This song was first released on the rocky mountain high album. it is the only album it has been released on.

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 mem'ries are worn

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

Well sometimes we'd travel right down the green river
To the abandoned old prison down by adrie hill
Where the air smelled like snakes and we'd shoot with our pistols
But empty pop bottles was all we would kill

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

And 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

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

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

Words and music by john prine

• Late Winter, Early Spring
• Paradise
• Prisoners