Ireland has been blessed with some extraordinary Singers.
Mary and Luke sing with natural authority.
Singing songs all their lives.
Silver songs of Freedom.
Songs for Ireland.
Louis MacNeice’s long autobiographical Poem, ‘Autumn Journal’ has had a prominent place on my shelves for more than 50 years now (I was a precocious Poetry devotee).
Today I feature two exquisite shorter poems which demonstrate his technical accomplishment and plangent imagination.
… I am not yet born; provide me With water to dandle me, grass to grow for me, trees to talk
to me, sky to sing to me, birds and a white light
in the back of my mind to guide me.
And ain’t it the truth ….
It’s no go the merrygoround, it’s no go the rickshaw,
All we want is a limousine and a ticket for the peepshow.
Their knickers are made of crepe-de-chine, their shoes are made of python,
Their halls are lined with tiger rugs and their walls with head of bison.
If you are Irish or know someone who is Irish or of Irish heritage (and that’s all of you!) please share these Hail St Patrick Posts as widely as possible.
Traditional Irish music demands far more than mere instrumental virtuosity from its practitioners.
What is demanded is cultural and spiritual engagement with the spirit of the music combined with deep listening to fellow musicians.
No better men to prove the point than Paul Brady and Arty McGlynn.
Paul Brady has featured here several times before as befits a master musician, songwriter, singer and performer.
Arty McGlynn, who sadly died recently, will be less well known to those who are not Irish music aficionados.
Arty, who I saw grace the stage many tines with Van Morrison, was by universal acclaim the premier guitarist in the traditional music world.
He seemed always able to find exactly the right parts to play both as a soloist and as a supportive accompanist.
Anyone playing with Arty was in the very best of company.
The clip below is from a 1976 TV Show and showcases Paul Brady’s great song Crazy Dreams before it had that title and before it was recorded with a rhapsodic full band electric arrangement.
Magnificent as that version remains I always wished the acoustic version below had been officially issued.
It doesn’t get any better !
Now let’s let Arty delight us with scintillating solo a Guitar.
To add to our revelries let’s now introduce master musicians Matt Molloy and John Carty
Sometimes a session opens up glorious musical vistas undreamed of before the first note was launched into the innocent air.
If you ever find yourself at such a session find yourself a good seat and settle in for the evening and let the magic do its work.
Now for some Poetry.
Bernard O’Donoghue has been a distinguished academic at Oxford University for many decades.
Yet, as his poems attest, imaginatively and emotionally he has always drawn nurture and inspiration from his Irish roots.
O’ Donahue’s poems are deeply felt and fully realised.
An architecture of the spirit.
There is an affecting spareness and reticence in tone which may owe much to his immersion in classical and medieval poetry.
The old thin ache you thought that you’d forgotten-
More smoke, admittedly than flame;
Less tears than rain. And the whole business
Neither here nor there, and therefore home.”
This Post Dedicated to the music and memory of Arty McGlynn.
Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam (May his soul be seated on God’s right hand)
Well here in the South Downs March did indeed come in like a Lion.
A very angry Lion.
Storm force 11 tree felling, roof lifting, banshee howling winds.
Field flooding, roof rattling, better build your Ark now! torrential rain.
Still, we hunkered down, turned the Hi Fi high and the lights down low and emerged blinking into the revelation of a sunny day.
And, here at The Jukebox March always ushers in another celebration of Ireland’s stupendous contribution to art and culture.
So, without further ado let’s call up the majestic voice of Dolores Keane and surrender to her Emotional Force 12 version of, ‘Teddy O’Neill’.
… The pain in my heart was too deep to conceal …
You would think after hearing Dolores sing in such an imperious manner that no other singer would dare to take on Teddy O’Neill.
But, true artists, and Maura O’Connell is a true artist, know that the best compliment you can pay a giant presence in your own field is to admire, reflect and then do otherwise.
Listen to Maura’s miraculous glowing vocal, here with Folk Legends De Dannan.
There is a dying ember tenderness that deeply stirs the heart.
… All dark and silent … no piper … no reel …
Ah, Teddy, Teddy, to have stirred such dreams.
Such Dreams.
Our opening tip of the hat to Ireland’s poetic treasury is from Michael Hartnett who previously featured here with his mystic, ‘Necklace of Wrens’.
When the wren landed on Michael his grandmother soberly told him that this was a sign he was going to be a Poet.
When it comes to Poetry many are called but very few are chosen.
