Who recorded it first
Angel from Montgomery
Not a Bonnie Raitt original — John Prine cut it first, in 1971
Because Bonnie Raitt has sung it in a woman’s voice for fifty years, most listeners file “Angel from Montgomery” as a Bonnie Raitt song. It is a John Prine record. Prine wrote it and recorded it for his self-titled debut album, issued by Atlantic Records in 1971 and cut at American Sound Studios in Memphis with Arif Mardin producing. It sat at side two, track three of an album that reached only No. 154 on the US pop chart — Raitt’s 1974 version on Streetlights is the one that carried the song to a wide audience.
The record
Who recorded it first
Released An album track, not a single: side two, track three of John Prine, the singer’s debut, issued by Atlantic Records in 1971 with the catalogue number SD 8296. It was cut at American Sound Studios in Memphis, produced by Arif Mardin, and runs 3:44 — a gospel-leaning arrangement led by the studio’s house piano and organ.
Charted Did not chart. Prine’s recording was never a hit single, and the album carrying it managed only No. 154 on the US Billboard pop albums chart in 1972. Half a century later the same album re-entered the Billboard 200 at No. 55, after Prine’s death.
Hear John Prine — “Angel from Montgomery,” the 1971 Atlantic album master www.youtube.com · An auto-generated distributor upload on the “John Prine - Topic” channel, whose description opens “Provided to YouTube by Atlantic Records” and carries the line ℗ 1971 Atlantic Recording Corporation. The credits list Arif Mardin as producer alongside the American Sound Studios house band — Reggie Young, Bobby Emmons, Bobby Wood, Gene Chrisman — which is the 1971 Memphis session. Duration checked: 3:42 against the MusicBrainz recording’s 224,426 ms (3:44), so this is the original master and not the re-recorded version Prine cut for Souvenirs in 2000, which is also on the channel under the same title. Then compare Bonnie Raitt’s 1974 version from Streetlights — the reading that made the song a standard. www.youtube.com · Auto-generated upload on the “Bonnie Raitt - Topic” channel, description line “Provided to YouTube by Rhino/Warner Records”, copyright “℗ 1974, 2008 Warner Records Inc.” Runtime 239s (3:59), an exact match for the MusicBrainz Bonnie Raitt recording tied to the Streetlights release (3:59, first release 1974). Discrepancy noted rather than hidden: the title carries a “(2008 Remaster)” suffix, but the ℗ 1974 line and the identical runtime confirm it is the same 1974 master remastered, not a re-recording. Rejected the other Topic candidate (5dnGF47iGC0, 235s, ℗ 2026 Warner Music Group - X5 Music Group) as a later compilation transfer.How we know
Atlantic put it out as ninth track on the debut LP — the MusicBrainz entry for the 1971 US pressing, SD 8296 ↗, lists it in that position at 224,426 ms.
Wikipedia’s page on the debut album ↗ supplies the rest of the documentation: Atlantic, Arif Mardin, American Sound Studios in Memphis, and a chart peak of No. 154 in 1972.
The earliest tape is earlier still, and it is still Prine — a November 1970 Chicago club set that stayed in a box until Oh Boy Records issued The Singing Mailman Delivers ↗, where the song is disc two, track seven.
Raitt’s version arrived on Streetlights ↗ in September 1974, produced by Jerry Ragovoy for Warner Bros. and credited to Prine as writer.
Wikipedia’s entry on the song, with the full chronology of coversKnow more about the original — or think we’ve got it wrong? Add a source →
Fact-check
Setting the record straight
Raitt’s reading is so completely inhabited that it is routinely mistaken for the source. The recording history is not ambiguous.
Bonnie Raitt
Raitt recorded it for Streetlights (Warner Bros., September 1974), three years after the song was already on record. Hers is the version that first attained wide recognition — which is a different achievement from being first.
John Prine
The first released recording is Prine’s own, side two, track three of his debut album John Prine (Atlantic SD 8296, 1971), produced by Arif Mardin at American Sound Studios in Memphis.
John Prine
Prine wrote both words and music. Wikidata, MusicBrainz and Atlantic’s own label credit all name him alone; the composition carries ISWC T-924.850.414-5. Unusually for a song of this kind, the writer and the first recording artist are the same person.
John Prine, live in Chicago
A club set from Prine’s residency at the Fifth Peg predates the Atlantic session and includes the song. It stayed unissued until Oh Boy Records released The Singing Mailman Delivers on 25 October 2011. It moves the earliest known recording earlier — but not to a different artist.
John Prine wrote it and recorded it first, in 1971. Bonnie Raitt made it famous in 1974. Both of those things are true, and only one of them is being remembered.
Context
Why the cover swallowed the original
The usual explanation for a cover eclipsing an original is that the cover was a bigger hit. That is not quite what happened here. Raitt’s Streetlights reached No. 80 on the Billboard 200 and Prine’s debut had stalled at No. 154 — respectable and unrespectable respectively, but neither is the kind of chart event that rewrites a song’s authorship in the public mind. What Raitt had instead was fit. Prine wrote the song after being told to write “another song about old people,” and built it around a woman who feels older than she is. Sung by a man, it is an act of imagination. Sung by a woman, it stops sounding like a character study and starts sounding like testimony.
That is the whole mechanism. Raitt did not out-sell the original; she out-belonged it. Then she did the thing that actually decides these questions — she kept singing it, for five decades, on stages and at tributes and eventually at the 2020 Grammy ceremony where Prine received his Lifetime Achievement Award. A song heard live a thousand times in one voice becomes that voice’s property, whatever the label copy says. Prine, who wrote it and recorded it first, spent much of that time standing next to her while she sang it.
The chronology, step by step
- November 1970 — Prine plays the song during his residency at the Fifth Peg in Chicago. The tape exists but goes unreleased for forty-one years, surfacing only in 2011 on Oh Boy Records’ The Singing Mailman Delivers. It is the earliest known recording of the song, and it is also John Prine.
- 1971 — Atlantic Records issues John Prine (SD 8296), recorded at American Sound Studios in Memphis with Arif Mardin producing. “Angel from Montgomery” is side two, track three, running 3:44.
- 1972 — The covers start early and start local. Chicago folk singer Bonnie Koloc records it for Hold On to Me. Carly Simon cuts a version during her No Secrets sessions; it is shelved and does not appear until the 1995 box set Clouds in My Coffee.
- 1973 — John Denver puts it on Farewell Andromeda, pluralising the title to “Angels from Montgomery.”
- 1974 — Bonnie Raitt records it for Streetlights (Warner Bros., September 1974), produced by Jerry Ragovoy at the Hit Factory in New York. Hers is the version that first attains wide recognition for the song.
- 2020 — Raitt performs it at the Grammy ceremony honouring Prine with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Prine dies that April.
She didn’t out-sell the original. She out-belonged it.