Next week marks the one-year anniversary of John Prine’s death from COVID.
This week’s Sunday Special is the great singer-songwriter’s favorite cocktail, one he actually invented: the Handsome Johnny. And this post is more about the man than the drink.
My first exposure to Prine came shortly after his eponymous debut album was released in 1971. I didn’t discover the album itself until several years later, but in between I heard its songs covered by everyone from Bonnie Raitt (“Angel From Montgomery”) to John Denver (“Paradise”) and even Bette Midler (“Hello In There”).
When I finally got the original record, and listened to each of his subsequent releases, I was dazzled by Prine’s remarkable talent—his ability to create seemingly simple songs filled with the most complex, meaningful, and sometimes LOL-funny lyrics. Time and again, Prine found ways to mine plain language for profound insights. This former mailman was, to use the hackneyed description, a true working-person’s poet. And I was a fan.
When I moved from my hometown of Boise to Portland in the early 1980s, my friends created an “I-84 Road Tape” filled with songs by Prine and his fellow Chicago musical raconteur, Steve Goodman, to keep me company in the grim stretch between Pendleton and Hood River. As a weekend musician, I filled my repertoire with Prine tunes, and I haven’t played a single house party or campfire singalong in the past 35 years without “Only Love” as the finale. I had the tremendous good fortune, as a music critic in the late 1980s, of interviewing Prine before his performance at Portland’s old Starry Night club (now the Roseland Theater); he was just like his songs: gentle, insightful, and fricking hilarious. As Raitt later remarked, Prine was “probably the closest thing for those of us that didn’t get the blessing of seeing Mark Twain in person.”
There’s so much more to be said about Prine’s amazing life and his unparalleled talent: how he was discovered by none other than film critic Roger Ebert, who walked into a bar after leaving the movie he was supposed to be reviewing because the popcorn was too salty; how Prine was the first singer-songwriter to perform at the Library of Congress; how he survived successive bouts of neck cancer and lung cancer, only to be killed by COVID.
As for the Handsome Johnny, Prine wasn’t a big drinker, but he did enjoy vodka and ginger ale. “I named it kind of after myself,” Prine said several years ago. “I thought Handsome Johnny sounded like a Rob Roy or a Manhattan.”
On the last song of his last album, 2018’s Tree of Forgiveness, Prine told us everything else we need to know about the Handsome Johnny:
When I get to heaven, I’m gonna shake God’s hand
Thank him for more blessings than one man can stand
Then I’m gonna get a guitar and start a rock-n-roll band
Check into a swell hotel; ain’t the afterlife grand?
And then I’m gonna get a cocktail: vodka and ginger ale
Yeah, I’m gonna smoke a cigarette that’s nine miles long
I’m gonna kiss that pretty girl on the tilt-a-whirl
‘Cause this old man is goin’ to town
Handsome Johnny
Courtesy of Fiona Whelan Prine
1 to 2 ounces vodka (Prine preferred red-label Smirnoff, but any inexpensive 80 proof vodka will do; I drink Taaka)
Ginger ale (Prine recommends diet; I suggest a premium ginger ale or ginger beer, such as Fever Tree)
Wedge of lemon (in the summertime) or lime (in the wintertime)
Fill a cocktail glass with ice.
Pour in vodka.
Pour in ginger ale.
Stir and drop the lemon or lime in from approximately 6 inches above. Do not squeeze it.
(John Prine photo courtesy of WFUV Public Radio)
Oh, I can definitely make that. Cheers to John, gone too soon.