A singing cowboy tells all

What makes someone a certified country music legend?

I'm not sure, but getting regular “Happy Birthday” tweets from the Grand Ole Opry surely qualifies.

Douglas B. Green has earned the right to consider the Opry family. Days before we spoke, he made his 2,668th appearance there.

Green, who goes by Ranger Doug, is a guitarist, vocalist, songwriter, and yodeler for Riders in the Sky, a band of singing cowboys approaching their 50th anniversary.

Over the course of 43 albums, their list of accomplishments is far too long to condense into this profile, but it involves two Grammys and many other trophies, membership in the Western Music Association Hall of Fame, "Austin City Limits" appearances, record contracts with MCA and Columbia, thousands of concerts all over the world, and various television and radio shows.

Ranger Doug has a master's degree in literature from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and a knack for music history, as demonstrated in his 2005 book, “Singing in the Saddle: The History of the Singing Cowboy.”

He’s working on a biography of “an extremely well-known country performer of the ‘20s and ‘30s named Carson Robison.”

He even showed Barney how to yodel:

- YouTubeyoutu.be

But most of impressive of all is the way he exudes harmonic sound. If you’re around Ranger Doug, you are in the presence of music.

How the yodel was born

Ranger Doug (the nickname is in honor of his lifelong hero, the Lone Ranger) was born in 1946, as America healed from World War II. He grew up in a house full of music. He can’t remember a time without melody and rhythm.

Two of his uncles played guitar and sang, often joined by his mother, who had a beautiful voice and played a tiny bit of piano.

“Between the magic of what I was seeing on TV and in the movies and the music that my uncles were singing, made me want to pick up the guitar," says Doug.

When Doug was 11, his Uncle Hank gave him a 1937 Montgomery Ward guitar, which he still has. His Uncle Arvid yodeled.

“There was something romantic in the American imagination about cowboys,” he tells me. “Now again, the word ‘cowboy’ is used to mean somebody reckless. That's not the way I see it.”

He was shaped by the movies and TV shows of the 1940s and 1950s, where the cowboy was always the hero.

“He was the guy who stood up,” he tells me. "The Lone Ranger was my idol when I was a kid, and that's the kind of thing that got me interested in loving cowboy music.”

Then, when his family moved to California for a year, he saw yodeling on TV and watched shows like "Western Varieties" and "Town Hall Party."

In high school, he gravitated toward stage plays and musicals. He wrote poetry and drilled on the guitar.

When he got to college, his love for old-time country music deepened. Then, he discovered songwriting yodeler Elton Britt and said, “Well, there's another whole level to this.” He describes Britt, who wrote “ That's How the Yodel Was Born,” as his “yodeling guru.”

The ongoing saga of the cowboy way

Nashville is Music City, USA, the birthplace of the outlaw country movement, and a playground to the likes of Johnny Cash, Roger Miller, Willie Nelson, and Waylon Jennings.

So it makes sense that a twentysomething Green would be drawn to this country-western paradise. In the 1960s, he played in Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys and worked as a journalist.

In 1974, he attended a Western swing festival and caught Sons of the Pioneers, the group of singing cowboys Roy Rogers founded in 1933.

At first, he was upset: “I'm thinking, ‘These guys don't swing, what's the deal here? I want to hear some swing music.'”

Then they played “ Way Out There” and “Cool Water” and “Tumbling Tumbleweeds.”

“God, it was a revelation to me,” he tells me. “I said, ‘This is the music I grew up with. And this means so much. And those lyrics are so beautiful and the harmony.’”

The band member Rusty Richards' yodeling was particularly impressive.

“That really changed a lot for me,” says Green. “I went back and started studying the Sons of the Pioneers and Foy Willing and the Riders of the Purple Sage especially. It has such great harmony. Not quite as many great songs, but there's no other Bob Nolan.”

Years later, he got to know Willing. Willing even wanted to make a record with Riders in the Sky, but he had a fatal heart attack.

When it comes to singing cowboys, Green points to four masters of the form: Tex Ritter, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and the Sons of the Pioneers. They typify the singing cowboy through “beautiful harmony, beautiful lyrics, beautiful musical ideas.”

He’s fortunate to have met all of them except Tex Ritter.

Chant of the wanderer

In discussions about Westerns, people often fixate on the ways in which Westerns are inaccurate. But I think that we should spend more time looking at the ways in which these movies connect us to a real history.

Green concedes that the singing cowboy is partly a romantic fantasy of the West.

