Halloween = Ghosts, Goblins, and all things scary. Since I love music, comics, and history who knows where this post will end up.
History: Let's start with the 'Wild Hunt'. Wild Hunt is a folklore tail, popularised by Jacob Grimm, who coined the term 'Wild Hunt', which is a part of many northern European cultures. The story typically involves a chase led by a mythologic, historic, or biblical figure. This leader is usually followed by a ghost or supernatural band of hunters. The hunters were usually composed of the souls of the dead, possibly ghost dogs, or in some cases depending on the composition of the believers could've been fairies, valkyries, or even elves.
In those cultures seeing the Wild Hunt was usually thought to presage some catastrophic event such as a war, a plague, or possibly the death of the person who witnessed it. For some people there was the belief that if you encountered the hunt you could be abducted and taken to the underworld or a fairy kingdom or your spirit was pulled away while you were sleeping to join the hunters behind the leader.
Comics: 'Ghost Rider'. Anyone who has read comic books has probably heard of Ghost Rider. This comic debuted in 1967 and was put out by the Marvel Comics Group. The original comic was actually a Western with the title character named Carter Slade. This particular series with Slade as the rider only lasted seven issues.
The next time we see Ghost Rider the title character had the name, Johnny Blaze. This character rode a motorcycle. Some of you may remember the movie of the same name that starred Nicholas Cage.
I believe the original seven Ghost Rider comic stories may have been renamed Phantom Rider, but I can't verify that.
And this brings us to the music part of the post.
Music: The song "Ghost Riders in the Sky" was written in 1948 by songwriter and actor Stan Jones. This song has been recorded by numerous singers, including Jones. According to Wikipedia, Jones claims that he was told the story, at the age of twelve, of ghost riders by a Native American who was living near his hometown of Douglas, Arizona. The story was that when the soul left the physical body it resided in the sky as a spirit. To Jones, the cloudy shapes that he saw when he looked up in the sky resembled the "Ghost Riders".
The song reached number one on Billboard magazine's chart as recorded by Vaughn Monroe in 1949. It also made the charts when sung by, The Outlaws, Bing Crosby, Frankie Laine, Peggy Lee, two different versions by Burl Ives, Marty Robbins, The Ramrods, and Johnny Cash. Even Lawrence Welk recorded the song.
Western Writers of America chose it in 2010 as the Greatest Western Song of all time.
So as the season progresses you can always take a trip down the rabbit hole that is YouTube and listen to all the versions of this song you can find. Have a wonderful October.
For those who wonder what I've been up to, I've released two non-fiction works under the name Doris McCraw:
"Under the Stone: EarlyWomen Doctors in Evergreen Cemetery" and "52 Haiku: Reflections From Life in Colorado"
Amazon
Amazon
Now, back to the work in progress. Here's to a productive fall and winter for all.
February 17thand February 19thhave a primary and secondary connection that
makes the trivia-loving nerd in me happy as a dog wagging two tails.
I’ll begin with the secondary connection, which is simply February birthdays—
Musician Gene
Pitney was born on February 17th
Gene Pitney (reference below)
and actor Lee Marvin was born on February 19th.
Lee Marvin (reference below)
First, a little about Gene Pitney—
Born on February 17, 1940 (died April 5, 2006), Pitney was
an American singer-songwriter and musician. Over the course of his career (1961
– 2006), Pitney experienced musical success with songs he wrote for others
and with songs that he wrote and performed himself. He was inducted into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002.
He referred to himself as a doo-wop singer. According to the
website www.britannica.com:
‘doo-wop is a style of rhythm and blues and
rock-and-roll vocal music popular in the 1950s and ’60s [with roots in the
1930s and 1940s]. The structure of doo-wop music generally featured a tenor
lead vocalist singing the melody of the song with a trio or quartet singing
background harmony. The term doo-wop is derived from the sounds made by the
group as they provided harmonic background to the lead singer.’
Notable and successful songs he wrote for others:
Hello Mary Lou by Ricky Nelson
Rubber Ball by Bobby Vee
He’s a Rebel by the Crystals
Today’s Teardrops by Roy Orbison
Notable and successful songs he performed:
Only Love Can Break a Heart
Twenty-four Hours from Tulsa
Half Heaven, Half Heartache
It Hurts to Be in Love
I’m Gonna Be Strong
Town Without Pity from the Kirk Douglas movie of the same
name. Pitney performed this song during the 1962 Academy Awards as it was
nominated for Best Song (lost to Moon River)
Pitney recorded two albums with country music
entertainer George Jones. They were voted the ‘most promising
country-and-western-duo of the year’ in 1965.
He also recorded in Italian, Spanish, and German and
competed in Italy’s annual Sanremo Music Festival to critical acclaim comparing
his voice to that of Italian opera tenor Enrico Caruso.
