Songfacts®:

• John Prine would often assume a character for his songs and sing them in the first person, even if that character is a woman. "Angel From Montgomery" begins:
  
  I am an old woman named after my mother
  
  The woman in the song is looking for meaning in her life, which has gotten quite dull. She dreams of turning into an angel or becoming a rodeo poster - anything that could make her feel special.
  
  Prine had no misgivings about assuming a female character. As a writer, he felt he could be any gender.
• Prine got help writing this song from his friend Eddie Holstein. They set out to write a song together, and Holstein suggested it be about old people, similar to another song Prine wrote called "Hello In There." Prince didn't want to do that, but hit on the idea to write about "a middle-aged woman who feels older than she is."
  
  "I had this really vivid picture of this woman standing over the dishwater with soap in her hands and just walking away from it all," Prine said in the book More Songwriters On Songwriting. "I just kept that whole idea image in mind when I was writing the song, and I just let it pour out of that character's heart."
• Prine was working as a mailman when he wrote this song. After doing two years in the Army, he took the job and loved it because he could think up songs while walking his route. The track appeared on his first album, which made him a star in the Chicago folk music community.
• Why is the song set in Montgomery? Prine didn't know for sure, but he thought he may have chosen the city of Montgomery, Alabama, because it was home to Hank Williams.
• Bonnie Raitt, a huge John Prine fan, has been performing this song since the '70s, often duetting on it with Prine. In 2020, Raitt sang it at the Grammy Awards, where Prine was honored with a Lifetime Achievement award. "John Prine, who is sitting right over there, wrote 'Angel From Montgomery' and so many other songs that changed my life," Raitt said.
  
  Raitt told Uncut magazine that "as a young feminist, the idea that this young man could inhabit the world of a middle-aged woman in a thankless marriage really resonated with me."
• In 2018, Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court after contentious hearings in which he was accused of sexual assault. On October 5, when it was announced Kavanaugh had enough votes to be confirmed, Prine dedicated the song to the women in the audience at his Ryman Auditorium performance in Nashville. "It's a sad, sad day when women can't be believed," he said.
• Carly Simon recorded "Angel From Montgomery" in 1972 in her first session for her album No Secrets with Paul Buckmaster as producer, James Taylor on backing vocals, and Danny Kortchmar on guitar.
  
  At the time, Simon was going out with Kris Kristofferson. "At one point," she told Mojo magazine, "Kris was at Dylan's house and he called me and asked if he could bring Dylan by and have a cup of coffee? Dylan came and I don't remember how it was, but John (Prine) and Steve (Goodman) were there. I think John had just written or recorded 'Angel From Montgomery.'"
  
  With everyone in Simon's kitchen, Prine sang the song and taught her to play it. "It was a time when there was a lot of passing the guitar around," she said. "People were being generous with their music. When people got very famous, they weren't so comfortable saying, 'Do you want to hear this?'"
  
  The record company, Elektra, wasn't feeling it. They thought Buckmaster wouldn't deliver a hit and politely (or maybe not so politely) asked Simon to work with a different producer, Richard Perry. So, Simon's version of "Angel From Montgomery" ended up on the shelf, gathering dust until 1995. That's when it finally got the mastering and mixing treatment and saw the light of day on her box set retrospective Clouds in My Coffee.