Michael Hartnett heard and responded full heartedly to his call and the rich harvest of his works demonstrate that he was indeed chosen.
Inchicore Haiku was a return to the English Language after many years of writing solely in Irish.
Falling, falling, on the school yards and the grave yards.
Falling, falling on the lost and the lonely.
Sometimes it really, really pours.
Falling on the outcasts and the refugees.
Falling relentlessly on Hank Williams as he walks purposefully down the lost highway.
Longer than the memory of man the rain has been falling down.
Mysterious and Merciless.
Falling down.
Falling down.
On Pharaoh and Caesar.
On the Saints and the Sinners.
Who’ll stop the rain?
Who’ll stop the rain?
A mysterious and alluring fable lasting barely 150 seconds which you will never sound the depths of even if you have 150 years for the task.
John Fogerty as the dark eyed seer alerting the tribe round the campfire to the signs and rhythms all around them if they would but attend to them.
His vocal and guitar is lit with ancient lore brought fatalistically to the present.
Lashed to the mast of John Fogerty’s obsessive imagination brother Tom, Stu Cook and Doug Clifford sail on into the unknown immensity ahead.
Bruce Springsteen from his youth recognised the primal power of John Fogerty’s songs with Creedence.
He also was struck by their mythic charge and insights into American history and contemporary society.
And they always had a dynamite riff!
The Boss also had that shiver looking out on, standing under, the still falling rain.
He knew there was a darkness that no one can evade.
Learning his trade and reflecting on his own and his nation’s experiences he understood that songs, if written and performed with craft and commitment, could provide shelter from the storm.
Who’ll stop the rain?
Good men through the ages though they know the rain will always fall still look to find the returning sun.
Bards and medicine men meet in colloquy reminding themselves of the insights of their vocations.
Aeons of songwriting and performing lore are distilled in this miraculous recording by John Fogerty and Bob Seger.
Impossible to say which voice is more aged in the wood.
Together they stand, shoulder to shoulder, as the hard rain tumbles from the sky.
Their is balm in the fellow feeling they show each other and us all as they sing.
Who’ll stop the rain?
Long as I remember …
The rain will never stop as long as the world turns.
All we can do is offer each other shelter and believe, no matter how sodden we become, in the reviving warmth of the sure to return sun.
Take the time to attend to an ordinary life and you will find; dramas and disasters, triumphs and terrors, hope and horror and stories more fantastical than Dostoevsky ever imagined.
Solar systems of fascinating and moving stories.
Stories just like yours.
Stories entirely different to yours.
Stories which will make you laugh and cry and shake your head at the wonder of it all.
The wonder of it all.
Sometimes you’ll hear a story and think – well, that’s a story I can identify with even though it never happened to me.
That’s a story that needed to be told.
And, stories that need to be told need attentive listeners.
John Gorka is a songwriter who ponders stories in his heart so that the songs that emerge carry an enormously powerful emotional charge.
Soldiers fight and soldiers die
Soldiers live to wonder why
Semper fi fe fo fum
Look out peacetime here we come
*
*
A Family story.
One man’s Father and a story he carried within him for silent decades.
My father joined the leathernecks
To stay out of the mines
The new marine was just fifteen
In 1939
A story of a nation and its leaders.
My father met Eleanor Roosevelt
In 1945
The war at last was over then
And they were still alive
*
Her husband was the President
Till he ran out of time
Her Franklin D. was history
And they’d put him on the dime
*
A story of a War which left a bloody trail all over the world.
There were medals and malaria
The south pacific war
Through jungles that were paradise
And were paradise no more
A story that excavates buried torments
Some of the men who did survive
Were not the lucky ones
My father lay recovering
The hurt was all inside
Sometimes the wounds that never heal
Are easiest to hide
*
A story that tells you hard truths.
*
Soldiers fight and soldiers die
Soldiers live to wonder why
War is only good for those
Who make and sell the guns
*
A story that reminds us that in the midst of terror and chaos what saves us is kindness and love.
*
When Eleanor came bearing gifts
To San Francisco Bay
She gave my dad a blanket
In the hospital that day
*
That blanket meant alot to him
My mother has it still
*
Some forget the kindnesses
That others never will
A story that’s a nightmare and a hard won blessing.
*
Soldiers fight and soldiers die
Soldiers live to wonder why
Semper fi fe fo fum
Look out peacetime here we come
*
Soldiers fight and soldiers die
Soldiers live to wonder why
Semper fi fe fo fum
Look out peacetime here we come
*
*
In the interviews I have seen with John Gorka he appears charmingly modest and hesitant.
