Covers Week, Part 3: Angel from Montgomery

Covers Week Part 3: Angel from Montgomery Bonnie Raitt and John Prine

Sometimes a song just finds exactly the right person to sing it, which is the case in Bonnie Raitt's version of John Prine's "Angel from Montgomery." I realize that Bonnie Raitt is going to cost me a lot of rock snob credibility, but I do think she is a good singer. "Angel from Montgomery" is a very sad, very beautiful song about loneliness and repetition-- along with "Sam Stone" it is my favorite John Prine song. While I do like Prine's version, it was never quite his song. A number of people have done this song, but I just think it is fits Bonnie Raitt so well in her version.
I am an old woman
Named after my mother
My old man is another
Child who’s grown old

If dreams were thunder
Lightning was desire
This old house it would’ve burned down
A long time ago

Make me an angel
That flies from montgomery
Make me a poster
Of an old rodeo
Just give me one thing
That I can hold on to
To believe in this livin’
Is just a hard way to go

When I was a young girl
I had me a cowboy
It wasn’t much to look at
It was a free ramblin’ man
There was a long time
No matter how I tried
The years they just rolled by
Like a broken down dance

Make me an angel
That flies from montgomery
Make me a poster
Of an old rodeo
Just give me one thing
That I can hold on to
To believe in this livin’
Is just a hard way to go

There’s flies in the kitchen
I can hear them there buzzin’
And I ain’t done nothing since I woke up today
But how the hell can a person
Go on to work in the morning
To come home in the evening
And have nothing to say

Make me an angel
That flies from montgomery
Make me a poster
Of an old rodeo
Just give me one thing
That I can hold on to
To believe in this livin’
Is just a hard way to go