WHEN YOU'RE TWENTY-ONE
(Claude King)

Claude King - 1970



 
As I look around me at unfamiliar faces
My mind goes back to my boyhood days
When the lust and the craze of far off places
Brought a simple country boy to a life of disgrace

I was raised on a farm way down in Louisiana
Down where the sweet magnolias grow
Just me and Bud and Mama and Papa
Little blue eyed Judy who lived down the road

I got Judy in trouble in the early days of summer
Oh, she and mama cried and begged me not to go
Later on someone told me Bud and Judy got married
And they had a little girl with hair of shining gold

I drank and I gambled and I knew many women
I lived too fast for a boy just twenty-one
And then one night I shot a man in Reno
The very first time I had ever fired a gun

Bud came to see me last Sunday morning
He said Judy and the baby were waiting outside
His eyes filled with tears when I asked about Mama
He said Mama's heart was broken, she just laid down and died

I hear the cell door open, soon it will be over
I'll have to pay for the wrongs I have done
To Bud and Judy and Mama and Papa
And I hope that you'll remember this when you're twenty-one
And I hope that you'll remember this when you're twenty-one


(Transcribed by Mel Priddle - October 2010)