Ghost riders in the sky


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Ghost riders in the sky

Postby colonel snow » Fri May 17, 2019 10:30 am

Deleted due to doubts about the information


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Last edited by colonel snow on Sat Oct 01, 2022 12:09 pm, edited 2 times in total.


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Re: Ghost riders in the sky

Postby Private Presley » Fri May 17, 2019 11:46 am

The melody of "Ghost Riders In the Sky" is based on a popular song, "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" from the American Civil War.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BTk-raafhU
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Re: Ghost riders in the sky

Postby Colin B » Fri May 17, 2019 11:49 am

Remember hearing this on the radio as a lad, it seemed, in the UK at least, that it was just a 'novelty' or a 'joke' song...
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Re: Ghost riders in the sky

Postby Suspicious Minds » Tue May 21, 2019 1:54 am

The song was written in 1948 by American songwriter, film and television actor Stan Jones. Here’s a little background story:

An impressionable 12 year old rode to the top of an Arizona hill one afternoon with an old Cowboy friend to check a windmill. A big storm was building and they needed to lock the blades down before the wind hit. When finished, they paused to watch the clouds darken and spread across the sky. As lightning flashed, the Cowboy told the boy to watch closely and he would see the devil's herd, their eyes red and hooves flashing, stampede ahead of phantom horsemen. The Cowboy warned the youth that if he didn't watch himself, he would someday be up there with them, chasing steers for all eternity. The terrified boy jumped on his horse and took off for the the safety of home. Years later, he recalled that scary, dark afternoon and on his 34th birthday, Stan Jones sat outside his Death Valley home and wrote "(Ghost) Riders in the Sky."

http://www.westernmusic.org/stan-jones


Here’s a clip of the original by Burl Ives:

https://youtu.be/j2klh2cTa_Q
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Re: Ghost riders in the sky

Postby Colin B » Tue May 21, 2019 9:30 am

Suspicious Minds wrote:The song was written in 1948 by American songwriter, film and television actor Stan Jones. Here’s a little background story:

An impressionable 12 year old rode to the top of an Arizona hill one afternoon with an old Cowboy friend to check a windmill. A big storm was building and they needed to lock the blades down before the wind hit. When finished, they paused to watch the clouds darken and spread across the sky. As lightning flashed, the Cowboy told the boy to watch closely and he would see the devil's herd, their eyes red and hooves flashing, stampede ahead of phantom horsemen. The Cowboy warned the youth that if he didn't watch himself, he would someday be up there with them, chasing steers for all eternity. The terrified boy jumped on his horse and took off for the the safety of home. Years later, he recalled that scary, dark afternoon and on his 34th birthday, Stan Jones sat outside his Death Valley home and wrote "(Ghost) Riders in the Sky."

http://www.westernmusic.org/stan-jones



So was the 12-year-old youth Stan Jones ?

I think we should be told !
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Re: Ghost riders in the sky

Postby Suspicious Minds » Tue May 28, 2019 1:19 am

From Wiki (slightly edited)

‘Ghost Riders In The Sky’ is based on the tune of ’When Johnny Comes Marching Home’ (or ’When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again’), a popular song from the American Civil War, written by Louis Lambert (pseud. of Patrick Gilmore) in 1863.

94284883-260D-4AD7-850D-7FCF6D4610A1.png


Yet, the story goes still further back in time, as Gilmore acknowledged that the music was not original but, as he put it in an 1883 article in the Musical Herald, "a musical waif which I happened to hear somebody humming in the early days of the rebellion, and taking a fancy to it, wrote it down, dressed it up, gave it a name, and rhymed it into usefulness for a special purpose suited to the times."

More on Gilmore and ‘When Johnny ...’
https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200000024/

Listen to a sample here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Jo ... ching_Home

A color-illustrated, undated slip of Gilmore's lyrics, printed by his own Boston publisher, actually states that ’When Johnny Comes Marching Home’ should be sung to the tune of ‘Johnny Fill Up the Bowl’, which means that Gilmore wrote the lyrics of ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’, but not the tune, which was copied - or at least derived - from ‘Johnny Fill Up The Bowl’.

9C4346D3-7795-4734-ACA1-A7A82514D78E.jpeg


Interestingly, the original sheet music for ‘Johnny Fill Up the Bowl’ states that the music was arranged - but not composed - by J. Durnal. Which means there must have been yet another pre-existing tune as its origin.

Some point to a melodic resemblance of the tune of ‘Johnny Fill Up The Bowl’ to that of ‘John Anderson, My Jo’ , to which Robert Burns wrote lyrics in 1789 to fit yet another pre-existing tune dating from about 1630 or earlier. Some have suggested a connection to ‘The Three Ravens’, an English folk ballad, printed in the song book Melismata, compiled by Thomas Ravenscroft and published in 1611.
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