Music: Roweling Hard

A month ago, 34-year-old Stanley Davis Jones was just another leathery-necked U.S. forest ranger, living quietly with his schoolteacher wife (“Most rangers marry schoolteachers, doggoned if I know why”) on the edge of California’s Death Valley. Last week, Stan Jones was cruising around Hollywood in a 1949 car, with reporters and photographers on his tail. Overnight, a little tune that he had cooked up around the campfire, called Riders in the Sky, had put him in the spotlight.

It all started when Cinemactor Randolph Scott and a movie troupe went to Death Valley last fall to shoot scenes for The Walking Hills, and Ranger Stan was assigned as technical adviser. Between takes Stan would haul out his guitar and twang some of the songs he has composed while out on ranger trips. Scott & Co. told him he was great, that he should sell his songs in Hollywood.

Stan took the tip. The first publisher who heard Riders told him it sounded too much like a “funeral dirge or a college hymn.” (Actually, its opening sounded more like the first few steps of When Johnny Comes Marching Home.) He kept plugging, finally recorded Riders and some of his others at his own expense. Then Nature Boy Eden Ahbez (TIME, May 3, 1948) sandaled into the act. He heard Riders and liked it. The song had hair on its chest, and would be hard to croon with mush in the mouth. Ahbez took the music to Burl Ives, who quickly recorded it for Columbia. By the time Bing Crosby got it onto wax for Decca last month, and Vaughn Monroe had done a big, first-class production job for Victor, Riders was roweling hard for the top of the hit parade.

To Arizona-born Stan, who had figured on retiring with a modest pension at 50, Riders will probably bring about $30,000. And Stan has more songs on the griddle. One is called Whirlwind, and his publishers are puffing it as “just as good as Riders.” The ranch of his own, complete with organ, that Stan wanted by 1965, looked much closer.