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lyrics

Phillip Lee

My name was not always Phillip Lee
There was a time I had a wife and family
A house on a farm in Alabama
Another life lived by another man

Snake wasn’t poor but he was trash
Breath of rotten smoke and sour mash
His daddy owned the county’s only bar
And had a dollar behind every county star

Eulie was a sharecropper's child
Alabama spring every time she smiled
We had been married 'bout a year
Little Rosa came with the first frost in the air

Flesh and blood, earth and air, beginning again
Forty years living hasn't changed
April muds still find me there trying to make amends
Looking for a way to stop the rain

Evening April tenth of '58
We’re driving home on the Eufaula highway
Rain was falling harder than the night
A broke down car crept into the headlights

'Mister, can we give you a ride?'
'Yessir' the black man replied
'I’m goin' to see my cousin Charlie Lee'
'Get in. He don’t live too far past me'

Snake pulled behind us in his pick-up truck
He bumped us once and he turned his bright lights up
Pushed us ‘til we’s running 85
Eulie held Rosa, she was crying

I tried so many times to hit the brakes
But we spun off that Eufaula highway
I remember in a blur after the crash
Snake honked his horn twice and drove on past us

The next thing I recall about that night
Was Charlie Lee's face in a lantern light
He helped me pull the others from the wreck
When he saw his cousin, his shoulders began to shake

After I got Eulie to Charlie's truck
She breathed her last and give the Spirit up
Rosa's quiet face still haunts my dreams
I held her close to keep her from the rain

Before the Chattahoochee saw the sun
Snake found himself at the end of my shot gun
Through a cigarette lipped smile He said 'Nigger how’s your wife?'
I never heard the sound but I pulled the trigger twice
Took off in the morning grey for the woods I grew up in
Asked Jesus to forgive me but I don’t think I had sinned

Just the black folks knew that Snake had died
When the Sheriff had the bodies identified
None of them ever said a word
They buried Phillip next to Eulie behind the church

So Eulie's always eighteen in my mind
And Rosa's still an arm-baby cryin'
After forty years with just their memories
I'm not so sure they'd ever recognize me

My name was not always Phillip Lee
There was a time I had a wife and family
A house on a farm in Alabama
Another life lived by another man

credits

from The Authorized Bootleg, released September 1, 2001

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