*
But playing live, having pondered the story he is about to tell, when his fingers encounter the guitar and he sings a voice emerges which is deep, rich and resonant.
*
In Semper FI John has been faithful to the lived experience of his father.
A 15 year old boy who grew up during a dark depression only to travel thousands of miles to grow up faster than anyone ever should among shot and shell and death.
*
John Gorka has also been faithful and done honour to the craft of song writing.
A chance to look back at all that you have done and the things you didn’t quite get round to doing.
A chance to look forward and plan for a brighter future.
I hope you and yours have fun.
Take the time to cherish the near and the dear ones and remember those far away in time and space.
Indulge the young and the old.
Be kind to yourself.
Merry Christmas!
The Immortal Jukebox once again celebrates the season with a Christmas Alphabet stuffed with musical and poetic delights.
Let’s begin with a tender meditation from Mary Chapin Carpenter.
‘Still, still, still’ is an Austrian Weihnachtslied a Christmas Carol and a lullaby.
The melody is a mid 19th Century folk tune from Salzburg.
The German Lyric has been attributed to Georg Gotsch.
Mary’s vocal and the arrangement beautifully capture the feeling of vigil, stillness and mystery as the drifting snow wraps us in peaceful sleep while the angels keep their watch.
Sleep, sleep, sleep.
Dream, dream, dream.
Still, still, still.
Still, still, still.
Still, still, still One can hear the falling snow For all is hushed The world is sleeping Holy Star its vigil keeping Still, still, still One can hear the falling snow
Sleep, sleep, sleep ‘Tis the eve of our Saviour’s birth The night is peaceful all around you Close your eyes Let sleep surround you Sleep, sleep, sleep ‘Tis the eve of our Saviour’s birth
Dream, dream, dream Of the joyous day to come While guardian angels without number Watch you as you sweetly slumber Dream, dream, dream
Of the joyous day to come
Our next selection features a giant of Jazz, Benny Carter, who effortlessly combined wit and elegance in his arrangements and Instrumental virtuosity.
Here he is from 1936 leading his Swinging Quintet with my all time favourite version of ‘Jingle Bells’.
Hop aboard the Sleigh!
Jingle Bells was recorded in London in 1936 with Benny on Clarinet and Alto Sax, Scotland’s Tommy McQuater was on Trumpet, England’s Gerry Moore on Piano, Albert Harris on Guitar, Wally Morris on Bass and Al Graig on Drums.
Now a Poem from the great English Poet John Clare (1793-1864).
I discovered John Clare in my late teens and have been a fervent admirer of his work ever since.
His Poem, ‘Christmas Time’ is characteristically generous of heart and acutely observed.
Glad Christmas comes, and every hearth Makes room to give him welcome now, E’en want will dry its tears in mirth, And crown him with a holly bough; Though tramping ‘neath a winter sky, O’er snowy paths and rimy stiles, The housewife sets her spinning by To bid him welcome with her smiles.
Each house is swept the day before, And windows stuck with evergreens, The snow is besom’d from the door, And comfort the crowns the cottage scenes. Gilt holly, with its thorny pricks, And yew and box, with berries small, These deck the unused candlesticks, And pictures hanging by the wall.
Neighbors resume their annual cheer, Wishing, with smiles and spirits high, Glad Christmas and a happy year To every morning passer-by; Milkmaids their Christmas journeys go, Accompanied with favour’d swain; And children pace the crumpling snow, To taste their granny’s cake again.
The shepherd, now no more afraid, Since custom doth the chance bestow, Starts up to kiss the giggling maid Beneath the branch of mistletoe That ‘neath each cottage beam is seen, With pearl-like berries shining gay; The shadow still of what hath been, Which fashion yearly fades away.
The singing waits — a merry throng, At early morn, with simple skill, Yet imitate the angel’s song And chaunt their Christmas ditty still; And, ‘mid the storm that dies and swells By fits, in hummings softly steals The music of the village bells, Ringing around their merry peals.
When this is past, a merry crew, Bedecked in masks and ribbons gay, The Morris Dance, their sports renew, And act their winter evening play. The clown turned king, for penny praise, Storms with the actor’s strut and swell, And harlequin, a laugh to raise, Wears his hunch-back and tinkling bell.
