My father had skin like leather   Hands like steel   From a lifetime spent   In the cotton fields      Though he'd come home tired and dirty   Almost every night   He found the strength to smile at me   And hold my mama tight      While that old transistor radio   Would play the opry out in the hall   I'd sit and watch their shadows   Glide across the wall      And they'd dance to a Dixie lullaby   A picture of love beneath the southern sky   Oh my, what a beautiful life?   Just like a Dixie lullaby      I left home at 18   In a hand me down Chevrolet   Packed my mamas goodness   My old mans stubborn ways      It was college, work and love   Then the babies came   The youngest one got   His granddaddy's name      And in the early morning hours   When my children could not sleep   I'd rock them in my arms   To a Jimmy beat      I'd sing them a Dixie lullaby   Hush baby, don't you start to cry   Oh my, what a beautiful life?   Just like a Dixie lullaby      My father was a mountain of a man   That was the description that I gave   The morning that we laid him in his grave      There with my mama by his side, we said our last goodbye   To a man we thought would never die   As I stood there in the fields of amazing grace   Oh, how the tears ran down my face      And I sang him a Dixie lullaby   We'll meet again, by and by   Oh my, what a beautiful life?   Just like a Dixie lullaby      Oh my, what a beautiful life?   Just like a Dixie lullaby