Song Help Request One odd chord in Roy Clark tune

[Oldscruggsfan]

I’ve been working on a 3/4 time strum to accompany the hilarious Roy Clark tune, “Thank God and Greyhound”. I wasn’t able to find uke tab online but found several versions of the chord progression on a guitar chord webpage.
It’s a D major progression, which I transposed to C.
I admittedly tend to hear “ghost” chord changes where they don’t actually happen so maybe it’s just my lack of perfect pitch but as I’m humming along, there seems to be the need for a note/ chord other than holding in F at the word “longer” in the second line of the chorus, and my ear says the C (as shown if transposed from the web version in D) should instead be a minor/ sharp note at “me” (last word of chorus lyrics, line 3) and at “song” (last word of chorus lyrics, line 5).
For “longer” in the 2nd line of the chorus lyrics, I tried Am which isn’t right, and for those words at chorus lyrics lines 3 and 5, I tried Fm which sounds better than “C” as shown by the guitar site, but is also still not right.
Am I mistaken?

 

[Oldscruggsfan]

I'm listening to a recording of Roy's which is in the key of Bb. The song sounds like it uses very basic chords: 1 (17) 4 1 5 1 (repeat), then the chorus starts on a prolonged 4 chord, finally shifting to 5. So, in the key of C, you'd have a prolonged F chord, although on the syllable "grey-" I hear a momentary shift to a b7 major chord (Bb) before returning right back to F. I hear no change in the harmony on "long-", not even a color note, although you could spice things up a bit by playing either F6 or Dm. This would echo the melodic "bump" up to D at "grey-" even as the melody itself dips down to an A. I'd avoid using Bb again here because the Bb note would clash with the A in the melody—they're only a half-step apart, and this isn't a jazz song. Am or Fm? Not here.

As for the (first?) "me", I think what you're thinking of with Fm is adding a little chromatic passing line from G through G# (enharmonic with Ab) to A. G is the 5th of the C chord, Ab is the (minor) 3rd of the Fm chord, and A is the (major) 3rd of the F chord. So Fm could fit beautifully in between as a passing chord. But I wouldn't switch to it until the 3rd beat, right before the change to F major on the second "watching". You could also try Caug, which achieves the same chromatic transition, but is more conventional, since the root transition doesn't occur until the start of the measure—the F chord isn't "foreshadowed" to the same extent, despite that leading chromatic line.

Wow! Ubelele, thank you so much for the detailed response. This should sort me out. I neglected to mention that I’m in the middle of writing “Ode to Spam” using Roy’s tune.