Ghost Riders in the Sky

Out of all of the songs Elvis has recorded, quite a few have been recorded time and time again - many are not due to the Elvis versions, but are classic songs, some of which date back over 100 years; Amazing Grace and How Great Thou Art being two good examples.

However, out of all of the songs Elvis was recorded singing, one that has been recorded over and over the most times is ‘Ghost Riders in the Sky’ (sometimes known as ‘A Cowboy Legend.’) During the ‘That’s The Way It Is’ rehearsals, Elvis and the band jammed to the song.

When Stan Jones wrote it in 1948, he based the melody on ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Come,’ which was an American Civil War song from the 1860’s and he based the lyrics on an old folk tale he had been told as a child about a cowboy getting a vision of cattle running through the sky. Jones was told that the cowboy was warned that he needed to change his ways or would become evil forever.

It has been recorded over 100 times by artists including Dean Martin, Marty Robbins, Johnny Cash and Tom Jones. The song has also been translated to other languages that include Czech, French, German, Estonian, Finnish, Portuguese, Italian, Lithuanian, Spanish and Yugoslavian, while supposedly inspiring other bands such as the Doors, Def Leppard and Motorhead.