John Prine – Paradise

I want to thank halffastcyclingclub for bringing this song up when reading the Levon Helm post called The Mountain I posted last week. I’d never heard it and fell for it immediately. I listened to it over and over again. Such a cool vibe of looking back in this song. 

The song is not just a song, it’s a family photograph yellowing at the edges, the kind you keep tucked in a drawer and only pull out when you’re feeling brave enough to remember. Written for his parents, and about a real place in Kentucky that no longer exists the way it used to. We can all relate to this. I grew up in a small city in Tennessee, and it’s completely different now than it was when I grew up. Sometimes progress is good and sometimes not. 

I don’t usually dissect songs, but this one hit me. Prine was only in his mid-twenties when he wrote it, but he already sounded like someone who’d lived a dozen lives. It’s not just a memory, it’s a eulogy with a banjo. “And daddy won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County / Down by the Green River where Paradise lay…”
And the punchline comes just a beat later:
“…Well I’m sorry my son, but you’re too late in askin’ / Mr. Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away.”

That’s it right there. Prine gives you a warm hug and slips a dagger in your back before the first verse is out. It’s a protest song in overalls, gentle, but furious. Not angry, but quietly heartbroken. He’s not shouting down injustice; he’s telling you what it feels like when the land your family once lived on gets strip-mined out of existence.

This song was the fifth track on his 1971 debut album, which is ridiculous when you think about it. As young as he was, and writing a song like this. Plenty of artists have covered Paradise. Dwight Yoakam, John Denver, John Fogerty, even the Everly Brothers, but none of them touch the original. Because it wasn’t just a song to Prine. It was a love letter to something that couldn’t love him back anymore.

Lynn Anderson released it in 1975, and it was the most commercially successful release. It peaked at #26 on the Billboard Country Charts and #16 on the Canadian Country Charts. 

Paradise

When I was a child my family would travel
Down 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 asking
Mister 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 Airdrie Hill
Where the air smelled like snakes we’d shoot with our pistols
But empty pop bottles was all we would kill

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 asking
Mister Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away

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

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 asking
Mister Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away

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 asking
Mister Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away

…

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

35 thoughts on “John Prine – Paradise”

  1. I love that song, Max. I didn’t recognize the title. John Prine was a true treasure trove of a songwriter. While musically, he wasn’t exactly Steely Dan, his songs really took you some place. There’s no way listening to a John Prine song and not getting drawn in – unless perhaps you don’t understand English. It’s a rare gift. John had it!

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    1. You said it…”being drawn in”…that is what happened to me. When halfastcyclingclub mentioned this song…I listened and I could not stop listening to it…great story as well!

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      2. I’m going to review this album coming up in the next few weeks…it IS awesome! I knew Sam Stone and Angel from Montgomery well…all of those came from that debut album.

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  2. Thanks for the shout-out. You nailed it again: “a love letter to something that couldn’t love him back anymore.”

    There’s no way I can pick a favorite song from this album. I looked back and I’ve covered him half a dozen times. Prine died of COVID-19 and I wrote this while he was intubated and mechanically ventilated but still hanging on: https://halffastcyclingclub.wordpress.com/2020/03/31/john-prine/. I included six songs from this album.

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    1. Thank you! I’m with you on this one….I listened to the album this week….I was just going to review the album which I probably will coming up…but I wanted to highlight this song.

      Love your review of the songs. I’ve heard it before but it’s been so long that I it seemed new to me again. I really appreciate you mentioning this song/album…I did not though remember Paradise…for some reason. Sam Stone and some others I did. If you don’t mind I’ll point there when I do review it.

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  4. “The song is not just a song, it’s a family photograph yellowing at the edges, the kind you keep tucked in a drawer and only pull out when you’re feeling brave enough to remember.” What a beautiful description, Max, for a beautiful song!

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  6. I second Dana, a tremendous bit of prose there describing the song. Well done!
    Not bad to listen to, but great lyrics. It’s disgraceful what the coal industry’s done to Appalachia.

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    1. Thank you Dave! I agree Dave….when we go to West Virginia I see these once beautiful mountains stripped bare. The opposite mountain sometimes is untouched…it just shows how bad it is.

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      1. yeah, it’s a real shame – most beautiful landscapes I’ve yet seen or those wooded mountains of KY and TN, but they’ve been abused and the people from them too

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  7. Max, one of your best write-ups ever. I feel your compassion, which fuels your eloquence.

    Prine is doing a community service by writing this very political song. This kind of rape of the land is going on everywhere, and it has throughout human history (except for peoples who lived *with* the land.) Here, it was, and is, the sand dunes. One mofo is still at it, leaving deep asteroid-hit-like depressions where lakes have formed. Polluted lakes from the manufacturing process. They donated them to the city to make a park where you can walk around it but don’t dare swim/fish in.

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    1. Thanks so much Lisa!
      Yws it’s a mess out there…West Virginia’s mountains were terrible. One mountain would be great…the other stripped. Now they have to plant back.

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  8. What a loss. One of many great songs from the debut. He never shied away from his roots. I’ve read that the opening acts that he took under his wing would be brought out to sing this with him.

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  9. Yes, a lot of subsumed anger in the song, tempered with that sad knowledge the train is just going to keep uncaringly rolling on. It’s a juggernaut that isn’t showing much sign of slowing down.

    There are a few in the same vein, Joe South’s ‘Don’t It Make You Want To Go Home’ which I’ve mentioned before, Verdelle Smiths ‘Tar And Cement.’ This one really cuts deep.

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    1. Obbverse I started to listen to this song (I either never heard it or didn’t remember but I have heard the album…must have missed it) and I totally felt it. After going to West Virginia I’ve seen what he was talking about.
      I love that Joe South song…I’ll check out Verdelle Smith’s song…I don’t remember that one! But yea this song I just kept playing on replay.

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      1. Yes, seeing something with your own eyes makes it really real, if you get what I mean. Show me pics of the Grand Canyon, yes very impressive; put me on the edge of the South Rim of the yawning canyon and my tiny brain can’t fathom what I’m seeing. And the downside of that is toxic piles of sludgey tailings polluting the landscape, reducing your pristine Waltons Mountain to some poxy molehill.

        The Verdelle Smith one is way before your time but it resonated with me even as a very young kid.

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      2. The artist that made me start thinking of the enviroment…yes I will admit it…is John Denver. Not that he had a bunch of protest songs but the way he described things made me think.
        I did like the Smith song but yea…I never heard of her before. Yes it’s downright sad. I told her that when going there…it’s depressing knowing what was there.

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  10. Just another reason why he’s one of the best. He is also in the “train” club. I was just back in my hometown. Maybe I’ll write a song. So many similar memories. I’m no Prine but he sure hits the inspiration bone. A gem of a song Max

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      1. Lots of material Max. Border town. North Dakota/Manitoba, a buffalo jump, homesteads from late 1800’s, big sky, abandoned grain elevators, swimming hole, deserted towns etc. Fantastic people all 350 of them. A warm prairie breeze setting the tone. All sorts of vibes in the air. Even caught the local hardball team in action. Cartwright Twins in the Border Baseball League. Get the guitar out and put some music to it Max. A few vultures watching the game from the nonaying seats. Games on me fella.
        “The train dont run here anymore”

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      2. Nothing like a small town. That does sound fantastic. I grew up in one as well…at the time maybe 500 – 700 people. Cool on catching a gme and yea…it’s worth a song!

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