Learn your ABC's: All Books Cash

I think I was around eight or nine years of age, maybe a bit younger, when my parents took my sister and I to see Johnny and June Carter Cash at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, TN back in the early 70's. I'm not quite sure the exact date.

And, I'm not quite sure how or why Cash's music and life become a focal point of my musical tastes throughout my life. But I'm very sure of how grateful I am for my loving parents and that small trek through Kentucky and Tennessee that summer of the 70's.

In Robert Hilburn's Johnny Cash: The Life, you too can take a trek, a journey back to the early days of Dyess, AR(today, Sept 26, would've been his 82nd birthday) through the pills, spills and chills; the peaks and valleys of John's musical life and landscape til that September day when Johnny Cash's journey ended.



Who's Robert Hilburn, you may ask. Well, I'd guess he's heard this phrase hundreds of times, " Hello I'm Johnny Cash!" but maybe the most memorable time came at the famous Folsom Prison Concert in 1968. Yes, Hilburn was there on assignment for a Los Angeles newspaper.

Hilburn, a music critic in LA has helped catapult careers of icons such as Elton John, Bruce Springsteen and Kris Kristofferson, who said that after Hilburn's review of his Troubadour debut, he never had to work again.

Johnny Cash: The Life can be seen as the authoritative book on the Man in Black. One only has to read through the number of sources, interviews, including many with John himself and several Cash family members, colleagues, contemporaries and friends to understand Hilburn and the books credibility. But don't start there. Start at page one. Hilburn writes not just through the eyes of a music critic but as a fan and friend adding a sincere, riveting, honest look at a Man, his Music and his Life. Heck, you may learn more about The Man than maybe he knew of himself!

Learn your ABC's my Mother told me. Not sure if these were the ABC's she was referring to, but they sure have taught me a lot.

All Books Cash ( I've read some, some I haven't...yet!):

 

*please note as you browse through my blog you have the opportunity to purchase  books directly from this website. However, I no longer earn any income from this particular site as when the state of MN required websites to pay taxes on their affiliate programs, Amazon abruptly ended theirs. Although I don't blog that much anymore, I do so now purely for the enjoyment of writing and promoting reading and a little music along the way.

 

On this day in 1945 on an island in the Pacific...

On this day in 1945, Marines raise the American flag on top of Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima in WWII.

Book Recommendation: Flags of Our Fathers by James Bradley, the son of  flag raiser, John Bradley . An extraordinary book on one of the most memorable days in WWII history, later made into a movie by Clint Eastwood
 

 To learn more about James Bradley, his story and books, visit his website

Movies include, Flags of our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, both directed by Clint Eastwood and Sands of Iwo Jima, starring John Wayne.



 

Originally written by Pete La Farge, The Ballad of Ira Hayes lyrically tells the story of Ira Hayes, flag raiser and Pima Indian. The song sang by the likes of Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan but made popular by Johnny Cash
 

The Video: "The Ballad Of Ira Hayes"

Ira Hayes,
Ira Hayes

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

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 for a thousand years
The water 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

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

There they battled up Iwo Jima's hill,
Two hundred and fifty men
But only twenty-seven lived to walk back down again

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

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

Ira 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 crops, no chance
At home nobody cared what Ira'd done
And when did the Indians dance

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

Then Ira started drinkin' hard;
Jail was often his home
They'd let him raise the flag and lower it
like you'd throw a dog a bone!

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

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

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

 

 *please note as you browse through my blog you have the opportunity to purchase  books directly from this website. However, I no longer earn any income from this particular site as when the state of MN required websites to pay taxes on their affiliate programs, Amazon abruptly ended theirs. Although I don't blog that much anymore, I do so now purely for the enjoyment of writing and promoting reading and a little music along the way.