Chords for Carolina Chocolate Drops - I'll Wait for You in Tennessee

My hand's tired, now I'm gonna [Bb] get on my knee.
I don't know what to do.
[Bbm] Well, I've been really, I don't know if you noticed, but we kind of get into our history.
[Bb] And I was reading this book called The Slaves' War.
This is like the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.
So, it's, you know, there's a lot of stuff coming out and new scholarship.
And there's this fella named [Cm] Andrew Ward who did a beautiful thing.
He took [Bb] all of these slave narratives, you [Bbm] know, the WPA narratives,
and what he did is he put them in the context of the Civil War, which is just an incredible thing.
So, you get an idea of not just what one person's experience was like,
but what a lot of people's experience was like during the beginning, the middle, and the end of the war.
So, I just really was struck by this book, and it just really kind of affected me in a profound way
and it made me want to write a little bit, because in the black community,
we don't really have a lot of narrative ballads about, you know, about these things,
because, you know, you really couldn't have sung that stuff out,
or you would have been punished pretty hard.
So, [Bb] I kind of thought, well, what [Bbm] if they had been able to,
and sort of started to reimagine folk songs.
So, this is one of them, and it's about the folks who followed the Union Army.
The Union Army came down, and then [D] as it went back, a lot of slaves followed [Bb] the Army,
hoping for a better life, and didn't get it all the time.
But they were called contraband, and a lot of them settled in Tennessee
and waited for their loved ones they left behind, and so this is about that.
_ _ [Bb] _ _ _ [Eb] _
_ _ _ _ _ [C] _ _ _
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_ _ _ [Bbm] _ _ [G] _ _ _
_ _ [E] _ _ _ [B] _ _ [Bb] _
_ _ _ [F] _ _ _ [Bbm] _ _
She turned her head and got struck down, they buried her in [Gb] the cold.
_ _ Long the road [Bbm] dies low, it is long and hard.
_ Long the road dies deep for you in Tennessee. _ _ _ _
[Bb] I was twelve, my father dear, was strong, a bomb and free of fear.
Till the day he raised his hand, he was [Gb] told to add a [Bbm] prayer.
Long the road dies low, it is long and hard.
_ [F] _ Long the road dies deep for [Bbm] you in Tennessee.
_ _ [D] _ _ _
[Bb] _ _ _ [Bbm] _ _ _ _ _
_ [G] _ _ [Bb] I was sixteen, found my bloom, found my [Bbm] band, we jumped the boom.
We [Bb] left each other the rest of our lives, and on Sunday nights we were man and wife.
Long the road dies low, it is long and hard.
[Bbm] _ _ _
_ _ [G] Long the road dies deep for you [Gb] in Tennessee. _ _
[G] _ And [D] I was eighteen, few growth old, [Eb] and boys in blue came all [Bb] of old.
My [F] chance to follow me led the [Gb] way to [Bbm] Tennessee.
Long [Bb] the road dies low, it is long and hard.
_ Long the [F] road dies deep for you [Gb] in Tennessee.
_ _ [Fm] _
_ _ [Bbm] _ _ _ Here I [B] am in a tiny [Bb] shack, thirteen others [F] at my back.
Since [Bb] you were so all I can do is wait and wait and wait and wait and wait. _ _ _ _ _ _ _
It [Bbm] is _ _ _ _ _ long and hard.
_ [Bb] Long the road [G] dies deep for you [Bb] in Tennessee.
It [F] _ _
_ [Bb] is long and hard.
_ _ Long the road [Bbm] dies deep for you in _ _ _ _ _ _ Tennessee. in Tennessee. _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [Bb] _ I'll wait for you.
[E] _ [Bbm] I'll wait for you.
I'll wait for you.
_ I'll wait for _ [Gb] _ _
_ [C] _ _ _ [Bbm] you. _
for you.
[D] _ _ _ _ _ [Eb] _