The Randall Knife chords by Guy Clark, Rodney Crowell

SimplifiedD · Em · A · G · C

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Intro 1

Verse 1
D 
My
father had a randle knife
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G 
My  mother gave it to him
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A 
when he went off to World War II
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D 
to save us all from ru in.
Now, if you've ever held
a Randall knife,
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G 
you know my father well.
Em 
A 
If  a better blade was ever made,
D 
it was probably forged in hell.
My father was a good man,
G 
he was a lawyer by his trade,
A 
and  only once did I ever
G 
Em 
D 
see him misuse a blade.
Well, it almost cut his thumb off
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G 
when he took it for a tool.
A 
Ah, the knife was made for darker things,
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D 
and you could not bend the rules.
He let me take it camping
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A 
G 
once on a Boy Scout jamboree.
A 
I  broke a half an inch off
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D 
trying to stick it in a tree.
Well, I hid it from him for a while,
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G 
Em 
with a knife, and he were one,
A 
and he put it in his bottom
drawer
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Em 
without a hard -word mark,
D 
and there it slept,
and there it stayed for
Em 
For twenty -some odd years,
A 
sort of like Excalibur,
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D 
Em 
A 
except waiting for a tear.
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A 
D 
When my father died when I was forty,
Em 
I couldn't find a way to cry.
A 
Not because I didn't love him,
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not because he didn't try.
I'd cried for every lesser thing,
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G 
for whiskey, pain,
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A 
but he deserved a better tear,
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D 
and I was not quite ready.
So we took his ashes out to sea
G 
and poured them off the stern
A 
and  then threw the roses
in the wake of everything
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D 
we'd learned.
And when we got back to the house,
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Em 
they asked me what I wanted.
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D 
A 
Not the law books, not the watch.
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D 
I need the thing he's haunted
Will my hand burn for the random knife
G 
There in the bottom drawer
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A 
And  I found a tear for my father's life
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D 
Em 
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D 
And all that it stood
Thank you very much.