Paul Bunyan Tab par The New Christy Minstrels

C    F            C
Paul Bunyan, Paul Bunyan,
      Dm               G7
There ain’t nobody who can
C      Bb           Am  Fm
Hold a candle or an axe handle
   C        G     C
To Paul the lumberman.

     C
Paul Bunyan lived so long ago
     G
That you may wonder how I know
  C
A lumberjack once told me so
    G          C
Way up in Minnesota.

     C
This earth began to rock one morn
    G
And all the folks knew Paul was born
    C
And ships were wrecked goin’ ‘round the horn
   G             C
In southern Minnesota.

     C
I’ll tell you how he came to be:
    G
The son of a great white oak was he
    C
His father was a redwood tree
     G          C              G            C
From out in California (that’s western Minnesota).

     F            C
Paul Bunyan, Paul Bunyan,
      Dm               G7
There ain’t nobody who can
C      Bb           Am  Fm
Hold a candle or an axe handle
   C        G     C
To Paul the lumberman.

     C
Paul Bunyan grew so very tall
   G
He could not stand up straight at all
     C
They said, “You’ll have to leave Saint Paul”
    G          C
And maybe Minnesota.

   C
He laughed and the earth shook far and wide
    G
And once they say Paul Bunyan cried
    C
And hundreds drowned-ed in the tide
     G            C
That flooded Minnesota.

   C
So off to the piney woods he went
      G
Where he built a dam with great extent
    C
And with his shirt he pitched a tent
     G            C
That covered Minnesota.

     F            C
Paul Bunyan, Paul Bunyan,
      Dm               G7
There ain’t nobody who can
C      Bb           Am  Fm
Hold a candle or an axe handle
   C        G     C
To Paul the lumberman.

    C
One day when Paul was ramblin’ ‘round
   G
He dug a river and saw the ground
   C
To float his giant timber down
       G            C
To the Gulf of Minnesota.

     C
Paul Bunyan had a great blue ox;
    G
Its length was a hundred city blocks
    C
And when it walked it stopped the clocks
   G           C
In all of Minnesota.

     C
Paul Bunyan’s ox was quite well-known;
    G
Its weight was a hundred million stone
     C
They called him “Babe” ‘cause he warn’t half-grown
       G             C
And he lived in Minnesota.

     F            C
Paul Bunyan, Paul Bunyan,
      Dm               G7
There ain’t nobody who can
C      Bb           Am  Fm
Hold a candle or an axe handle
   C        G     C
To Paul the lumberman.

   C
He took Arizona in his hand
    G
And ran his finger through the sand
   C
He made a canyon and called it “Grand”
   G              C
In southwest Minnesota.

   C
To list his great deeds one by one,
   G
If I were to mention all he’s done
     C
In a hundred years I’d-a just begun
   G               C
To talk about Paul Bunyan.
 
    Cm
And when he died, he died so hard
   G
He shook the ground in my backyard
    C
And every minstrel and every bard
      G                C           G         C
Wrote songs about Paul Bunyan (and also Minnesota).

     F            C
Paul Bunyan, Paul Bunyan,
      Dm               G7
There ain’t nobody who can
C      Bb           Am  Fm
Hold a candle or an axe handle
   C        G     C
To Paul the lumberman.

     F            C
Paul Bunyan, Paul Bunyan,
     Dm            G7
I’ll tell you if I can
   C        Bb             Am       Fm
In all this nation and the whole creation
       C          G     C
He's a giant of a lumberman.


Simplified chorus:
     F            C
Paul Bunyan, Paul Bunyan,
      G7
There ain’t nobody who can
C                       F
Hold a candle or an axe handle
   C        G     C
To Paul the lumberman.