Posted on 05/19/2024 3:29:16 PM PDT by Twotone
~yesterday...I played America's Number One record from exactly three-quarters of a century ago - May 1949:
Listeners seemed to enjoy it, and many wanted to know more about it. I don't blame them. It's extremely catchy for a song with no consistent title: "Ghost Riders in the Sky"? "(Ghost) Riders in the Sky"? "Riders in the Sky"? "Riders in the Sky (A Cowboy Legend)"? Or maybe you prefer just plain "Ghost Riders", or "Ghostriders", or half-a-dozen other variations over the years.
But, however you label it, it's a song unlike any other. It made its appearance seventy-five years ago, and shortly thereafter versions by Peggy Lee, Bing Crosby and Burl Ives chased Vaughn Monroe up the hit parade, to be followed over the decades by Frankie Laine, Dean Martin, Marty Robbins, Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, the Doors, Blondie's Debbie Harry, the DNA Vibrators, and the German heavy metal band Die Apokalyptischen Reiter. But, with all due respect to those fine vocal artistes, the song's melodrama is made for a big-voiced baritone like Vaughn Monroe. On May 14th 1949 he and his orchestra hit Number One on the Billboard chart, and America was gripped by one of the spookiest tales ever to haunt the jukebox:
An old cowpoke went riding out one dark and windy day
Upon a ridge he rested as he went along his way
When all at once a mighty herd of red-eyed cows he saw
A-plowin' through the ragged skies and up a cloudy draw
Yippee-yi-yay, yippee-yi-yo
The ghost herd in the sky...
A ghost herd in the sky? Where did that come from? From a guy called Stan Jones - and it was, as they say on the TV movies, based on a true story.
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
I think the Leroy Troy version on the Marty Stuart show is better. The stand up bass guy loses it, but keeps playing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pkdci55adqk
Yep, the version by The Highwaymen is amazing. I think my first copy of that album was on cassette.
Another collection of great artists like The Traveling Wilburys, only country oriented. Though I guess the Traveling Wilburys did some country like songs too. Anyway, love listening to them both. 😊
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