| Chorus:
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| I gotta walk that lonesome valley. |
| I got to walk it by myself. |
| Oh nobody else
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| can walk it for me. |
| I got to walk it by myself.
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| You got to walk that lonesome valley. |
| You got to walk it by yourself.
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| Oh nobody else can walk it for you. |
| You got to walk it by yourself.
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| If ever I could have thought this man in black was soft and had any yellow up his back, I gave that notion up the day a lumberjack came in and it wasn’t to pray. |
| Yeah, he kicked open the meeting house door and he cussed everybody up and down the floor! |
| Then, when things got quiet in the place, he walked up and
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| cusses in the preacher’s face! |
| He hit that Reverend like a kick of a mule and
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| to my way of thinkin' it took a real fool to turn the other face to that lumber
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| jack, but that’s what he did, The Reverend Mr. Black. |
| He stood like a rock,
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| a man among men and he let that lumberjack hit him again, and then with a voice as quiet as could be, he cut him down like a big oak tree when he said:
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| (Chorus)
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| It’s been many years since we had to part and I guess I learned his ways by heart. |
| I can still hear his sermon’s ring, down in the valley where he used to sing. |
| I followed him, yes, sir, and I don’t regret it and I hope I will always
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| be a credit to his memory 'cause I want you to understand. |
| The Reverend Mr.
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| Black was my old man!
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| (Chorus) |