Riders in the Sky

Riders in the Sky may refer to:

David and the Giants

David and the Giants began as a rock band in Laurel, Mississippi; with the Huff brothers: David, Clay, and Ray—with Jerry Parker on drums, touring the Southeast during the 1960s. In 1977 they switched to a Christian rock format. They continued to sing and record together through 1999. Recording and performing together for almost 40 years, the band released 17 albums. Though the band's style has been compared to that of Mylon LeFevre and Broken Heart, their most commercially successful work came in the 1960s with a sound, augmented by The Muscle Shoals Horns, that closely resembled that of Jay & the Techniques.

Musical career

Beginning

The band released its first single, a cover version of "Rockin' Robin" around 1964, under the name of Little David & the Giants. In 1969, Keith Thibodeaux (best known as "Little Ricky" from I Love Lucy) joined the band. His arrival marked the beginning of the band's most commercially successful era. Although band members often described their sound as having its roots in Southern rock, the band's most successful recordings became popular in England in the 1970s and 80s as Northern soul – songs that featured a mixture of a Top 40 sound with horns and strings.

Riders in the Sky (band)

Riders in the Sky is an American Western music and comedy group which began performing in 1977. Their style also appeals to children, and they are sometimes considered a children's band. They have won two Grammy Awards and have written and performed music for major motion pictures, including "Woody's Roundup" from Toy Story 2 and Pixar's short film, For the Birds.

Riders Radio Theater is the Riders in the Sky's radio show. It originated in Nashville, with WPLN-FM as the presenting station, but later moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, and can now be heard on WMKV.

History

For much of their career, the group was a trio: lead singer/guitarist Ranger Doug (Douglas B. Green), singer/fiddler Woody Paul (Paul Chrisman), and singer/bassist Too Slim (Fred LaBour). In the 1990s, the group re-added Joey the Cowpolka King (Joey Miskulin) on accordion, who had been with the group for a brief period in the 1980s. They usually introduce themselves as "Ranger Doug, The Idol of American Youth", "Woody Paul, the King of the Cowboy Fiddlers", "Too Slim, the Man of a Thousand Hats" and "Joey, the Cowpolka King".

(Ghost) Riders in the Sky: A Cowboy Legend

"(Ghost) Riders in the Sky: A Cowboy Legend" is a cowboy-styled country/western song written in 1948 by American songwriter Stan Jones. A number of versions were crossover hits on the pop charts in 1949, the most successful being by Vaughn Monroe. The ASCAP database lists the song as "Riders in the Sky" (title code 480028324), 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 one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time.

Overview

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". Jones said that he had been told the story when he was 12 years old by an old cowboy friend. The story resembles the northern European mythic Wild Hunt.