Country Gold

My Pappy’s Pappy used to sing he played those honkey tonks
It kept them all from starving once the cotton king was gone
It’s the lot cast to the sharecropper to still have bills to pay
So he’d work all night to harmonize and then sweat all through the day

That was back before this rock and roll, this electric guitar
Before Jimmy Rodgers ever thought of yodeling a song
And if he needed something new to sing to keep ‘em coming through
Then as he’d work the fields he’d figure out a tune:

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
You make me happy when skies are gray
You’ll never know dear, how much I’ve loved you
Please don’t take my sunshine away

One night when he was singing things the folks seemed like to hear
A stranger came to nowhere town all polished and veneered
There was nothing bout this man to think that he’d had a need to steal
There was no one chasing after him and the cash he’d spent was real

Well he’d said he was a music star, played from coast to coast
And as a chile I used to hear him on the grand ole opry show
He had that stetson hat, a walking cane, a big ol’ diamond ring
And in the evening he would hear my grandpa sing:

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
You make me happy when skies are gray
You’ll never know dear, how much I’ve loved you
Please don’t take my sunshine away

Ten years passed before the old man heard a radio
It was bout then that he figured out them songs he’d wrote was gold
But a rich man ain’t got time to hear what a poor man has to say
Though he’d learned to yell as loud he could until his dieing day

I ain’t saying I ain’t never stole but I’d never steal a song
To take the words from someone’s mouth ain’t nothing else but wrong
They can take away his right to sing, the money he’d of made
But they’ll never take what’s written on his grave:

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
You make me happy when skies are gray
You’ll never know dear, how much I’ve loved you
Please don’t take my sunshine away