San Francisco Mabel Joy Lyrics - John Denver

This song appears on two albums, and was first released on the Some Days Are Diamonds album, and has also been released on the Changes album. 

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

And his Momma spent her young life 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 Francisco's Mabel Joy 

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

Related 

18 Non-Traditional Yet Perfect Wedding Songs 

From MetroLyrics to You: Our Classic Christmas Playlist 

5 Totally Underrated Christmas Songs 

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 

Sunday 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 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, Georgia boy 

Starin' at those four gray walls in silence he would listen 

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

Photos 

Sunday mornin' 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, she's not here no more 

She left this house four years today, they say she's lookin' for some Georgia farm boy"? 

Words and Music by Mickey Newbury