Prime Prine gathers twelve songs from the first four albums John Prine made, among them Sam Stone, The Great Compromise and Sweet Revenge. The compilation originally closed out his years at Atlantic Records in 1976 and was put together without him; Wikipedia quotes him telling Goldmine in 1992 that a friend in the art department sneaked them in at night "so we could at least look at the cover before it came out". It was the only gold certification of his career. The selection shows the Prine who sang about veterans, failed romances and small lives with dry humour and almost no decoration.

This edition is an LP.