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<h1><em>Sweet Revenge</em> (John Prine album)</h1><h2>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</h2><h2><br></h2><h2>Recording and composition</h2><p><em>Sweet Revenge</em> was produced by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arif_Mardin" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Arif Mardin</a> and was mostly recorded at Quadraphonic Sound Studios in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashville,_Tennessee" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Nashville</a>. As Prine biographer Eddie Huffman observes, <em>Sweet Revenge</em> was a full-band LP recorded in Tennessee, but the singer had grown dramatically as a vocalist and recording artist over the previous two years. He sounded fully integrated with the backing musicians this go-around..."<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_Revenge_(John_Prine_album)#cite_note-FOOTNOTEHuffman201588-1" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">^[1]</a> Two songs, "Blue Umbrella" and "Onomatopoeia", were recorded at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Recording_Studios" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Atlantic Recording Studios</a> in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">New York City</a> while "Dear Abby" was cut live at a gig at New York's <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_University" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">State University</a> in New Paltz. "Dear Abby" was attempted in the studio but, as Prine told David Fricke in 1993, "The studio version of that was cut with a band, and it was real stiff and humorless. We cut it once, live, and that was it. That was the power of the song, in the way people would turn their heads the minute I'd get to the first verse, the first chords. That was the reason we used the live version." The album features many of the same musicians who played on Prine's debut album, along with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cissy_Houston" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Cissy Houston</a>, who was a member of the Elvis Presley accompaniment group, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_Inspirations" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Sweet Inspirations</a>, and Houston, Deidre Tuck, and Judy Clay sing with Prine on the title track's call-and-response sections, adding a soulful blend to Prine's ragged hillbilly edge.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_Revenge_(John_Prine_album)#cite_note-FOOTNOTEHuffman201586-2" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">^[2]</a> "Sweet Revenge" reflects some of Prine's frustrations with how his second album was received, commenting in the <em>Great Days: The John Prine Anthology</em> liner notes, "I'd quit my job at the post office, I had this album out that got incredible reviews, and then this second one where the critics started to hit me. I think it got under my skin."</p><p>In the liner notes to <em>John Prine Live</em>, Prine writes that "Mexican Home" was partially inspired by his father Bill sitting on his front porch in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maywood,_Illinois" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Maywood, Illinois</a>, while "Grandpa Was A Carpenter" was his homage to his grandfather Empson Schobie Prine. "Christmas in Prison" mixed humor with pathos, romantic longing with some of Prine's most cinematic imagery to date.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_Revenge_(John_Prine_album)#cite_note-FOOTNOTEHuffman201587-3" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">^[3]</a> In the <em>Great Days</em> liner notes, Prine writes of the tune, "It's about a person being somewhere like a prison, in a situation they don't want to be in. And wishing they were somewhere else. But I used all the imagery as if it were an actual prison, with the lights swinging around the yard, the food tasting bad, making guns out of wood or soap. And being a sentimental guy, I put it at Christmas." "Please Don't Bury Me" was a rollicking country toe-tapper with some intricate guitar interplay but had been redrafted, with Prine recalling in <em>Great Days</em>, “That song was originally about this character I had in mind called Tom Brewster. He dies but he wasn't suppose [<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sic" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>sic</em></a>] to, like that scene in those old movies. The angels have to send him back, but they can't the way he is. So they send him back as a rooster. Which is why his name is Brewster. I ended up trashing that whole part and came up with this idea of the guy just giving all of his organs away, and I made a whole song out of that.”</p><h2>The album cover is a far cry from the somewhat naive portraits of the singer on his first two LPs: a bearded, denim-clad Prine - wearing sunglasses and pointy-toed cowboy boots, a cigarette jutting from his lips - sprawls across the leather front seats of a 1959 Porsche convertible, the "first toy" the singer purchased with his record company money.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_Revenge_(John_Prine_album)#cite_note-FOOTNOTEHuffman201589-4" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">^[4]</a></h2><h2><img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/53/SweetRevengePrine.jpg" alt="SweetRevengePrine.jpg"></h2><p><br></p>