Lyrics to
Johnny B. Goode

This version of Johnny B. Goode was released by Grateful Dead in 1971.

Our Decade Lyrics Grateful Dead profile has all of the Johnny B. Goode lyrics from 1971 and many more songs from the Grateful Dead discography that we have on file.

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Deep down in Louisiana close to New Orleans,
Way back in the woods among the evergreens
There in an old cabin made of earth and wood
There lived a country boy named Johnny B. Goode.
He never learned to read or write so well,
But he could play a guitar like ringin’ a bell.

Go go, go Johnny go, go; go Johnny go, go;
go Johnny go, go; Go Johnny go, go; Go Johnny B. Goode.

He used to carry his guitar in a gunny sack,
Go sit up in the trees by the railroad track.
The engineers seen him sittin’ in the shade
Strummin’ to the rhythm that the drivers made.
People passin’ by would stop and say
“My my, but that little country boy can play!”

His mamma told him “Someday you will be a man.”
You will be the leader of a big old band
Many people comin’ from miles around
To hear you play your music when the sun goes down.
Maybe someday your name will be in lights.

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Want more lyrics and songs by Grateful Dead?

Grateful Dead has released many songs over the years besides Johnny B. Goode. Grateful Dead released songs from 1967 to 1989 spanning across albums like The Grateful Dead, Anthem Of The Sun, Live / Dead, Aoxomoxoa, American Beauty, Workingman's Dead, Grateful Dead (Skull & Roses), Europe '72, History Of The Grateful Dead, Vol. 1 (Bear's Choice), Wake Of The Flood, Grateful Dead From The Mars Hotel, Blues For Allah, Steal Your Face, Terrapin Station, Shakedown Street, Go To Heaven, Reckoning, In The Dark, and Built To Last. Decade Lyrics has over lyrics & songs by Grateful Dead.

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About Lyrics and Johnny B. Goode by Grateful Dead

When you decide to study the lyrics to Johnny B. Goode, you're looking at the words, verses and background chorus from the 1971 song by Grateful Dead. Some of the lyrics to Johnny B. Goode have clear meanings and some contain metaphorical references. Like most songs, only Grateful Dead and their collaborators know the full story behind any of the their songs.

You can understand the lyrics to Johnny B. Goode if you take apart the structure of the words. The word "lyric" itself derives from the Latin word lyricus, with the actual English word lyrics applied to the definition "words set to music" listed in Stainer and Barrett's 1876 Dictionary of Musical Terms. Continuing the chain, the Latin word lyricus derives from the Greek word λυρικός or lyrikós. This somewhat means "poetry accompanied by the lyre" or "words set to music." You can easily see that by looking at the background of the word lyric, that the "lyrics to Johnny B. Goode" means the words set to the music of Johnny B. Goode, or poetry accompanied by the lyre played by Grateful Dead. The singular form "lyric" is still used to mean the complete words to a song. However, the singular form lyric is also commonly used to refer to a specific line (or phrase) within a song's lyrics. Hence, by this analysis of word structure, you could say that the lyric to Johnny B. Goode and the lyrics to Johnny B. Goode are both one and the same thing. None of this talk about the word Lyrics is really relevant to fans of Grateful Dead who came here looking just for the lyrics to Johnny B. Goode, but we feel it is still fun to learn what's behind commonly used words and lyrics in songs.

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