Baez Joan San Francisco Mabel Joy Lyrics

San Francisco Mabel Joy Lyrics

His daddy was a simple man, just a red dirt Georgia farmer

 And his momma spent her young live havin kids and balin hay

 He had fifteen years and an ache inside to wander

 So he hopped a freight in Waycross and wound up in L.A.

 

 Lord, the cold nights had no pity on a Waycross, Georgia farm boy

 Most days he went hungry then the summer came

 He met a girl known on the strip as San Franciscos Mabel Joy

 Destitutions child born of an L.A. street called "Shame"

 

 Growin up came quietly in the arms of Mabel Joy

 Laughter found their mornings brought meaning to his life

 Yes the night before she left sleep came and left that 

 Waycross, Georgia boy with dreams of Georgia cotton and a California wife

 

 Sonday morning found him standin 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 but sunny, youre still green"

 

 He turned twenty-one in a grey rock fedral prison

 The old judge had no mercy for a Waycross, Georgia boy

 Starin at those four grey walls in silence he would listen

 To that midnight freight he knew would take him back to Mabel Joy

 

 Sunday morning found him standin 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 shes not here no more 

 She left this house four years today, they say shes lookin for some Georgia
farm boy."

 

 Mickey Newbury 

 Copyright 1969 by Acuff-Rose Publications, Inc. 

 BMI 4:23