“(Ghost) Riders in the Sky: A Cowboy Legend” is a cowboy-styled country/western song written in 1948 by American songwriter, film and television actor Stan Jones. A number of versions were crossover hits on the pop charts in 1949. The ASCAP database lists the song as “Riders in the Sky“, but the title has been written as “Ghost Riders“, “Ghost Riders in the Sky“, and “A Cowboy Legend“. Members of the Western Writers of America chose it as the greatest Western song of all time.
The song tells a folk tale of a cowboy who has a vision of red-eyed, steel-hooved cattle thundering across the sky, being chased by the spirits of damned cowboys. One warns him that if he does not change his ways, he will be doomed to join them, forever “trying to catch the Devil’s herd across these endless skies”. The story has been linked with old European myths of the Wild Hunt and the Dutch/Flemish legend of the Buckriders, in which a supernatural group of hunters passes the narrator in wild pursuit.
However, the “Wild Hunt” falls firmly in a symbolic complex of warrior-hunter mythology, whereas “The Ghost Riders in the Sky” is more likely rooted in a herder mythology. Both mythological complexes may very well derive from primal explanations for the cacophonous majesty of thunderstorms ripping across the landscape, equating it with the sound of stampeding people, horses, and herd animals, as storms, while natural, can be unnatural in their fearsomeness and wanton destruction. Transitioning from hunter to herder invariably involves a symbolic transformation in respect to food animals. Whereas the hunter regards the prey with a measure of respect, and awareness of its sacrifice, herder mythology tends towards to commodification of the herd animal. It is a resource, not an honoured brother or sister.
Stan Jones stated that he had been told the story when he was 12 years old by an old Native American who resided north-east of the Douglas, Arizona, border town, a few miles behind D Hill, north of Agua Prieta, Sonora. The Native Americans, possibly Apache, who lived within Cochise Country, believed that when souls vacate their physical bodies, they reside as spirits in the sky, resembling ghost riders. He related this story to Wayne Hester, a boyhood friend. As both boys were looking at the clouds, Stan shared what the old Native American had told him, looking in amazement as the cloudy shapes were identified as the “ghost riders” that years later, would be transposed into lyrics. The melody is based on the Civil War-era popular song “When Johnny Comes Marching Home”.
Hundreds of performers have recorded versions of the song. Vaughn Monroe reached number 1 on the Billboard with his version (“Riders in the Sky” with orchestra and vocal quartet). Other artists that made the charts with the song include The Outlaws, Bing Crosby (with the Ken Darby Singers), Frankie Laine, Burl Ives (two different versions), Marty Robbins, The Ramrods and Johnny Cash.
