Singer and songwriter John Prine has died due to complications of COVID-19. Prine was 73 when he passed away on Monday at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville, TN.

After graduating from high school the folk - country singer was drafted into the Army. The draft came shortly after he secured a job at the US Postal Service.

The Army sent Prine to Germany and he remained active duty for two years. When he was welcomed back to the states he continued working for the Post Office.

It was about 1970 that he decided to drop his mail carrying career and run towards his dream of being a singer, after Kris Kristofferson happened upon Prine in a Chicago pub. Several weeks later, Prine found himself in New York at a Kristofferson concert. It was that New York trip that changed Prine's life because Kristofferson invited him on stage. One day later, Prine was offered a contract with Atlantic Records.

The singer, who is loved by musicians all over the world, survived two bouts of cancer in his lifetime, won numerous awards, appeared in movies, wrote songs for entertainers far and wide - but the coronavirus was too much for his health at age 73.

Prines' wife Fiona announced that she had tested positive for the COVID-19 virus on March 19, 2020. Just ten days later, Prines' family reported that he too had symptoms of the same dreaded virus, which sadly ended on April 6, 2020.