With its vividly haunting lyrics and melody, Ghost Riders in the Sky is one of the all time great cowboy songs. This song was written by Stan Jones in 1948 when he was still a forest ranger writing songs on the side. He often stated that this song was based off a ghost story a cowboy had told him when he was 12. Many believe the story he was told was the story of Stampede Mesa. Here is what Texas folklorist, J. Frank Dobie wrote about the legend.
Early in the fall of ’89 an old cowman named Sawyer came through with a trail herd of fifteen hundred head of steers, threes and fours. While he was driving across Dockum Flats one evening, some six or seven miles east of the mesa, about forty-odd head of nester cows came bawling into the herd. Closely flanking them, came the nester, demanding that his cattle be cut out of the herd. Old Sawyer, who was ‘as hard as nails,’ was driving short handed; he had come far; his steers were thin and he did not want them ‘ginned’ about any more. Accordingly, he bluntly told the nester to go to hell.
The nester was pretty nervy, and seeing that his little stock of cattle was being driven off, he flared up and told Sawyer that if he did not drop his cows out of the herd before dark he would stampede the whole bunch. “At this Sawyer gave a kind of dry laugh, drew out his six shooter, and squinting down it at the nester, told him to ‘vamoose.’
Nightfall found the herd straggling up the east slope of what on the morrow would be christened by some cowboy Stampede Mesa. Midnight came, and with scarcely half the usual night guard on duty, the herd settled down in peace.
But the peace was not to last. True to his threat, the nester, approaching from the north side, slipped through the watch, waved a blanket a few times, and shot his gun. He did his work well. All of the herd except about three hundred head stampeded over the bluff on the south side of the mesa, and two of the night herders, caught in front of the frantic cattle that they were trying to circle, went over with them.
“Sawyer said but little, but at sunup he gave orders to bring in the nester alive, horse and all. The orders were carried out, and when the men rode up on the mesa with their prisoner, Sawyer was waiting. He tied the nester on his horse with a rawhide lariat, blindfolded the horse, and then, seizing him by the bits, backed him off the cliff. There were plenty of hands to drive Sawyer’s remnant now. Somewhere on the hillside they buried, in their simple way, the remains of their two comrades, but they left the nester to rot with the pile of dead steers in the canyon.
And now old cowpunchers will tell you that if you chance to be about Stampede Mesa at night, you can hear the nester calling his cattle, and many assert that they have seen his murdered ghost, astride a blindfolded horse, sweeping over the headlands, behind a stampeding herd of phantom steers. Herd bosses are afraid of those phantom steers, and it is said that every herd that has been held on the mesa since that night has stampeded, always from some unaccountable cause (Dobie, J. Frank, 1924, p.282-283)Stan Jones himself was the first to record this song and did so in 1948. Here is that version. You may notice it uses a faster tempo and a stronger beat than later verisions. This was done to create a sound simular to that of stampeding cattle.
However the song would gain more fame when Burl Ives recorded it in 1949.
Also in 1949 Vaughn Monroe would take the song to number 1.
Of course this is a Movie Music Monday and thus we come to my favorite version of the song. Gene Autry recorded this song for Columbia records in 1949 as well as using it as the title song of one of his best movies, Riders in the Sky (1949). The scene where Gene sings this song is not only a great bit of music but a masterful piece of visual filmmaking, that definitely stood out compared to what audiences had come to except from B westerns. Much of this had to do with the fact that the film was directed by John English, who directed some of Autry's best movies (including my favorite, Rim of the Cannon (1949)) as well as what is considered to be the best movie serial of all time, The Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941). Gene's voice is also completely perfect for this song. A review of the movie in The Showman's Trade Review stated, "'Riders in the Sky' is superior both in entertainment and technical values to the usual western in its class and is probably the best in the series. The song, Ghost Riders in the Sky, is skillfully woven into the story and the ghost riders are shown with some very capable photography and artwork displayed in this piece."
Box Office Barometer, 1949
This song would return to the movies decades later with a truly bizarre scene in Blues Brothers 2000 (1998).
The song again returned to the movies when the alternative rock band did a version for the movie Ghost Rider (2007).
I also love Johnny Cash's version of this song. Johnny recorded it in 1979 as part of his Silver album. It went to number 2 on the charts.
In 1980 Johnny performed this song on The Muppet Show (1976-1981).
The band, Outlaws turned this into a full on rock song in 1980.
This song also inspired The Doors' 1971 song, Riders of the Strom.
There have been more versions of this song than I can possibly post on this blog what is your favorite.
-Michael J. Ruhland
https://esoterx.com/2012/12/09/ghost-riders-in-the-sky-the-wild-hunt-and-the-eternal-stampede/
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