Coca-Cola Stock (1919)

Lyrics

[Intro]
Yeah.
You think you know this town.
Let me tell you how the real money started.

[Verse 1]
Old man Asa Candler, he was done.
Built an empire from a headache cure, a five-cent kick in a glass.
And in nineteen nineteen, he gave the whole damn kingdom to his children.
All five of 'em.
A gift, a burden.
They didn't really know what they were holding.
Just a name, and some brown sugar water in that funny-shaped bottle.

[Chorus]
Then came Ernest Woodruff.
Trust Company of Georgia.
A handshake on a promise.
Five hundred thousand shares of paper.
Forty dollars a piece.
That ain't just stock, baby.
That's the deed to modern Atlanta.
That's the cornerstone, right there.

[Verse 2]
The Candler name comes off the letterhead.
The public's name goes on the book.
Goes from a family secret to a ticker symbol on the wire.
They sold it right on the street.
Forty dollars for a piece of the faith.
A piece of the fizz.
A piece of the future, printed in green ink.

[Chorus]
And here comes Ernest Woodruff.
Trust Company of Georgia.
Nineteen nineteen.
Five hundred thousand shares of paper.
Forty dollars a piece.
That ain't just stock, baby.
That's the deed to modern Atlanta.
That's the cornerstone, laid right here.

[Bridge]
You see that bank tower shining on Peachtree?
That family name on the hospital wing?
That old, quiet money with the house up in Buckhead?
It all started here.
Not with railroads, not with cotton.
It started with syrup and bubbles.
It started with five kids who sold their birthright...
for a pile of paper that built this whole damn city.

[Outro]
Forty dollars.
Nineteen nineteen.
Trust Company.
Yeah.
That's how we built this town.
On paper faith.
And a little bit of sugar.