by Pickle Juice D.
We all have songs in our lives that have in one way or another touched a place in our soul. A song that can make the world stop for a moment when we hear it. Songs that can awaken the shadowy places in our hearts. "Ghost Riders in the Sky" is one of those songs for me.
Actor and Singer Stan Jones was the original composer of "Ghost Riders In The Sky" (Image from Wikipedia)
A few months ago, the dream of playing music was rekindled when I purchased a cheap Johnson guitar at a thrift store. I placed the guitar in my arms and ran my thumb over the strings. I felt like a rock star in a Jukebox Hero sort of way. My first thought was, “I have gotta play Ghost Riders!”
This love affair began in 2007 when Spiderbait performed a metal version for the movie Ghost Rider, starring Nicholas Cage and Sam Elliot. The metal tones as the flaming Riders rode across the desert was the moment I was hooked.
I am now four bars into learning "Ghost Riders" and reading sheet music. What surprised me the most is my self discipline- I’m practicing twice a day.
The birth of "Ghost Riders in the Sky" began long before Stan Jones wrote the song in 1948. When Stan was a boy in Arizona, an old Indian told a tale of cowboys in the sky cursed to drive angry cattle from horizon to horizon. At that moment, the seed was planted. It would later bloom into the epic ballad that has been enjoyed for generations.
But first of all, what is a ballad?
According to the Library of Congress, “Traditional ballads are narrative folksongs - simply put, they are folksongs that tell stories. They tell all kinds of stories, including histories, legends, fairy tales, animal fables, jokes, and tales of outlaws and star-crossed lovers.”
Nowadays, ballads are not limited to folk songs. Every genre has numerous examples of ballads. It would seem the only music more popular is love songs, but many of those are ballads.
Ballads don’t have to be tales of love and loss. Any story told with music is a ballad, whether it’s a tale of murder or love. I could go on forever listing ballads. Country music is loaded with them, as is pop, R&B, and soft rock. Folk music is nearly nothing but ballads. Hip hop and Rap have their ballads. Metal, well, that’s where the power ballad comes in.
I’ll have to write more about ballads in a later article. For now, let's get back to the legendary ballad, "Ghost Riders in the Sky."
The song was written by Stan Jones in 1948. Within a year of its release, the song was covered extensively by the likes of Burl Ives, Peggy Lee, Bing Crosby, Frankie Laine, and Vaughn Monroe. For those of you that are low bass cover fans, I would have to speculate that Vaughn Monroe did the first low bass cover of "Ghost Riders in the Sky." This would have been before auto tune allowed anyone to do a low bass. Each cover made the Billboard Top 100 chart and stayed there for weeks.
Johnny Cash recorded a rendition of the song in 1979. (Image from Discogs)
Of these early covers, I’m partial to Burl Ives. It’s partly because his voice is more familiar from narrating Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer but it’s mostly because he sounds more like a tired cowboy sitting around a campfire after a long cattle drive than any of the others.
At one point, Elvis Presley spent time in the studio rehearsing "Ghost Riders." Sadly he never publicly performed the song, or released it on a record. It sure would have been nice to hear what style Elvis would have brought to the legacy of the song.
Lawrence Welk and His Orchestra released an instrumental version in 1961 featuring Neil Levang on guitar. You gotta love the guitar in this one. While I do prefer the acoustic guitar for this song, Neil did an amazing job.
Glen Campbell and Roy Clark performed a duet with electric guitars. While I may not be a fan of the distortion they used, I cannot deny they were masters of the guitar and they rocked the song.
In November of 1980, The Outlaws brought us a gloriously aggressive cover. It's everything you love from 80’s metal and one you should give a listen.
Of course we have the Highwaymen, a powerhouse of talent, that performed one of the greatest covers of "Ghost Riders in the Sky."
Just an interesting side note about the Highwaymen. In 1990, members of the original group Highwaymen sued country music's Highwaymen, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, and Kris Kristofferson over their use of the name. The suit was dropped when all parties agreed that the folk group owned the name and that the folk group would grant the nonexclusive, non transferable license to the supergroup to use the name. The two groups then shared the stage at a 1990 concert in Hollywood.
I know that anyone who knows this song is probably screaming, “What about Marty Robbins?” Well, unwind your panties, I was saving the best for last. For my taste, there is no better version than the tones of Marty Robbins. You can disagree all you want, but the legend’s music and voice sings for itself. Marty Robbins keeps that sitting-around-the-campfire quality which adds to the song. It’s the best balance between a man, his guitar, and an orchestra.
Nowadays, we have low bass covers becoming popular and "Ghost Riders" is getting swept up into the trend. Some may like it, some may not. What this does tell us is that each generation has kept this haunting ballad alive. Each generation has discovered and loved "Ghost Riders" so much that they have kept its legend alive.
I have often wondered what a musician would think of all the covers performed of their song. They all dream of immortality through their music. Does Stan Jones sit on his steed in the sky and pause to take a look at the legend he left behind? Does he look on with pride? Is he there by the side of a young child when they get their first guitar and all they want is to play "Ghost Riders in the Sky?"