Mr. Prine later wrote a ruefully bitter song titled “Paradise,” in which he sang:

The coal company came with the world’s largest shovel

And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land

Well, they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken

Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man

John grew up in a country music-loving family. He learned guitar as a young teenager from his grandfather and brother and began writing songs.

After graduating from high school, he worked for the Post Office for two years before being drafted into the Army, which sent him to West Germany in charge of the motor pool at his base. After being discharged, he resumed his mail route, in and around his hometown, composing songs in his head.

“I always likened the mail route to a library with no books,” he wrote on his website. “I passed the time each day making up these little ditties.”

Image Mr. Prine in 1992 when he won the Grammy Award for best contemporary folk album. Credit... Rick Maiman/Sygma via Getty Images)

Reluctantly, he took the stage for the first time at an open-mic night at a small Chicago club called the Fifth Peg, where his performance met with profound silence from the audience. “They just sat there,” Mr. Prine later wrote. “They didn’t even applaud, they just looked at me.”

Then the clapping began. “It was like I found out all of a sudden that I could communicate deep feelings and emotions,” he wrote. “And to find that out all at once was amazing.”