A while back I bought this collection of Ghost Riders, which has eleven versions. I deleted the other stuff. Ghost Riders is amazingly popular and one blogger has said it is the best song ever written. I don’t know about that. I would put “Mack the Knife” up there too. I never grow tired of either, and love to hear other renditions of both.
Wikipedia tells us it was written by Stan Davis Jones, kind of a jack of all trades who grew up in Arizona, went to UC Berkeley, while participating in rodeos. Ha, ha those were the days. Tell a UC student that today and she’d turn green with embarrassment and transfer to Stanford, if she could afford it. Don’t worry; I have tales about Stanford, too.
Being lazy, I decided to not write “Test-tube Steak, Next Soylent Green,” or “Solar Death Star Makes Hydrogen Fuel,” both recent news articles, about whose implications I must warn everyone. I will soon. Right now my time is consumed by BookTrack, a book enhancement that I am helping beta test. It is fun and I hope to have my first chapter available to readers soon.
Rather than those options, I’m running this little survey and asking readers to cast a vote for best “straight up” version of Ghost Riders, and best “adapted” version, where “adapted” means converted to the artist’s style, or genre, and “best instrumental”. Okay I know that every artist adapts the song to his/her style, but some are more far out than others, and I do love the song enough to want three bests. If you can’t find your favorite, don’t blame me, I couldn’t list all 50+ choices, and I did want to list a few lesser known ones.
Go here at Amazon and also this, click on the preview of each version, if you want to hear it before you vote. Forward this blog to everyone. Lots of votes would be fun. I had to include the version by Burl Ives, it was the first, and by Johnny Cash, probably the favor, but not mine.
Go here for the lyrics to Ghost Riders.
Next week: “Best Version of Mack the Knife,” or “Soylent Green,” or “Death Star Solar Hydrogen.”
Poll One: Best Straight Up “Ghost Riders in the Sky”
I have marked my favorite with an *. Okay I have a lot of favorites, but we get only one vote in each poll.
Poll Two: Best Adapted Version
Poll Three: Best Instrumental Version
Instrumentals…
By far:
Chet Atkins
Dan Bau Vietnam – Rider in the Sky (Vietnamese Instrumental).mp3
I have collected almost 800 versions of GRITS
Fantastic. Any way to link some? Or do you want to do a guest blog with links to some obscure ones that you like or find interesting?
I am working on a website which will be a comprehensive version list.
I’m looking everywhere for Chet Atkins – (Ghost) Riders in the Sky and currently it seems that Chet Atkins barely exists on the internet. Could you help me out with this please?