Singer-Songwriter John Prine Critically Ill With Coronavirus

Acclaimed singer-songwriter John Prine, who speaks across multiple generations with a collection of songs told in the plain, everyday language of the masses, is critically ill with symptoms of the new coronavirus, his family says.

The 73-year-old Grammy Award winner and Songwriters Hall of Fame member is one of several high-profile celebrities who have come down with COVID-19, starting with actor Tom Hanks and his wife, Rita Miller, as the number of U.S. cases jumped to at least 143,055 Monday morning. More than 2,500 people have died in the United States. Worldwide, 35,300 have died.

Prine was hospitalized Thursday and intubated Saturday night after a “sudden onset” of the illness, the family said in a statement on his verified Twitter account.

The family said Prine’s situation is critical.

"This is hard news for us to share,” the statement said. “But so many of you have loved and supported John over the years, we wanted to let you know, and give you the chance to send on more of that love and support now. And know that we love you, and John loves you.”

Fiona Prine, the musician's wife, tweeted Monday that she had been ill with COVID-19, but has recovered.

"Sing his songs. Stay home and wash hands. John loves you. I love you," she wrote in the tweet.

In another tweet, she clarified earlier statement that her husband's condition had stabilized.

"That is not the same as improving," she tweeted Monday.

"There is no cure for Covid-19. He needs our prayers and love — as do the thousands of others who are critically ill. ..."

Kris Kristofferson, who discovered Prine, wrote on the liner notes of his 1971 self-titled debut album that Prine is “twenty-four years old and he writes like he’s two-hundred and twenty.”

Admired for his ability to turn a phrase, Prine is considered one of America’s greatest songwriters, with a steady stream of songs that have struck his fans’ rawest emotions and their funny bones over a career that has spanned nearly 50 years.

Never a big arena headliner, Prine’s fans cherish their storyteller as a well-kept secret. But his fame has expanded over the past decade or so, particularly as more people discovered some of his best songs made famous by other musicians.

Prine poignantly captured the loneliness of the elderly with “Hello In There,” covered by Bette Midler, and of a long-married couple bored with one another in “Angel from Montgomery,” a profile-raising single for Bonnie Raitt.

“Sam Stone,” one of the songs on Prine’s self-titled debut album in 1971 released when he was 24, told the story of a veteran who returned from war with a heroin habit. It doesn’t explicitly mention the Vietnam War, but it became an anthem for the anti-war movement.

Other songs in the protest genre include “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore,” “The Great Compromise” and “Take the Star Out of the Window.” He often has sung of social justice and, in “Paradise,” environmental justice. The song, which Prine wrote for his father, details the devastating effect of coal strip mining in the area around the Green River in Kentucky.

Prine can also be delightfully whimsical with folk tunes such as “Grandpa Was A Carpenter,” the story of a loveable old grandfather who was a “level on the level,” and “Please Don’t Bury Me,” which Prine once said was “the best organ donor campfire song I know.”

Prine often weaves his 1950s blue-collar upbringing into his music. He grew up in Maywood, Illinois, the son of Bill and Verna Prine, a tool-and-diemaker and homemaker. Prine hated school, he told Men’s Journal, and had a shining moment when his high school gymnastics team made it to the state finals, but he then became disinterested and became “a juvenile delinquent guitar player."

Prine’s label, Nashville-based Oh Boy Records, created in 1981, is the second-oldest artist-owned independent label in the country.

Prine, who won his first Grammy in 1991 for the album, “The Missing Years,” was honored at this year’s Grammy Awards with a lifetime achievement award. In 2015, the Grammy Hall of Fame inducted his 1971 self-titled album.

He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2005. He was named the Artist of the Year by the American Music Association in 2017, and also accepted the PEN New England’s Song Lyrics of Literary Excellence Award that year.

In his latest album, “The Tree of Forgiveness,” Prine touches on familiar themes, such as loneliness and heartbreak, breaking them up with honor and wit.

Prine has battled cancer twice. Surgery in the 1990s to remove cancer from his neck permanently changed his voice, giving it a lower, more gravelly tone. In 2013, he underwent surgery to remove cancer from his left lung.

This article originally appeared on the Across America Patch