Reply #6: Mason Proffit, Wanted: Mason Proffit [View All]

[Wickerman]

1968 and Mason Proffit was an early early venture into Country Rock, ala Gram Parsons and the Byrds. The song Two Hang Men is one of the best anti-death penalty songs ever.

As I rode into Tombstone on my horse, his name was Mack,
I saw what I'll relate to you going on behind my back.
It seems the folks were up in arms, a man now had to die
For believing things that didn't fit the laws they'd set aside.

The man's name was Ima Freak, the best that I could see
He was the executioner, a hangman just like me.
I guess that he'd seen loopholes from working with his rope
He'd hung the wrong man many times so now he'd turned to hope.

He talked to all the people from his scaffold in the square
He told them of the things he'd found but they didn't seem to care
He said the laws were obsolete, a change they should demand
But the people only walked away, he couldn't understand.

The Marshal's name was Uncle Sam, he said he'd right this wrong
He'd make the hangman shut his mouth if it took him all day long.
He finally arrested Freak, and then he sent for me
To hang a fellow hangman from a fellow hangman's tree.

It didn't take them long to try him in their court of law
He was guilty then of thinking, a crime much worse than all,
They sentenced him to die so his seed of thought can't spread
And infect the little children, that's what the law had said.

So the hanging day came 'round, and he walked up to the noose
I pulled the lever but before he fell I cut him loose
They called it all conspiracy and that I had to die
So to close our mouths and kill our minds, they hung us side by side.

And now we're two hangmen, hanging from a tree,
That don't bother me at all.
Two hangmen hanging from a tree,
That don't bother me at all.