And oft for pence and spicy ale, With winter nosegays pinned before, The wassail-singer tells her tale, And drawls her Christmas carols o’er. While ‘prentice boy, with ruddy face, And rime-bepowdered dancing locks, From door to door, with happy face, Runs round to claim his “Christmas-box.”
The block upon the fire is put, To sanction custom’s old desires, And many a fagot’s bands are cut For the old farmer’s Christmas fires; Where loud-tongued gladness joins the throng, And Winter meets the warmth of May, Till, feeling soon the heat too strong, He rubs his shins and draws away.
While snows the window-panes bedim, The fire curls up a sunny charm, Where, creaming o’er the pitcher’s rim, The flowering ale is set to warm. Mirth full of joy as summer bees Sits there its pleasures to impart, And children, ‘tween their parents’ knees, Sing scraps of carols off by heart.
And some, to view the winter weathers, Climb up the window seat with glee, Likening the snow to falling feathers, In fancy’s infant ecstacy; Laughing, with superstitious love, O’er visions wild that youth supplies, Of people pulling geese above, And keeping Christmas in the skies.
As though the homestead trees were drest, In lieu of snow, with dancing leaves, As though the sun-dried martin’s nest, Instead of ic’cles hung the eves; The children hail the happy day — As if the snow were April’s grass, And pleased, as ‘neath the warmth of May, Sport o’er the water froze to glass.
Thou day of happy sound and mirth, That long with childish memory stays, How blest around the cottage hearth, I met thee in my younger days, Harping, with rapture’s dreaming joys, On presents which thy coming found, The welcome sight of little toys, The Christmas gift of cousins round.
About the glowing hearth at night, The harmless laugh and winter tale Go round; while parting friends delight To toast each other o’er their ale. The cotter oft with quiet zeal Will, musing, o’er his bible lean; While, in the dark the lovers steal, To kiss and toy behind the screen.
Old customs! Oh! I love the sound, However simple they may be; Whate’er with time hath sanction found, Is welcome, and is dear to me, Pride grows above simplicity, And spurns them from her haughty mind; And soon the poet’s song will be The only refuge they can find.
Don’t hesitate to share The Christmas Alphabet as widely as possible – spread the Christmas Cheer!
Notes :
‘Still, still, still’ can be found on Mary Chapin Carpenter’s highly recommended CD, ‘Come Darkness, Come Light’.
My favourite Benny Carter compilation is a 4 CD set from Proper, ‘Music Master’.
‘John Clare : The Major Works’ from Oxford University Press is an excellent compendium of both his Poetry and his autobiographical writings.
‘John Clare : A Biography’ by Jonathan Bate from Picador is a superb critical study fully worthy of its subject.
Set Your Calendar now for December 7th and the next Christmas Alphabet Post – H for ….
From The Dean of Texas Songwriting, Guy Clark, a masterclass in songwriting.
A story imbued with loving detail bringing to vivid life a vanished time and place which yet lives on in the memory.
Being 6 Years Old …
Six is not Five and Six is not Seven.
Now you’re Six you realise you really ought to look out for your little Sister.
Now you’re Six you realise that your older brother may just not be the fount of all wisdom.
Turns out that being indisputably taller is not the same as being smarter.
Now you’re Six you see all kinds of things about the family and the town and yourself that went by in a blur before.
Late afternoon on a hot Texas day …
Nothing hotter than a hot Texas day.
Least that’s what everybody says as they sit around sipping drinks and settin’ the world to rights – starting right here in town.
The sun is so bright it hurts your eyes just keepin’ them open.
Trick is to do everything real slow.
Real slow.
Mama always says nothin’ improved by rushing around.
And, of course, she’s right.
Slow and easy gets it done.
Plenty of hours in the day and most everything can wait a little while and all the better for the waiting.
Old man Wileman ..
Lots of old men in town.
Not a one as old as old man Wileman.
Someone said he was born before the Civil War.
Some say he lost that arm at Five Forks and that’s why every April 1st he gets real quiet and drinks all day.
Mind you it seems to me he pretty near drinks all day every day.
But, he does tell a good story.
And, there’s nothing I love more than a good story.
Now, when you’re Six it turns out that if you keep real quiet that the old men forget you’re there as they play Dominos and tell story after story your mama wouldn’t want you listenin’ to.
You learn a lot more from old men’s stories than you do at school.
Trains are big and black and smokin’, louder than July 4 …
I love to go to the Depot just to watch the trains roll by.
Trains always been somewhere and they are always going somewhere.
