Specially priced double CD set of John Prine's earliest recordings, unearthed tapes--the first disc is an August 1970 recording for John recording songs that would make up his first album at the WFMT studios in Chicago. These songs were recorded immediately after John's interview with the legendary Studs Terkel.

Disc 2 is a live set from November 1970--featuring versions of many of the same songs--recorded during John's residency at Chicago's Fifth Peg. Both discs are amazing finds and a perfect for celebrating the 40th Anniversary of John Prine's recorded debut.

This double CD collection features solo studio recordings from August 1970, as well as a complete live performance from November 1970 at an intimate Chicago nightclub with John Prine accompanied by a bass player.

Available from Oh Boy Records and from Amazon.com 

9/19/2011
Oh Boy Records celebrates the earliest studio and live recordings of John Prine with the forthcoming two-disc album The Singing Mailman Delivers releasing on October 25!

(NASHVILLE, TN) – Long before the awards and accolades, all the concerts and many, many albums, John Prine trudged through snow in the cold Chicago winters, delivering mail across Maywood, his childhood suburb. “I always likened the mail route to a library with no books,” says John Prine. “I passed the time each day making up these little ditties.”

On October 25th, 2011, Oh Boy Records (founded in 1981 by Prine and manager Al Bunetta) will release The Singing Mailman Delivers. This two-disc archival release features the earliest studio and live recordings from Prine dating back to 1970, one year before his prolific, self-titled, debut album.

In August 1970, John Prine went to Chicago’s WFMT Studios to be interviewed by Studs Terkel. “I asked after the show if it were possible to stick around and tape all the songs I had written up until then,” Prine continues. These studio recordings were simply and sincerely recorded with Prine’s trademark guitar finger-picking and early vocal style. The disc closes with the unreleased track titled “A Star, A Jewel, And A Hoax,” a brief and whimsical look into an often-overlooked cranny of everyday life.

The live performance was recorded at the Fifth Peg in Chicago in November 1970, where Prine would play three nights a week, while still delivering mail during the day. Prine says, “I still maintain that Chicago winters and postman-hungry dogs finally drove me to songwriting.”

With just his acoustic guitar, some audience banter and a friend on bass, 24-year old Prine takes the live audience through 12 of his classic tunes, a few of which already sound like crowd favorites. “I was just learning how to sing a full set of my songs and still manage to talk in between without getting shot or anything thrown at me,” he admits. The one cover track is a Hank Williams medley that Prine learned for his father with the songs “Hey Good Lookin’” and “Jambalaya (On The Bayou).”

This fall marks the 40th anniversary of that first album, John Prine, and these amateur recordings on The Singing Mailman Delivers truly show Prine as a poet whose consummate songs were refined since inception. Even the then-titled “Great Society Conflict Veteran’s Blues,” his studio and live versions of “Sam Stone,” bestow the listener an intricate sense of understanding and compassion from a humble and unassuming songwriter who wrote such words to pass time on his mail route.

Oh Boy Records will begin a presale for The Singing Mailman Delivers on Wednesday, September 21 via John Prine’s official online store at johnprine or ohboy.com

THE INTERVIEWS AND REVIEWS

He sang his own songs. That night I heard "Sam Stone," one of the great songs of the century. And "Angel from Montgomery." And others. I wasn't the music critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, but I went to the office and wrote an article. [ below ] And that, as fate decreed, was the first review Prine ever received."
-dead link http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/music/john-prine-an-american-legend.html

No Depression
From "Turnstyled and Junkpiled" blogger on NO Depression - John Prine proves that the postman always does ring twice with his latest, The Singing Mailman Delivers. read the rest of it at ND here

The Singing Mailman Delivers | Album Reviews | Rolling Stone www.rollingstone.com
Before John Prine's 1971 debut got him dubbed the next Dylan, he was a Chicago mailman playing his homespun folk tunes at an open mic. These two discs

  John Prine’s had a consistent amount of recorded output over his four-decade long career. But he had to get a start somewhere, and his new album, The Singing Mailman Delivers, celebrates that beginning. The album gets its title from Prine’s pre-music job as a mailman, where he would brainstorm ideas for songs.

  “I always likened the mail route to a library with no books,” Prine said in a press release for The Singing Mailman Delivers. “I passed the time each day making up these little ditties.”

  The album will be released on Prine’s Oh Boy on Oct. 25. It’s a two-disc set filled with archived footage that dates back to 1970, which features Prine’s earliest recordings, including with a radio session Prine did after an interview with Chicago’s WFMT.

  “I asked after the show if it were possible to stick around and tape all the songs I had written up until then,” Prine said about the post-interview session.

From Performing Songwriter