“Obviously, there was no character in 1880 like Gene Autry hopping off a beautiful horse with a thousand-dollar saddle and a $5,000 guitar,” he tells me. “It isn't very accurate, but it is a reflection of how we want to feel about what winning the West was and how to be a kind person and the person who stood up for right in the face of oppression and evil.”

Through years of research, Green's been able to find the many ways in which Westerns are grounded in reality.

“I mean, a lot of cowboys sang. They had to do something at night when everything was quiet, [before] television and radio and records, where men were gathered to do work and then have to live together.”

From lumberjack songs to sea shanties, men who are laboring alone, outside civilization, have always turned to song for solace.

“It was only natural that the people out in the plains did some singing and probably more fiddle playing,” he adds.

“Then there's the whole thing about cowboys singing softly to keep the cattle from being restless. And doubtless that happened, whether they could sing in tune or not.”

Three on the trail

On a cold night in 1977, three singing cowboys took the stage in the basement of a club that is now a Catholic bookstore. On that November night in Nashville, they performed together live for the first time. In those early days, the boys played shows without really knowing what they were meant to do — they didn't even have a name.

Eventually, they settled on “ Riders in the Sky,” a song by the Sons of the Pioneers. Two of the original members, “Windy Bill" Collins and “Tumbleweed Tommy" Goldsmith left.

Two years later, they played the Grand Ole Opry for the first time. They were introduced by Roy Acuff, who, as noted by the Country Music Hall of Fame, “helped intensify the star system at the Grand Ole Opry and remained the show’s leading personality until his death.”

Ranger Doug and the boys had been performing as Riders in the Sky for a few years, yet Acuff introduced them as Doug Green and Fred LaBour.

“It was not like we had our whole thing quite together yet, but the music was good,” he tells me. He remembers that they performed ” Blue Shadows on the Trail” and “When Payday Rolls Around.”

On the upright bass was Too Slim, aka Fred LaBour, aka the Man of a Thousand Hats, the comedic powerhouse of the group, known for peddling a necktie in the form of a cactus called a cac-tie.

LaBour is easily the sharpest wit in the West. Prior to the Riders, he was a janitor, industrial galvanizer, puppeteer, rumor-monger, hay stacker, burlesque show emcee, sportswriter, wildlife manager, and electric bass man. Besides his superb bass play and comic genius, he has inspired thousands to whack out tunes on their faces.

"Woody Paul" Chrisman plays fiddle and sings. Joey Miskulin, the Cow-Polka King, the accordion player, began playing with the band in 1987, eventually becoming an official member.

To infinity and beyond …

Green has proven his nicknames as the "Governor of the Great State of Rhythm” and “the Idol of American Youth.” That last one is fascinating. Riders in the Sky has connected with each new generation.

“Slim says many times a lady comes up after the show and says, you know, I'm sitting between my father and my son, and you're the favorite group of both of them. We kind of lose them in the middle years usually.”

After the band's TV debut on the Nashville Network with “Tumbleweed Theater,” they did "Riders Radio Theater," a weekly half-hour comedy-musical program that Riders in the Sky performed from 1988 till 1995, with several reunions since. The boys refer to this era as the golden age of high yodeling adventure.

The show is dizzingly fast-paced, with songs, skits, fake commercials, lots of silliness, a segment called the National Polka Countdown, and a ton of characters, including Ranger Doug’s portrayals of Doctor B. Baxter Bazzle, Sergeant Dudley, Trader Doug, and Genie of the Coffee Pot.

Each episode opened the show with the “ Riders’ Radio Theme,” which urged listeners: “Come on, partner, saddle up and go / Get ready for the cowboy show.”

From there, the boys moved to Hollywood to make the TV show "Riders in the Sky," which took over the CBS Saturday morning slot previously occupied by "Pee-wee’s Playhouse."

Then came Disney and the soundtrack of "Toy Story 2."

“There's something kids just seem to love about the beat or something about the Western music,” he tells me. “When I was a kid, I just liked it because I didn't get broken hearts and love affairs. Who knew about that? But riding a horse with your friends and singing songs in the open range? Oh, yeah, I'm all about that."

At Green’s most recent Grand Ole Opry, country singer Scotty McCreery was inducted into the Opry, and he specifically asked that Riders in the Sky be there to sing “Woody's Roundup” for his child.

Throw a saddle on a star

Last year they released their latest album, "Throw a Saddle on a Star." The title track is a song written by Andy Parker and the Plainsmen. There’s also a Western movie based on the song from 1946.

It also includes a roaring cover of “ The Cherokee Strip,” written by Tim Spencer.

Green wrote “ The Shelter of the Wildwood,” which won Best Original Composition at the 2024 Western Heritage Awards.

