Started out working in the summertime
On the docks of the Mississippi Valley barge Line
Stoking towboats on those long hot days
Getting half days off, sometimes with pay
Became a steamboat captain
Wrote the songs to Mark Twang
Rolling down the river to New Orleans
Oh, I can hear something coming up around the bend
It's the Julia Belle Swain, boys, gleaming and steaming on in
And it's Radio John standing at the helm
With a wave and a smile and some yarn to tell
♪
He loved life on the river and the fiddle tunes
Of blind Ed Haley and Benny Martin too
He always played them songs with a Vamp in the Middle
With a hustle and a shuffle and a skittle wah diddle
He wrote songs every day, lord, he'd scratch and scribble
So the tunes that he wrote, he could play on his fiddle
Well, I went up the river come away last Sunday night
With my fiddle and my banjer and my baby there to hold me tight
A banjo man, he rolled while he sang
With rhythm like a piston on a railroad train
♪
Gotta see Radio John with his two-toned shoes
A-slipping and a-sliding while he danced for you
He knew every crooked turn, up 'n' down the Mississippi
He was a Huckleberry Finn, an airwaves hippie
Radio John, a steamboat troubadour
A Mississippi Sawyer, like we'd never seen before
He spun those tunes in St. Louie and Illinois, they say
He played Bill, Earl and Lester and some boys named Bray
You could hear his voice every night 'til dawn
So cut your television off and turn your radio on
It's Radio John
♪
He danced, and he played in the bars and the halls
While he was tapping his shoes, we was having a ball
Yeah, Radio John had us all sing along
Just a-clapping and a-stomping to every one of his songs
He could make us happy and sometimes make us cry
And looking back now, I wish we never had to say goodbye
It was 6-9-0 KSTL
Where he played those songs we all knew so well
Radio John