RIDERS IN THE SKY:
ROMANCING THE WEST
WITH MUSIC AND HUMOR
Bobbie Malone and Bill C. Malone
Texas A&M University Press
264 pages
“It’s the Cowboy Way.” Riders in the Sky: Romancing the West with Music and Humor is exactly the kind of book that makes you want to pull up a chair and stay awhile. The Malones take us from the dime novels of the 19th century, through the silver-screen cowboys of the 20th, and right into the living, breathing revival of the singing cowboy tradition today, spotlighting the Grammy®-award winning cowboy trio known as the Riders in the Sky. As always, the Malones tell American history through music, the great equalizer, with songs that cross class lines and economic divides and somehow belong to everybody.
The introduction sets the stage beautifully, and the chapters unfold like a miniseries. You can see the scenes, hear the harmonies, feel the dust. And the endnotes? They’re a gift. For readers like me who love a good rabbit hole, they open doors to more books, more stories, more layers of the West than you knew were there.
Bill Malone has been telling the story of American music for more than half a century, and he does it with that rare combination of deep scholarship and plainspoken grace. He makes history feel like a conversation instead of a lecture. Together, Bill and Bobbie prove that an academic press can produce a book that is rigorous and readable—equally at home in an American Culture classroom or on a bedside table next to a stack of well-loved records.
There really hasn’t been a book quite like this one. The Malones don’t just write about the Singing Cowboy; they trace the whole lineage, from immigrant ballads carried across oceans to mythic campfire heroes to rhinestone-studded stars under the lights of the Grand Ole Opry. And they hang their star firmly on the Riders in the Sky. As Marty Stuart so perfectly put it, this musical trio was an unlikely band of characters who set out to honor the singing cowboys of their youth and ended up becoming folk heroes themselves.
I laughed when I was asked to peer review this book. Bill Malone is a pioneer in American cultural history—the man who essentially invented the academic study of blue-collar American music. Being asked to review his work felt a little like being asked to peer review the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. Scholars and writers alike have long looked to Malone as the “go-by” for writing about popular music, and once again, he and Bobbie deliver scholarship that is serious and deeply researched—but never slow, never heavy. The story moves.
And what a story it is. The Malones take us backstage with Ranger Doug, Woody Paul, and Too Slim—not just as performers, but as scholars, thinkers, and students of American culture. The Riders in the Sky have deep roots in American entertainment, their humor influenced by midcentury humor of such acts as the Smothers Brothers and Bob Newhart. The Malones explore “Ranger Doug” Green’s academic path through Albion College and Vanderbilt, Fred “Too Slim” LaBour’s University of Michigan days—including his unlikely brush with the “Paul Is Dead” Abbey Road rumors – and “Woody Paul” Chrisman, PhD in nuclear physics from MIT in his pocket, a fiddle under his chin. The most educated band in country music? Quite possibly. But more importantly, one of the most enduring and beloved.
The research is meticulous—songbooks, interviews, journals, conference papers—but what I especially love are the “rest of the story” notes that add that little bit of lagniappe. Those details that make you smile and lean in just a little closer.
Bobbie Malone, (Lois Lenski: Storycatcher and Rabbi Max Heller: Reformer, Zionist, Southerner), has long been a gifted storyteller in her own right, and her collaborations with Bill on Traveler: The Musical Odyssey of Tim O’Brien and Nashville’s Songwriting Sweethearts: The Boudleaux and Felice Bryant Story are rich contributions to American music history.
Ken Burns didn’t have to start from scratch when he took on his PBS documentary Country Music. Bill C. Malone had already done the heavy lifting in his landmark book Country Music, USA—first published in 1968, and now in its 50th anniversary edition—and that steady, clear- eyed scholarship became the heart and backbone of Burns’ award-winning film.
Over the years, Bill’s writing—including Don’t Get Above Your Raisin’: Country Music and the Southern Working Class and Singing Cowboys and Musical Mountaineers—has helped generations of readers understand not just the songs, but the folks who sang them and the culture that raised them. He wasn’t just telling music history; he was telling our story.
With this book, the Malones remind us that the singing cowboy was never just a costume or a movie trope. That fixture of Western lore was and still is part of the American imagination. And thanks to the Riders in the Sky, that imagination still has harmony.
If you haven’t heard the Riders in the Sky, check them out on your favorite streaming service. If you have, give them another listen. It will be good for what ails you. –Diana Finlay Hendricks