Reply #51: Paradise by John Prine or The Dying Miner by Woody Guthrie

[Radical Activist]

There are a lot of good ones but I love those two.

Lyrics to Paradise:

When I was a child, my family would travel,
To western Kentucky, where my parents were born.
And there's a backwards old town that's often remembered.
So many times that my memories are worn.

And Daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg county,
Down by the Green River, where Paradise lay.
"Well I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in askin'."
"Mr. Peabody's coal train has hauled it away."

Well, sometimes we'd travel right down the Green River,
To the abandoned old prison down by Aidrie Hill.
Where the air smelled like snakes: we'd shoot with our pistols,
But empty pop bottles was all we would kill.

chorus

Instrumental break.

Then the coal company came, with the world's largest shovel,
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land.
Well, they dug for their coal till 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 waitin',
Just five miles away from wherever I am.

And Daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg county,
Down by the Green River, where Paradise lay.
"Well I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in askin'."
"Mr. Peabody's coal train has hauled it away."