“Anybody here seen my friend Martin? / Can you tell me where he’s gone? / He freed a lot of people, but it seems good they’re dyin’ / You know I just looked around and he’s gone.”

The “it seems good they’re dyin'” is repeated four times in “Abraham, Martin and John,” a 1968 hit from Dion (still with us!) and songwriter Dick Holler.

For decades I never quite understood why Dion felt it was good on some level that all the freed people were dyin’. I didn’t think that was the actual lyric, of course, because it didn’t make a lick of sense. Nonetheless I had no alternative and that’s how I sang it for years.

A few days ago I took the time to read Holler’s lyrics and realized that the line goes as follows: “He freed a lotta people but it seems the good they die young.”

What? That’s absurdly ungrammatical on Dion’s part. “The good” and “they” are the same things. Clumsy. A grammatical way to sing it would be to pronounce the first “the” (right before “good”) and then omit the “they” and make it “it seems the good die young.”

I can’t be the only listener who thought he was singing “it seems good they’re dyin’.”

Anybody here seen my old friend Abraham?
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
He freed a lotta people but it seems the good they die young
You know I just looked around and he’s gone

Anybody here seen my old friend John?
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
He freed a lotta people but it seems the good they die young
I just looked around and he’s gone

Anybody here seen my old friend Martin?
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
He freed a lotta people but it seems the good they die young
I just looked around and he’s gone

Didn’t you love the things that they stood for?
Didn’t they try to find some good for you and me?
And we’ll be free
Some day soon, it’s gonna be one day

Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
I thought I saw him walkin’ up over the hill
With Abraham, Martin, and John