Notes on John Prine’s “Paradise”

At the Bonnie Raitt concert WC attended recently, Raitt lamented the loss of John Prine, her friend, co-performer and colleague. “Hold John close to your heart,” she urged us, before performing “Angel from Montgomery,” the Prine song she has sung most often. It’s on Prine’s astonishing first album, along with other unforgettable songs like “Sam Stone,” “Hello in There,” “Flag Decal” and “Paradise.”

In effort to do what Raitt asked, and because WC remains a huge fan of the late John Prine, WC offers this closer look at “Paradise,” Prine’s ode to Muhlenberg County, Kentucky.

It was written by Prine for his father.

I wrote it for my father mainly so he would know I was a songwriter. Paradise was a real place in Kentucky, and while I was in the Army in Germany, my father sent me a newspaper article telling me how the coal company had bought the place out.

. . . . .

It was a real Disney-looking town. It sat on the river, had two general stores, and there was one black man in town, Bubby Short. He looked like Uncle Remus and hung out with my Granddaddy Ham, my mom’s dad, all day fishing for catfish. Then the bulldozers came in and wiped it all off the map.

When I recorded the song, I brought a tape of the record home to my dad; I had to borrow a reel-to-reel machine to play it for him. When the song came on, he went into the next room and sat in the dark while it was on. I asked him why, and he said he wanted to pretend it was on the jukebox…

– John Prine, 1983 Interview with Lydia Hutchinson, for a piece on Prine at Performing Songwriter.com

At several points in the song, Prine calls out Peabody Coal Mining Company, especially in the chorus, “Mr. Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away.” That seriously annoyed Peabody. The company reportedly wrote Prine, demanding he stop performing the song. He ignored it. Peabody published a pamphlet, attempting to rebut the claims of the song. The pamphlet seems to be lost to history, but song’s lyrics remain widely known.

And the song still gets under the skin of Peabody. When environmental activists Thomas Asprey and Leslie Glustrom, of Boulder, Colorado, sued Peabody for violating their civil rights by having them arrested outside a 2013 shareholders’ meeting in Gillette, Wyoming, in their complaint Asprey and Glustrom included the chorus of “Paradise.” Peabody moved to strike the chorus from the complaint, whining that it was irrelevant. U.S. Magistrate Kelly Rankin refused, holding:

Although the song lyrics add little if any relevant information to the complaint, they are not so disconnected, inflammatory or prejudicial as to merit removal. Furthermore, as the lyrics have existed since 1971, it is difficult to see how the inclusion of the lyrics in plaintiff’s complaint prejudices defendant Peabody to a greater extent.

Order Denying Motion to Strike, May 22, 2015

Did Prine get it wrong? Here’s an annotated set of lyrics.

Lyrics	Notes
When I was a child my family would travel Down to Western Kentucky where my parents were born And there’s a backwards old town that’s often remembered So many times that my memories are worn. 	Yes, Prine’s parents, William Mason Prine, a tool-and-die maker, and Verna Valentine (Hamm, were both born in Muhlenberg County. And, as a child, Prine and his family would make summer visits there.
Chorus: And daddy won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County Down by the Green River where Paradise lay Well, I’m sorry my son, but you’re too late in asking Mister Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away 	Paradise, Kentucky no longer exists, but it was indeed on the banks of the Green River. Near the town of Paradise, Kentucky, the Tennessee Valley Authority built the Paradise Steam Plants – initially two units, both in the 740 megawatt range. TVA made long-term coal supply contracts with mining companies for thousands of acres of land in the immediate vicinity of Paradise. 50,000 acres, much of it in Muhlenberg County, was strip-mined for coal. The coal plants were just upwind of Paradise. The coal ash and air quality were so bad people abandoned the town.
Well, sometimes we’d travel right down the Green River To the abandoned old prison down by Airdrie Hill Where the air smelled like snakes and we’d shoot with our pistols But empty pop bottles was all we would kill. 	The Green River runs on the east side of the former site of Paradise. There was a prison at a quarry on Airdrie Hill. It was last used as a prison for Civil War prisoners. There’s a back story to the snakes business, too. Studs Terkel got Prine to tell it.
Then the coal company came with the world’s largest shovel And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land Well, they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man.	Peabody’s gigantic shovel, “Big Hog,” was assembled on site in 1965, used until the coal seam ran out, and then buried in situ. Peabody filed bankruptcy in 2016, escaping most of its environmental remediation obligations and stiffing the miners to whom it owed pensions.
When I die let my ashes float down the Green River Let my soul roll on up to the Rochester dam I’ll be halfway to Heaven with Paradise waitin’ Just five miles away from wherever I am.	Rochester Dam is located on the Green River, just upstream from Rochester, Kentucky.

Dignitaries walk away from the dedication of Peabody Coal’s giant shovel in Western Kentucky, 1965. Louisville Courier-Journal Photo

The song became something of an anthem in the environmentalism fight to stop the carnage to the landscape under Kentucky’s lax mining laws. But that wasn’t why Prine wrote the song. It’s an homage to things that are lost. And, within the limits of art, a pretty accurate story. Whatever Peabody may have claimed.