The Best Of The Sons Of The Pioneers |
In 1996 I quit my job. I was a professional. I was a professional and I had a career. I’d been working at this “career” for 12 years, and I quit.
What I did then was this. I got a job as a courier. Not very high class that job, but I did it for 9 months, long enough to give birth to a second career (sorry, could not resist). I went back to school then, and ended up doing what I’m doing now.
But being a courier took me all around the city. So guess what? I got to drop in here and there at all these cool libraries that I wouldn’t ordinarily have seen. There was the Pembina Trail and Westwood and Louis Riel and Munroe and Transcona and etc and etc. And each branch has something on CD that was of interest. All those CDs, just waiting for me to come and get them…
I so I think it was Transcona where I found the Sons Of The Pioneers. Transcona is in the east end of the city, and it’s kind of joke, the way Timbuktu is a joke, Transcona being the place that’s so unlikely that living there or going there seems absurd. I don’t know why actually. People live there. It’s not absurd to them. I actually worked there for two years; well I worked at the edge of Transcona, but, weather permitting, I would go out at lunch time and walk across a big field and end up on Regent, where all the action was. That was like the west end of Transcona, Crossroads Shopping Centre, and everything you could ask for, Value Village, Staples, Future Shop, everything.
But the library wasn’t there. It was (is I supposed, I don’t think they’ve moved it) on Day Street, farther to the east. That was more like “downtown” Transcona, and older area, farther away from the real downtown, more esoteric for those of us like me who lived in the city our lives but for whom Transcona was as familiar as Leningrad.
And so I got this western music at the east end of the city. Or I think I did. Let’s just say I did.
Roy Rogers was actually in this group for a while, but Bob Nolan was the real star; he wrote “Tumblin’ Tumbleweeds” and “Cool Water.” And “Riders In The Sky” (aka “Ghost Riders In The Sky”, aka “(Ghost) Riders In The Sky”, aka “Ghost Riders in The Sky (A Cowboy Legend”) is on here, I think the original is by Vaughan Monroe but it should have been by these guys, and that’s one heck of a song if you don’t listen to the words, which are a bit dumb, kind of anti-climactic when you realize that this supernatural tale of a hallucinating cowboy and a phantom herd of cattle is actually just a warning to behave yourself, so I like the Ramrods version, and any other instrumental version. “Cool Water” was done by everyone and his brother too; I have Burl Ives, and a bunch of others, all of whom escape me at the moment, and the Allmusic web site isn’t working very well, so I can’t even look it up. But yeah, Burl Ives.
Ok this is cowboy music, get along little dogie. Love the harmonies…
The Sons Of The Pioneers:
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