I Ride An Old Paint, Traditional, as by Riders In The Sky.
I don’t know this one as a Johnny Cash song, or a Linda Rondstadt song; I just know it as a cowboy song recorded by the silliest western group this side of Sesame Street: Riders In The Sky.
I’ve been nursing the same poor Riders CD for more than 20 years, I am sure of it, but I first heard them on public radio — WLRN 91.3 in Miami, after my parents split up and my dad didn’t get a television.
Public radio was the soundtrack of the every other weekend I spent with him, in his apartment, in his car (when it wasn’t Paul Simon or Steve Miller — but those tapes peaked before those years, I think), in thunderstorms on the Intracoastal, or on perfect days driving down to Miami Beach and back along A1A because it was easier than thinking of something else to do.
Our local NPR station was the place I heard real live blues — Ruth Brown — and the place I heard “country” music I didn’t hate — Riders Radio Theater. The goofy mystery segment was always appealing (with far, far less cynicism than Garrison Keillor, who I didn’t like until I was very much an adult, and then not for long, because ask not for whom the milkshake duck quacks…)
That radio was also the place I really heard (and felt) jazz for the first time, Miles Davis’s Nefertiti on one of those car rides south, but that’s not this story.
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Oh, so, I got that little MIDI keyboard in the mail today, and after a little bit of frustration (the real cause of the delay was the Bluetooth headphones, natch), I enjoyed the heck out of playing the software drums, bass, and piano on it.
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