TAB by Song : 300601
Tab List Area
1 Pages 1 Results
I Would Not Be Here by John Hartford
I Would Not Be Here
Tuning:E A D G B E
Key:C
Capo:no capo
This song is a waltz in 3/4. Employ the stanard waltz strumming pattern:
For the first beat of each chord simply strum only the bass note; for the next
two beats strum the remaining strings of the chord.
[Intro]
C C/G C C/G
C C/G C C/G
I would not be here if I hadn't been there
C/Bb C/A F G
And I wouldn't been there if I hadn't just turned
C C/G C C/G
On Wednesday the third in the late afternoon
C/Bb C/A F G
Got to talking with George who works out in the back
C F G C
And only because he was getting off early
F Bb Eb G
To go see a man at a Baker Street bookstore
C C/G C C/G
With a rare first edition of "Steamboats and Cotton"
C/Bb C/A F G
A book he would never have sought in the first place
C C/G
Had he not been inspired
C C/G C/Bb C/A
By a fifth grade replacement schoolteacher in Kirkwood
F G
Who was picked just at random
C F G C
By some man on a school board who couldn't care less
F Bb
And she wouldn't been working
Eb G
If not for her husband
C C/G C C/G
Who moved two months prior to work in the office
C/Bb C/A
Of a man he had met
F G
While he served in the army
C C/G C C/G
And only because they were in the same barracks
C/Bb C/A F G
An accident caused by a poorly made roster
C F G C
Mixed up on the desk of a Sargent from Denver
F Bb Eb G
Who wouldn't be in but for being in back
C C/G C C/G C/Bb C/A
In the car he was riding before he enlisted that hit a cement truck
F G
And killed both his buddies
C C/G C C/G
But a back seat flew up there and spared him from dying
C/Bb C/A F G
And only because of the fault of a workman
C F G C
Who forgot to turn screws on a line up in Detroit
F Bb Eb G
Cause he hollered at Sam who was hateful that morning
C C/G C C/G
Hungover from drinking alone at a tavern
C/Bb C/A F G
Because of a woman he wished he'd not married
C C/G C C/G
He met long ago at a Jewish bar mitzvah
C/Bb C/A F G
For the son of a man who had moved there from Jersey
C F G C
Who managed a drugstore that sold the prescription
F Bb Eb G
That cured up the illness he caught way last summer
C C/G C C/G
He wouldn't have caught except for some kid
C/Bb C/A F G
All contagious from fever who sat in his lap
C C/G C C/G
Was the son of a man who sold him insurance
C/Bb
He met at a...
----------