone," and "Paradise."

His musical career began humbly in the late 1960s while he was still working as a mailman in Illinois. Five decades later, Prine is a Nashville icon who has won a litany of awards, including two Grammys and a lifetime achievement award for songwriting from the Americana Music Association.

North Carolina music journalist Eddie Huffman wrote the first-ever biography of Prine that traces the musician from his family roots in Kentucky through struggles with alcohol and cancer in his adult life, to where he stands in the music scene today.

We'll talk with Mr. Huffman, contributing music writer for the Greensboro News & Record and Winston-Salem Journal, about his new biography John Prine: In Spite of Himself. Huffman will be reading from his new book at The Regulator Bookshop in Durham on March 25 and at Scuppernong Books in Greensboro on April 10.