Paradise

Album: John Prine (1971)
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Songfacts®:

  • Prine wrote this track after his father sent him a newspaper clipping about a quaint town in Kentucky called Paradise, where the singer had spent summers with his grandparents as a teen, that was bought by a coal mining company.

    "Then the bulldozers came in and wiped it all off the map," Prine recalled to Performing Songwriter. "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."
  • Prine re-recorded this for his 1986 album, German Afternoons.
  • John Denver covered this for his 1972 album, Rocky Mountain High. It's also been covered by Jackie DeShannon, The Everly Brothers, Lynn Anderson, Roy Acuff, Johnny Cash, and John Fogerty.
  • Johnny Cash recorded his version for his 1981 TV movie The Pride of Jesse Hallam.
  • Prine's version played over the end credits of the 1997 action flick Fire Down Below, starring Steven Seagal.
  • And daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County
    Down by the Green River where Paradise lay


    John Prine died from COVID-19 on April 7, 2020. In accordance with his wishes as expressed in this song, his family spread half of his ashes in Kentucky's Green River. They buried the other half next to his parents in Chicago.

Comments: 2

  • Edward M. Brown, Jr. from Bardstown, KyBorn in Greenville, Ky—raised in Drakesboro, Ky 7 miles to/from Paradise. Baptised in the Green River where Hwy 176 ended in the Green River at Paradise where the Song Paradise was written about. Also, worked worked for Peabody Coal Company and P & M Coal Company both helped haul Paradise away.
  • Ginni Latham from Bartlett, IlMy family is from Muhlenberg. I spent Mose of my summers and long weekends down inCentral City, down by Green River where Paradise lays. I had more fun in that river..... until” two summers ago, my cousin from rChicago drown down with just ended her life, because that was her Paradise. Everyone of from Chicago loved that area. I love the song... I listen to it all the time.
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