day 117: Don’t Fence Me In

Don’t Fence Me In, by Roy Rogers*.

I knew this first as a Riders in the Sky song, but I’m starting to wonder if Riders in the Sky might be the Jan & Dean to Sons of the Pioneers’ Beach Boys? If you get all of those references, our dads might have the same taste in music.

[checks Wikipedia once]

So, funny story, it turns out Cole Porter put this song together for a Roy Rogers movie, but the lyrics were very much by some cowboy poet out of Montana, and the studio et al screwed him out of a writing credit, because every stereotype about 1930s Hollywood is true.

And then they used it in like three more Roy Rogers movies. I looked up one after reading the words “Trigger’s dance ends” in the stage direction for the chords and lyrics to this.

[resists urge to look up how many horses really played Trigger]

Oh, and more recently, Willie Nelson recorded it, too.

//

I’m probably singing it in the Riders style, but I added the silly Wildcat Kelly intro, which honestly doesn’t hold up too well, but when I looked it up to check if Wildcat Kelly happens to be some real person, I found Ella Fitzgerald singing this part, so it’s probably OK.

Added a cheeky cowboy solo, but I’m tired.