Of the Riders in the Sky songs on the playlist, Ranger Doug wrote “Riding Alone,” "At the End of the Rainbow Trail,” “One Little Coyote,” “Blue Montana Skies,” “Lonely Yukon Stars,” and “ The Shelter of the Wildwood.”

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Carry me back to the lone prairie

Green hosts "Ranger Doug's Classic Cowboy Corral" satellite radio show on Friday night after the Grand Ole Opry, Saturday night before the Grand Ole Opry, and Sunday morning on SiriusXM's Willie's Roadhouse. As he likes to say, “It's an hour's worth of Gene and Roy and Tex and Rex and the magical entertainers from the golden age of Western music.”

As for his supply of material, he credits the British Archive of Country Music with producing numerous CDs of these obscure artists, not only their records but their radio transcriptions.

At one point, I describe him as a music historian, and he smiles, “ Amateur music historian.” He has spent decades studying the early recording era and the music of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. His focus has always been much more on the music than on the film content.

“We didn't start Riders in the Sky until I was 31 years old," he says. "So I had a whole ten years before that of being an amateur or semipro. I did some touring with other groups, but I also ... had day jobs and I worked at the Country Music Hall of Fame, which gave me an infinite field to dive into the history of the music.”

"Throw a Saddle on a Star" features a cover of “The Little Green Valley," a song written in 1924 by a guy named Carson Robison, about whom Green is writing a book: “He grew up in very rural Kansas. He wrote it in New York, and I'm sure he was thinking that sometimes this big city isn't for me.”

"What drew you to Robison?" I ask.

“Well, the pandemic,” he says. “We had no work. I had nothing to do," he says. "Having done this radio show that I do, "Classic Cowboy Corral," I was realizing that [Robison wrote] so many of these great songs from the 20s and 30s ... like ‘Barnacle Bill the Sailor.'"

In Green's view, Robison was the first country music professional songwriter and studio guitar player.

"Of the prewar era, Vernon Dalhart recorded the most and Carson Robison recorded the second-most. He was a real force at his time, and he's been completely forgotten. So I thought, well, let's resurrect him a little bit. Let's go back and see if we can't get him a little more credit for the incredible career he had.”

I tell Green that I see this spirit in his music as well, an element of “let's resurrect something that worked and doesn't seem to be as popular, but also let's add something new to it. Let's be true to the spirit at the same time.”

“That's exactly what we wanted to do from the start.”

When the bloom is on the sage

Part of this endeavor is incorporating nature in a way that the original singing cowboy would have.

“I feel very strongly about that. There are a million songs about broken hearts and pickup trucks leaving. There were three things that attracted me to Western music. One was harmony, because I love harmony and always sang harmony. It seemed so fresh because it wasn't about broken hearts and feeling sorry for yourself."

“It was about the outdoors. Well, I love the outdoors. I guess most people do, but it was about the majesty of the West and the beauty of the West and the peace of the West. And I love that. And the third thing was Bob Nolan, especially, and Tim Spencer, [who] were such brilliant poets that, as a literature major, I really appreciated. ... It wasn't ‘Lay your pistol down, Mom. Lay your pistol down.’ It was serious poetry and beautiful poetry.”

So long, saddle pals

Most singing cowboys follow a version of the cowboy code. To Green, it finds its truest expression in Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and the Lone Ranger.

“The Cowboy Way" (1987) is the eighth album by Riders in the Sky, their second live album, and the first to be released by MCA Records. In 2010, they released “ It’s the Cowboy Way! The Amazing True Adventures of Riders in the Sky.” But their best exploration appears as a poem, written by Green, in "Riders in the Sky: The Book." He does a reading of it on the band’s silver jubilee (2003) reissue.

He wants to know, “What is the cowboy way?”

It's the courage of the pioneers who crossed a continent's span
It's the spirit of the red men who shed their blood to save their land
It's the will to know the truth, good or bad, come what may
It's a heart that's free and grateful, it's the Cowboy Way
It's the strength to say you're sorry, to admit that you were wrong
It's the wisdom, too, to recognize the time you must be strong
It's a love of nature's creatures in their struggle and their play
It's the quiet flame of justice, it's the Cowboy Way
It's the hand to help a neighbor or a stranger in their need
It's the love of humankind with not a thought of race or creed
It's the courage of convictions, without posture or display
It's the peaceful sleep of children, it's the Cowboy Way
It's the moment that you take before the words you might regret
It's the time you give to others with no thought of what you'll get
It's the time you take in smelling all the roses on the way
It's doing just the best you can
It's the Cowboy Way.