Come Along And Ride This Train (Mississippi Delta Land/Detroit City/Uncloudy Day/No Setting Sun/Mississippi Delta Land) - Live

Come along and ride this train

Come along and ride this train

'Cross the mountains, prairies, reservations

Rivers, levees, plains

Come along and ride this train

Ride this train...

Ride this train with me to the Mississippi River Delta Land

A wide stretch of rich black earth, that-

Spreads out along the banks of the Mississippi river

Startin' somewhere up around Southern Illinois

Runnin' right on down to the Gulf Of Mexico

This is the land of King Cotton, this black rich land

And to the people who live here, cotton is their bread 'n' butter

And though the land is rich, to many, life is pretty hard

You see that old shack overthere?

That's the home of a shear cropper

His work is back breaking

He could spend 30 years of his life, into that kinda land

And then wind up with that kind of a place

Only to just up and leave with just the clothes on his back, a prayer in his heart

And a pickup truck half-full of used furniture

Mississippi Delta Land, you robbed me of my youth

And all you gave back, was a one room shack and a mind that learned the truth

There ain't no future for the man, that works, but never owns the land

And now these ol' hard workin' hands are headin' for Chicago in the mornin'

Mississippi Delta Land, your riches ain't for me

These kids of mine and me's gonna find a better place to be

Thank you

At one time, most of the cotton was grown by small cotton farmers

Like my people- 20 acres of it

These were people that lived on the land- and by the land

Because it's in the nature of a man to always look away to grass that seems- just a little bit greener

Many of the sons and the daughters of these small cotton farmers

Headed for the big cities and the car factories in the North

Like I did when- when I was 18 years old

Where they'd heard tell of good money- and better times

Where they hoped they could- leave- leave behind the hardships

The hard times of the small Delta farm

Last night, I went to sleep in Detroit City

And I dreamed about those cotton fields and home

I dreamed about my mother, their old poppa, sister and brother

I dreamed about that girl, who's been waiting for so long

I wanna go home, I wanna go home

Oh, how I wanna go home

Home folks, think I'm big in Detroit City

From the letters that I write, they think I'm fine

But by day I make the cars and by night I make the bars

If only they could read between the lines

'Cause you know, I rode a freight train North to Detroit City

And after all these years I find, I was just wastin' my time

So I think I'll just take my foolish pride

Put it on a South bound freight and ride

I'm goin' back to loved ones, I left waiting far behind

I wanna go home, I wanna go home

Oh, how I wanna go home

Down in Dyess, Arkansas and that part of the Delta Land where I grew up, I did my earliest singin'

And I learned my first songs, while pickin' or choppin' cotton- on the cotton patch

Seemed somebody was always singin' while they worked

To help make the day go a little bit faster

I c'n 'member- my sister Louise out in the cotton field

She would keep us all cheared up by singin' gospell songs and- the hits of the days

And bein' a few years older than I was, she w'd teach me songs

She'd say

I'm gonna sing you this song three times and then, see if you were listening

You sing it back to me

Sometimes she'd be way down the row, pickin' ahead of me

And while she was waitin' for me to catch up, I could hear her singin'

And she w'd sing-

And lord, she w'd sing-

And wouldn't she sing...

Oh, I can almost hear her singin' now

And I'd pick a little bit harder, catch up with her

She w'd sing to me some more

And she w'd sing-

And just about every afternoon, as the sun was sinkin' real low

When we were leavin' the cotton fields

All of us- would usually leave the field singin' this song

Life's evening sun (Life's evening sun)

Is sinkin' low (Is sinkin' low)

A few more days (A few more days)

And I must go (And I must go)

To meet the deeds

That I have done

Where there will be (Where there will be)

No setting sun (No setting sun)

Yeah, the life of the small Delta farmer- will soon be gone forever

But though the song may be gone from the cotton fields

The memory of those good people- that worked there, will live on as long as I live

And as long as the cotton grows tall, along the banks of that old Mississippi River

Mississippi Delta Land, my dad and his dad too

They ploughed your soil and for all that toil, they never owned an inch of you

Mississippi Delta Land, you robbed me of my youth

And all you gave back, was a one room shack and a mind that learned the truth

Mississippi Delta ...