Ninety Nine Years

Chords you’ll need to know

C D G

Jam-Along Backing Track

Lyrics

I've been in this prison twenty years or more I shot my woman with a 44 I'll be right here till my dyin' day I got 99 years and one dark day Well the food is bad and the beds are hard I spend all day breakin' rocks in the yard Well there ain't no change gonna stay that way I got 99 years and one dark day Ain't no singer that can sing a song Convince that warden that I ain't wrong His mind's made up, gonna stay that way I got 99 years and one dark day I never learned to read, I never learned to write My whole life's been one big fight I never heard about the righteous way I got 99 years and one dark day I remember a time many years ago I shot my woman with a 44 I'll be right here till my dyin' day I got 99 years and one dark day I got 99 years and one dark day

About This Song

Ninety Nine Years (99 Years) isn't a traditional song. Jesse Fuller wrote it: he was the Georgia-born one-man band from Oakland who also wrote "San Francisco Bay Blues." Fuller first recorded it in 1958 as "Ninety Nine Years and One Dark Day."

The version bluegrass players know comes from Hot Rize. Tim O'Brien rewrote the words and sang lead, and the band recorded it in January 1979 in Denver for their first album, Hot Rize. The album credits it to Jesse Fuller, with arrangement and lyrics by O'Brien. Later bluegrass versions usually use O'Brien's words. On the record Hot Rize play it in B. The chart above is in G.