The Late John Garfield Blues notes
"What I was writing about was how late Sunday night going into
Monday morning was always a weird period of time. Whether you were
apprehensive about work or school, it was like the twilight zone. At
first, the song was called "The Late Sunday, Early Monday Morning
Blues." I finally decided to make it like the kind of movie that
would be on TV at that hour, a John Garfield movie. It's not so much
about him, the actor; I used this character to get into something
else.
When Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge got together, they
moved into this house on Franklin Avenue in Los Angeles. They had an
acetate of the record, and when they played that song, the electricity
went out in the house. The next day, they found out that John Garfield
used to own the place. It's a good thing it wasn't a song about John
Garfield, or he'd have been turning my lights out."
~John Prine