Every train tells a story.
At home, on the radio, there’s different kinds of trains.
Train songs.
Jimmy Rodgers, Frank Hutchinson, Charlie Poole and the new guy, Hank Williams, tell stories in song about trains.
Gonna tell my own story in song one of these days.
One of these days.
Look out here she comes, she’s comin’, look out there she goes she’s gone …
*
Now you’re Six you realise that you can’t stop time you can just hold it in your memory.
*
Maybe that’s the whole point of songs and stories.
*
Always gonna keep that nickel and every time I look at it I’m gonna remember the day a red and silver streamliner barrelled right through the town I grew up in.
For the Song and the Singers featured and for the warm memories it evokes.
Nothing like music to open the gates of memory!
Music hath charms. Music hath charms.
And, among those charms is its uncanny ability to forge bonds of fellow feeling and friendship between people born in wildly different times, places and cultures.
Take me and Carl.
Carl came from the spice Island of Grenada in the Caribbean.
When we met he was seventy years old and I was a callow twenty two.
I had just emerged, blinking, from the ivory tower of Cambridge University awaiting my inevitable discovery as a great novelist.
Carl had spent decades in the fierce factories of Detroit and the searing cane fields of Florida.
We met in Hospital.
I was working there as a porter dramatically rushing the resuscitation trolley to people on the point of death and more prosaically ferrying patients to the X-Ray department and to the operating theatre for surgery.
Carl, having suffered a heart attack, came into Accident & Emergency by ambulance at 3am when I was on night shift.
I watched with a mixture of horror and fascination the team of doctors and nurses, with whom moments before I had been sharing idle banter, urgently bring all their professional skills to the struggle to to save Carl’s life.
Happily they succeeded and before I left that morning I wheeled Carl to the ward where he would recover.
Normally that would have been the last time I saw him but as I was about to leave Carl said, ‘Will you come and see later?’.
A request I could hardly refuse.
So, that night I made the first of many visits to Carl’s bedside in the three weeks he spent in the hospital.
Walking into the ward I wondered what two such disparate individuals might find to talk about.
Almost without thinking I asked him, having learned of the time he had spent in America, what kind of music he had listened to there.
Given his age, and reading on his chart that he was a Baptist by religion, I anticipated that he might answer Big Band Jazz or Gospel Music.
I was a little taken aback therefore when he answered by singing in a mellow baritone:
‘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
Riding through the ragged skies and up a clouded draw …’
Now, my education, at University, might have been airily academic but luckily on those few occasions when I was not bent over some medieval text I could be found, a huge tub of popcorn by my side, obsessively watching every ‘A’, ‘B’ or series Western that ever came to town.
So, without missing a beat, I joined in as we sang:
‘Their brands were still on fire and their hooves were made of steel,
Their horns were black and shiny and their hot breath he could feel,
A bolt of fear went through him as they thundered through the sky,
For he saw the riders coming hard and he heard their mournful cry ..’
And then, to the incredulity of the rest of the ward, we lifted our voices up and sang together lustily:
‘Yippie I aye, Yippie I ooh,
Yippie I aye, Yippie I ooh,
Ghost Riders In The Sky’
Then we laughed and laughed until we nearly cried.
And, we sang that song, among many other Western favourites, every time we met until Carl died some two years later.
‘Ghost Riders In The Sky’ was Carl’s favourite song and the version he preferred, ‘Because he don’t mess about with the song’ was the one by Gene Autry from 1949.
This one’s for you Carl:
According to the Western Writers of America, ‘Ghost Riders In The Sky’ is the greatest of all Western songs and I whole heartedly agree with that august body.
The song was written in 1948 by Stan Jones and first recorded by him and his marvelously named, ‘Death Valley Rangers’ that same year.
Stan, then a Park Ranger in Death Valley, is reputed to have written the song on his 34th birthday as he recalled a legend told to him when he was 12 by an old cowboy.
Now, all stories told by Stan Jones need to be taken with a fistful of salt as he was a noted fabulist who often valued the effect of a tale above its veracity (as frequently do I!).
The tale of the spectral herd in the skies and the curse of, ‘Stampede Mesa’ probably traces its origins to mythical cautionary stories told around the cowboy campfire in nineteenth century Texas.
Whatever its cultural lineage Stan crafted a certifiable classic which is shot through with haunting images which never leave the mind once heard.
Burning in the mental firelight of my imagination as the song proceeds I feel the hot breath of those red-eyed cows and shudder with fear as their black and shiny horns and steely hooves thunder by.
