Paradise

Words & Music:

Traditional

 

CHORUS:

G                                D

Daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenberg county?

     G                                 A

Down by the green river where paradise lay.

          D                         G           D

Well, I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in asking;

                          A         D

Mister Peabody's coal has hauled it away.

 

     D               G            D

When I was a boy, my family would travel

                                  A            D

Down to western Kentucky where my parents were born.

                                    G     D

There's a backwards old town that's often remembered.

                      A            D

So many times that my memories are worn.

 

Well, sometimes we'd travel right down the green river

To the abandoned old prison down by Adrie Hill.

Where the air smelled like snakes and we'd shoot with our pistols

But empty pop bottles was all we would kill.

 

CHORUS:

 

Then the coal company came with the world's largest shovel.

They tortured the timber and stripped all the land.

Well, they dug for their coal 'til the land was forsaken.

Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man.

 

CHORUS:

 

When I die, let my ashes float down the green river.

Let my soul roll on up to the Rochester Dam.

I'll be halfway to heaven with paradise waiting.

Just five miles away from where I am.

 

CHORUS: