Interpret:

John Denver

Album:

Some Days Are Diamonds

His daddy was an honest man, just a red dirt Georgia farmer 
 His mother lived her short life havin' kids and balin' hay 
 He had fifteen years and he ached inside to wander 
 So he jumped a freight in Waycross and wound up in L.A. 


 The cold nights had no pity on that Waycross, Georgia farmboy 
 Most days he went hungry, then the summer came 
 He met a girl known on the Strip as San Francisco's Mabel Joy 
 Destitution's child born of an L.A. street called shame 


 Growing up came easy in the arms of Mabel Joy 
 Laughter found their mornings, brought a meaning to his life 
 Yes, the night before she left sleep came 
 And gave that Waycross country boy 
 A dream of Georgia cotton and a California wife 


 Sunday mornin' found him standing 'Neath the red light at her door 
 When a right cross sent him reelin' Put him face down on the floor 
 In place of Mabel Joy he found a merchant mad marine 
 Who growled "Your Georgia neck is red. Aw, but sonny, you're still green 


 He turned twenty one in a gray rock fed'ral prison 
 The old judge had no mercy for a Waycross country boy 
 Staring at those four gray walls in silence Lord, he'd just listen 
 to the midnight freight he knew Could take him back to Mabel Joy 


 Sunday morning found him lying 'neath the red light at her door 
 With a bullet in his side he cried, "Have you seen Mabel Joy?" 
 Stunned and shaken someone said Why she don't live here no more 
 She left this house four years today they say she's lookin' for 
 some Georgia farmboy