The Candler Children

Lyrics

[Intro]
Old man Asa, he saw it coming.
Sold the whole secret to his own blood for a million dollars.
That was 1916.
Just a warm-up act.
Just an appetizer.

[Verse 1]
Three years later. November chill on Peachtree Street.
In a room at the Trust Company of Georgia, the air smells like ink and coal smoke.
Five names hold the future in their hands.
Charles Howard, the oldest.
Asa Junior—we called him Buddy. The one with the private zoo down at Callanwolde.
Walter T. William.
And the only daughter, Lucy Beall.
Five kids holding the keys to the kingdom.

[Chorus]
Twenty-five million dollars.
Nineteen nineteen.
On a mahogany table, a city is born.
Candler to Woodruff.
That's the signature.
That's the handshake that never ends.
That's when Atlanta got its money.

[Verse 2]
On the other side of that table, Ernest Woodruff.
He's not buying a beverage company.
He's buying a century.
Partly financed by a public offering, a new idea then.
Let the people buy a piece of the promise.
The biggest deal the South had ever seen.
A lot of excitement, his boy Robert said.
Yeah. You could say that.

[Chorus]
Twenty-five million dollars.
Nineteen nineteen.
On a mahogany table, a city is born.
Candler to Woodruff.
That's the signature.
That's the handshake that never ends.
That's when Atlanta got its money.

[Bridge]
And the money went to work.
Buddy bought an elephant, named her Coca. She’d get loose in Druid Hills sometimes.
The rest of it... it built the skyline.
It built the hospitals, the libraries, the university on the hill.
Every cornerstone, every foundation, every name on every brick...
It all traces back to that room.
To that transfer.

[Outro]
From Asa, to the five kids.
From the five kids, to Woodruff.
From Woodruff, to us.
Still flows through the streets.
Still runs this town.
Don't it, though.