Above, courtesy of jordanthecat, is a clip of a young John Prine, on the steps of what had been his family's house in Maywood, Illinois, with his "number one partner in crime", John Burns, singing "Paradise", a lament for his parents' home town in Kentucky. Here's jordanthecat's description of the provenance of this song and clip:
"Paradise" is one of the three songs John Prine first performed on stage- the others being "Sam Stone" and "Hello In There." He still plays all of these songs in his concerts today, almost forty years later.Today is John Prine's sixty third birthday. Many more years of good living and singing, John.
Muhlenb[e]rg County, in western Kentucky, was once one of North America's largest coal-producing regions. The Peabody Coal Company, now called Peabody Energy, is to this day one of the world's largest coal companies.
The town of Paradise[,] in Muhlenb[e]rg County, was flooded by the waters of the Green River in 1969 when a dam was erected, in order to facilitate barge traffic to and from the Peabody coal fields.
This clip is from the outstanding "JOHN PRINE LIVE ON SOUNDSTAGE 1980" DVD, released in March, 2007.
John Prine's site: http://www.ohboy.com/
The town of Paradise was enveloped by the construction of a TVA power plant of the same name in around 1963. They bought coal from Peabody and other companies.
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