A radio disc jockey nicknamed Pitney “The Rockville Rocket”
because of his meteoric rise in the music charts. (Pitney grew up in Rockville,
Connecticut.)
Next, a few words about Lee Marvin—
He was born on (February 19, 1924 (died August 29, 1987). He
was an American film and television actor with a military background of having
enlisted in the Marines at the beginning of World War II. His military
experience, which included receiving the Purple Heart Medal, Presidential Unit
Citation, American Campaign Medal, Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, WWII Victory
Med, and the Combat Action Ribbon.
His military experiences affected him deeply for the rest of his
life. He disliked acting in many of his war-related movies as he felt the movies glorified
war, and he was picky about which war movies he took. He often spoke out
against U.S. involvement in Viet Nam.
These two quotes from the IMDb website (link in references
below) illustrate his entire Hollywood career.
He was typecast as a heavy before graduating to
unsympathetic heroes.
He often played tough, hard bitten anti-heroes.
Also from his bio on the IMBd website, here are three of his
quotes regarding the violence in some of his movies and the violence in the
characters he’d played.
Because real violence is a thing that must not be tolerated,
and in order not to tolerate it, you must be educated in knowing what it is.
Violent films come out with value… When I play these roles of vicious men, I do
things you shouldn’t do and I make you see that you shouldn’t do them.
...But most violence on the screen looks so easy and so
harmless that its’ like an invitation to try it. I say make it so brutal that a
man thinks twice before he does anything like that.
I’ve always been against senseless violence myself. When I
incorporate violence in my performances, I make sure there’s a point to it. If
I were playing a heavy, say a cowboy bad guy, I could commit some senseless
crime to that I’d have to be destroyed in the third or fourth reel Holding up
the stagecoach, for example, and shooting the old lady because she turned her
back on me. So I’m against pointless violence, too.
Just a few of Lee Marvin’s movies: (deliberately left out
his numerous television appearances)
You’re in the Navy Now (1951 film debut - uncredited)
Bad Day at Black Rock
Not as a Stranger
Pillars of the Sky
Raintree County
The Comancheros
Donovan’s Reef
Cat Ballou (Oscar win)
Ship of Fools
The Professionals
The Dirty Dozen
Paint Your Wagon
Monte Walsh
Pocket Money
Prime Cut
The Iceman Cometh
Death Hunt
The Delta Force
Finally, the primary connection — The Man Who Shot Liberty
Valance
Pitney had a hit with the Burt Bacharach / Hal David song The
Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
Marvin played the villain Liberty Valance in the western film The
Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
…and now you know the nerdy connection.
Side note: The song was not included in the movie because of
a publishing dispute. However it did reach No. 4 on the music charts.
Gene Pitney singing the theme song to The Man Who Shot
Liberty Valance:
We meet Lee Marvin as Liberty Valance in all his villainous
glory:
We all have songs that mean something extra special to us
whether by our associating them with a special event, a loved one, a precious
moment, a situation, etc. In fact, if you’re like me, I could go on for hours singing
the words to all the songs that are near and dear to me.
But there is one song. The one song that tops all the
others. The that brings a tear to my eye and a warm fuzzy feeling in my heart.
Hints:
“My” song is an American rendition of Greensleeves, which is
an old English folk song of complicated, and not entirely identifiable origins.
Greensleeves was a familiar song (tune) in Shakespeare’s day, because he
referenced it in his play, 'The Merry Wives of Windsor' in 1595. Falstaff: “Let
the sky rain potatoes! Let it thunder to the tune of ‘Greensleeves’!”
There is a legend that the original song was written by
Henry VIII for his future wife, Anne Boleyn, but that is apparently a myth as
there is evidence the song was around before Henry’s time.
By 1690, or so, the original song was becoming associated
with Christmas and New Year’s. Then by the 19th century, any
Christmas songbook worth its salt included some version of the original folk
song (lyrics and tune) as a carol. Elvis Presley, Tom Jones, and a host of
other crooners have recorded their renditions of Greensleeves.
Here is a clip from The Rifleman with Johnny Crawford singing Greensleeves.
As a Christmas song, we know it as What Child is This? which
has also been recorded by too many artists to list here.
For those of you desiring more history about Greensleeves,
click HERE, HERE, and HERE.
My favorite song is A Home in the Meadow. The lyrics were written by Sammy
Cahn and the song was performed by Debbie Reynolds in the 1962 western movie
(and book by same title written by Louis L’Amour), How the West was Won.
For your viewing and listening pleasure, here is the YouTube
clip from the movie. If you've not read the book How the West was Won AND watched the 1962 movie of the same name, you should remedy those most egregious oversights as soon as you can. You can thank me later. *wink*
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