Johnny Cash The Ballad of ira Hayes Lyrics:
[Instrumental introduction featuring, "Taps."]

[Sung:]
Ira Hayes,
Ira Hayes.

Call him drunken Ira Hayes.
He won't answer anymore.
Not the whiskey drinkin' Indian,
Nor the Marine that went to war.

[Spoken:]
Gather 'round me people there's a story I would tell,
About a brave young Indian you should remember well.
From the land of the Pima Indian, a proud and noble band,
Who farmed the Phoenix valley in Arizona land.

Down the ditches of a thousand years,
The waters grew Ira's peoples' crops.
Till the white man stole the water rights,
And the sparklin' water stopped.

Now Ira's folks were hungry,
And their land grew crops of weeds.
When war came, Ira volunteered,
And forgot the white man's greed.

[Sung:]
Call him drunken Ira Hayes.
He won't answer anymore.
Not the whiskey drinkin' Indian,
Nor the Marine that went to war.

[Spoken:]
There they battled up Iwo Jima hill.
Two hundred and fifty men.
But only twenty-seven lived,
To walk back down again.

And when the fight was over,
And Old Glory raised,
Among the men who held it high,
Was the Indian, Ira Hayes.

[More "Taps.

[Sung:]
Call him drunken Ira Hayes.
He won't answer anymore.
Not the whiskey drinkin' Indian,
Nor the Marine that went to war.

[Spoken:]
[ Find more Lyrics on http://mp3lyrics.org/RX ]
Ira Hayes returned a hero,
Celebrated through the land.
He was wined and speeched and honored.
Everybody shook his hand.

But he was just a Pima Indian,
No water, no home, no chance.
At home nobody cared what Ira'd done,
And when did the Indians dance?

[Sung:]
Call him drunken Ira Hayes.
He won't answer anymore.
Not the whiskey drinkin' Indian,
Nor the Marine that went to war.

[Spoken:]
Then Ira started drinkin' hard.
Jail was often his home.
They let him raise the flag and lower it,
Like you'd throw a dog a bone.

He died drunk early one mornin',
Alone in the land he fought to save.
Two inches of water in a lonely ditch,
Was a grave for Ira Hayes.

[Sung:]
Call him drunken Ira Hayes.
He won't answer anymore.
Not the whiskey drinkin' Indian,
Nor the Marine that went to war.

[Spoken:]
Yeah, call him drunken Ira Hayes.
But his land is just as dry.
And his ghost is lyin' thirsty,
In the ditch where Ira died.

[Instrumental feturing, "Taps."]


[THE BALLAD OF IRA HAYES]
[Written by: Peter LaFarge [1]
Performed by: Johnny Cash
Appears on: Bitter Tears (The Ballads of the American Indian)-1964,
Classic Cash: Hall of Fame Series-1987, The Ballad of Ira Hayes-1999,
The Essential Johnny Cash-1992 & 2002, Silver Collection-2007, et al.]

[1] Peter La Farge (April 30, 1931-October 27, 1965) was a New York-based
folksinger and songwriter of the 1950s and 1960s. He is known best for
his affiliations with Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash. According to anecdotal
sources, he was descended from the nearly extinct Narragansett Indian
tribe and was raised on a ranch in Fountain, CO. He was the biological
son of the Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Oliver La Farge. Oliver and
Peter shared a love and respect for the traditions and history of Native
Americans. As a teenager, Peter competed as a rodeo rider and worked as
a singer. As a young musician he worked with Big Bill Broonzy, Josh White,
and Cisco Houston; Houston became La Farge's mentor, in songwriting and
in life. La Farge served in the United States Navy during the Korean War.
After the war, he took up again with the rodeo, where an accident nearly
cost him a leg. Following his recuperation, he studied acting at the Goodman
Theater School of Drama in Chicago. He then moved to New York City, where
he began to focus increasingly on music. As a singer-songwriter, he became
a central figure in the folk music movement in Greenwich Village, along
with Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger.]
Lyrics: The Ballad of ira Hayes, Johnny Cash [end]