Prine was delivering mail in suburban Chicago and playing folk clubs at night when Roger Ebert wandered into the Fifth Peg and reviewed him. Kris Kristofferson, dragged along by Steve Goodman, brought him to New York to open at the Bitter End, where Jerry Wexler heard him and signed him to Atlantic the next day. The debut album that followed in 1971 carried “Angel from Montgomery” alongside “Sam Stone” and “Hello in There.” He won four Grammys across his career and a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2020, the year he died of COVID-19 complications in Nashville.