Prine died in 2020 from complications of COVID-19. To mark what would have been his 80th birthday, we listen to an interview from 2018 in which he talked about the surgeries that altered his voice.
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John Prine on music, cancer and why he never thought he'd be a recording artist
Corrected: October 13, 2026 at 11:40 AM EDT
The audio version of this story incorrectly says that John Prine’s song "Sam Stone” is about a Korean War veteran. In fact, it is about a veteran of the Vietnam War. Also, a previous web introduction to this story misstated Prine's last name as Pine.
