John Denver – San Francisco Mabel Joy (Guitar)

    D                               G                D
His Daddy was an honest man, just a red dirt Georgia farmer

    D                                                  A
His mother spent her short life havin' kids and balin' hay

D                           G               D
He had fifteen years and he ached inside to wander

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

D                                  G                 D
  The cold nights had no pity on a Waycross, Georgia farm boy

D                                           A
Most days he went hungry, then the summer came

D                                   G               D
He met a girl known on the strip as San Francisco's Mabel Joy

D                                A                   D
  Destitution's child born of an L.A. street called "Shame"

G                                            D
Growin' up came quietly in the arms of Mabel Joy

D                                                      A
Laughter found their mornings brought a meaning to his life

         G                                                       D
Yes, the night before she left sleep came and gave that Waycross country boy

  D                       A                  D
A dream of Georgia cotton   and a California wife

       G                                                     D
Sunday morning found him standin' neath the red light at her door

       D                                                      A
When a right cross sent him reelin', put him face down on the floor

   G                                            D
In place of Mabel Joy he found a merchant mad marine

    D                                          A                   N.C.
Who growled, "Your Georgia neck is red, oh but sonny, you're still green"

D                         G                     D
He turned twenty-one in a gray rock fed'ral prison

    D                                             A
The old judge had no mercy for a Waycross country boy

D                                   G                        D
Starin' at those four gray walls in silence, lord, he'd just listen

       D                                       A
To the midnight freight he knew could take him back to Mabel Joy

       G                                                   D
Sunday mornin' found him lyin' 'neath the red light at her door

       D                                   A
With a bullet in his side, he cried, "Have you seen Mabel Joy?"?

G                                                               D
  Stunned and shaken someone said, "Why, she don't live here no more

    D
She left this house four years today,

     A                     N.C.                   D
they say she's lookin' for some Georgia farm boy"