These John Forgerty produced, written, performed -- and undecipherable lyrics from a great, great album, are now accessible with the touch of a button from the 'net.
They are well worth knowing.
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Green River (1969)
Well, take me back down where cool water flow, yeh.
Let me remember things I love.
Stoppin' at the log where catfish bite,
walkin' along the river road at night,
barefoot girls dancin' in the moonlight.
I can hear the bull frog callin' me.
Wonder if my rope's still hangin' to the tree.
Love to kick my feet way down the shallow water,
shoe fly, dragon fly, get back t' your mother.
Pick up a flat rock, skip it across Green River.
Well!
Up at Cody's camp I spent my days, oh,
with flat car riders and cross-tie walkers.
Old Cody, Junior took me over,
said, you're gonna find the world is smould'rin'
an' if you get lost come on home to Green River.
Well!
Come on home.
1 comment:
The dragonfly and the bullfrog call him home, and he hopes, as he comes down the bayou toward the place where they have to take you in, that the barefoot girl will choose to forget why he left Green River in the first place. He's forgotten why.So he watches her dance and he idly picks up flat rocks from the shore,even though nothing is done idly here in Green River. As she sways, I skip the rocks across the bayou - five, six, seven skips, just like before - and she notices but says nothing. Later that evening, she asks, "You get lost out there?" She tips back her beer bottle as I think. I nod. "Yeah, Lucinda," I say, "I got lost a little." She eyes me. "The world was smolderin', then?" she asks. I finish my beer and shake my head. "Nah, not smoldering. It was rotting, just rotting." I lean down to pick up more flat stones. She watches,not sure if the stones are important. WHen I have five, I say goodnight and head down to the bayou shore. There's a question on her face. "I say,"I got more stuff from out there that I need to throw into the lake, stuff I need to lose." She smiles tentatively. "How long will it take?" He shrugs. "Not much more'n a week, I guess." She nods, thinking. "Well," she says, "we can wait.You tell us when you cleaned all that stuff out,and then you've really come on home to Green River." At the bayou, he tossed rocks to the accompaniment of the frogs saying "Throw it." "Throw it." And he threw it, all of it, all of the sadness and isolation and missed chances and bad luck and pure chicanery that had plagued him in the city. As he walked back into the camp, he thought with some satisfaction that he was almost home. But he knew he wouldn't be home until Lucinda welcomed him back into the house that had been theirs before he went out into the world and then came back home to Green River.
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