Paradise

Written by John Prine

Key of C · Chords: I IV V

Verse 1

     C             F         C
When I was a child my family would travel
                                  G7      C
Down to Western Kentucky where my parents were born
                                 F            C
And there’s a backwards old town that’s often remembered
                      G7       C
So many times that my memories are worn.

Chorus

    C                            F  C
And daddy won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County
                              G7       C
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
                                 F        C
Well I’m sorry my son but you’re too late in asking
                            G7         C
Mister Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away

Verse 2

     C                     F              C
Well sometimes we’d travel right down the Green River
                                    G7    C
To the abandoned old prison down by Adrie Hill
                                      F               C
Where the air smelled like snakes and we’d shoot with our pistols
                          G7     C
But empty pop bottles was all we would kill.

Verse 3

     C                          F           C
Then the coal company came with the world’s largest shovel
                                 G7           C
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land
                                  F            C
Well they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken
                                   G7       C
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man.

Verse 4

     C                  F              C
When I die let my ashes float down the Green River
                              G7        C
Let my soul roll on up to the Rochester dam
                          F    C
I’ll be halfway to Heaven with Paradise waiting
                          G7       C
Just five miles away from wherever I am.