In my dreams I’m there with the gaunt faced cowboys their shirts soaked with sweat as they endlessly pursue the cursed herd they never, ever, will catch.
Surely that’s my name I hear them calling in the wind at the dead of night!
‘Yippie I aye, Yippie I ooh,
Yippie I aye, Yippie I ooh,
Ghost Riders In The Sky’
Stan wrote many more fine Western ballads notably those featuring in the films of the greatest of all Western Film Directors – John Ford.
But, neither he, nor anyone else, ever wrote a better one than, ‘Ghost Riders In The Sky’.
The brilliance and mother lode Americana quality of the song has, for seven decades now, attracted hundreds and hundreds of artists to take a shot of rye, strap on their spurs and saddle up with the Ghost Riders to see if that herd can finally be corralled.
And, if anyone, by force of will and character could carry out that miracle it would surely be none other than Johnny Cash – no mean mythic figure himself.
Johnny sings the song with the oracular power an old testament prophet issuing a grave warning to his tribe to prevent them from sleepwalking to doom.
You want fire-snorting horses brought to life?
You want those ghostly riders coming hard right at you?
You want to feel those mournful cries in the pit of your stomach and the marrow of your bones?
Call for The Man in Black!
‘Yippie I aye, Yippie I ooh,
Yippie I aye, Yippie I ooh,
Ghost Riders In The Sky’
Stan Jones’ evocative melody has always attracted guitarists and instrumental groups who like to tell an atmospheric story using six resonant strings instead of the vocal chords.
Today I’ve chosen to feature a top 30 Billboard Chart hit from 1961 (and top 10 in the UK) by The Ramrods – who had clearly listened closely to Duane Eddy.
The Ramrods were out of Connecticut and had brother and sister Claire and Rich Litke on drums and sax respectively.
Vinny Lee took the lead guitar role with Gene Moore in support.
They were essentially one hit wonders though I greatly enjoyed listening to their follow up, ‘Loch Lomond Rock’ which, probably uniquely, mashes up twangtastic guitar with a bagpipe solo!
And, now as they say, for something completely, completely different.
I have to say that when I started researching this post I never expected to feature a trance version by Debbie Harry!
‘Yippie I aye, Yippie I ooh, Yippie I aye, Yippie I ooh’ Indeed!
Debbie’s version comes from Alex Cox’s 1998 film, ‘Three Businessmen’ and in my view is the best thing about it.
The production is by Dan Wool who had worked frequently with Stan Jones’ son who is a music editor – so legal clearances to use the song were easily arranged.
There’s definitely something sexily hypnotic about Debbie’s vocal adding an unexpected dimension to an established standard.
I’m going to conclude with another version out of left field or should I say the firmament.
And, versions of Ghost Riders don’t get more left field than the hipster version by Scatman Crothers!
‘Yippie I aye, Yippie I ooh,
Yippie I aye, Yippie I ooh,
Ghost Riders In The Sky’
Everyone has heard Scatman’s distinctive tones through his voice over work for TV and film. That’s Scatman as Hong Kong Phooey and as the hep Jazz playing feline in, ‘The Aristocats’.
Some may remember his appearances on TV in the show, ‘Chico and the Man’ or on film as Dick Halloran in Kubrick’s, ‘The Shining’ (one of four films he shared billing with Jack Nicholson).
Scatman was always a hep cat as evidenced by his drumming with Slim Gaillard. He brings all his vouty hipster presence to this version of Ghost Riders which has me cheering him on while doubled up with laughter.
There will be many more fine versions of Ghost Riders because we all love a good story.
Especially one that’s so incredible it just has to be true.
‘Yippie I aye, Yippie I ooh,
Yippie I aye, Yippie I ooh,
Ghost Riders In The Sky’
Notes:
There’s a fine biography of Stan Jones by Michal K Ward published by Rio Neuvo.
The major hit version was by Vaughn Monroe
Basso profundo versions by Lorne Green, Marty Robins, Burl Ives, Frankie Laine
Western versions by Sons of the Pioneers, Riders in the Sky, Chris Ledoux, Jimmy Wakeley, Mary McCaslin
Instrumental versions by The Ventures, The Shadows, The Spotniks, Glen Campbell/Roy Clark, Dick Dale
‘Other’ versions by Spike Jones, Blues Brothers, Brothers Four, Judy Collins, Christopher Lee
The Immortal Jukebox 