RUNNERS AND RIDERS

collated by Some Lonesome Picker

RUNNERS AND RIDERS

following Sidetracks & Detours

Champion The Wonder Horse    Frankie Laine

Black Horse & The Cherry Tree KT Tunstall

Mother Country                           John Stewart

Let The Big Horse Run               John Stewart

Golden Gate Fields                     John Stewart

Yankee Doodle Dandy                Jimmy Cagney

The Race Is On                           George  Jones

A Horse With No Name              America

Pony Boy                         Bruce Springsteen

Chestnut Mare                             The Byrds

My Rifle My Pony And Me         Dean Martin

All The Pretty Little Horses        Gordon Lightfoot

I Need Some Horses Around       Chip Taylor

A Horse  In The Country             Cowboy Junkies

Horses Come Dancing                 Michael Martin M

If I Had A Boat                             Lyle Lovett

Heavy Horses                               Jethro Tull

All the Tired Horses                     Bob Dylan

Rider In The Rain                        Randy Newman

Mr. Ed                                          Earl Sykes

• all tracks available at Spotify

I love horses as an adornment to the landscape, but in truth I am a little bit feared of them. In truth I love horses in a Stubbs-like pose ! My childhood imagination was thrilled by television horse; Champion The Wonder Horse and, in later life, of course KT Tunstall´s incarnation of Black Beauty in Black Horse And The Cherry Tree with its hooves pounding in to a Bo Diddley beat.

Another childhood thrill was The Lone Ranger´s Silver and, of course the famous Mr Ed, the talking horse. All three of these ´childhood tv horses´ were cemented in my mind by great musical theme tunes. Champion The Wonder Horse was actually recorded by the great Frankie Laine, who also later gave us the Rawhide title track, that also alluded to horses.

The thrilling sight of Silver rearing on his hind legs as his masked rider urged him on with a ´Hi Ho Silver away´, after that Rachmaninov title music, was wonderful.

Mr. Ed, of course, was a talking horse, (but no one could talk to a horse, of course´). I later learned it is easier and safer to whisper !

The relationship between Man and Horse is perhaps best described in a song by John Stewart, who once wrote that ´maybe, even when I´m gone, some lonesome picker will find some healing in these sings´, which of course has lent itself as a nom de plume for this series of articles.

John Stewart (right) had a wonderful affinity with horses, and that is reflected in the three selections he has earned on this compilation of Runners And Riders.

His song Mother Country speaks of the gentler times between the eras of the lawlessness of the wild west and the modern day frenzy of America. The story he tells is of an old man, E.A Stuart, who throughout his life had held the reins in the driver´s seat of the wagon being pulled by his favourite horse, Sweetheart On Parade. Just before his death, when old EA Stuart was by now stone blind, he rode the wagon around the coral, and his family who had watched this feat told him afterwards that Sweetheart On Parade had never looked finer or prouder than she did that day.

Another Stewart song, Let The Big Horse Run addresses the same equine subject matter as a film about one of the most-loved and greatest race horses ever. The film, Secretariat (the name of the horse) enjoys a sound track of thundering  hooves as it tells the story The film starred John Malcovich, an actor we saw last year who delivered an incredible confusion of autobiography and mis-appropriated biography, in a live one man show (that included two sopranos and a thirty piece orchestra!) at Jameos Del Agua cave-theatre on Lanzarote.

In the film, Secretariat, though, Malcovich proved himself to be a skillful actor as he stepped away from his often vulgar, evil character portrayal to reveal a likeable, sweet horse-trainer. Even the feminine fashion of Diane Lane (who played horse owner Penny Tweedy) is somehow refreshingly innocent and, dare I even say, restful to the eye, in what is a heart-warming film.

In real life Secretriart captured the heart of the nation and at one notable race almost 140,000 people turned up to watch ´the big horse´ run.

However, John Stewart on his final studio-recorded album, The Day The River Sang, included a song about less heart-warming attitudes at Golden Gate Field. It sounds to be a story of race-fixing, horse doping, ill treatment of horses by their riders and the ill treatment of those riders by their drug-dealers who identified a market of need (and greed).

Such corruption in the horse racing industry had been addressed before in both cinematic and musical terms. The film Yankee Doodle Dandy, in part, told the story of a young jockey who was accused of taking a bribe to ´throw a race´. Jimmy Cagney was that Yankee Doodle Boy.

Nevertheless Ladies and Gentlemen, The Runners And Riders are all lined up and The Race Is On…. Heartache is running on the back stretch and Tears is holding back, trying not to fall. And all the ill sentiments of love that George Jones has ever known are riding in this race.

We do also have a handful of anonymous horses among the runners on today´s card.

Pony Boy by Bruce Springsteen has no story to sell, no whip to crack, but is simply a celebration of the pony from of an equine.

There can be no horse more anonymous than A Horse With No Name, as ridden across the desert by a group called America.

There was an un-named beauty introduced by The Byrds in the sixties about a Chestnut Mare, and I have included it here along with Dean Martin, who didn´t lend a horse a name when he sang of My Rifle,  My Pony And Me.

I have often referred to shaded areas on Venn Diagrams of recordings or artists in which usually disparate tastes merge into combined acknowledgement and I´m sure that Gordon Lightfoot´s recording of All The Pretty Horses would appear on any Horse Songs compilation by both myself and by Peter Pearson our Americana correspondent.

One of my favourite songwriters, Chip Taylor (Angel Of The Morning, Wild Thing and I Can´t Let Go) didn´t name specific horses in his confession that he Needs Horses Around.

Cowboy Junkies left their ride un-named when singing of their Horse In The Country and Michael Martin Murphy doesn´t even check their names at the door when When Horses Come Dancing.

Lyle Lovett wrote an unfathomable lyric about ´riding on my pony, on my boat´ which may, nevertheless, say much about his preferred mode of transport.

In another shaded area in another Venn Diagram I find my Americana choices conjoin in one place with my old mate, the late Dave Espin, lover of The Incredible String Band, Genesis and Jethro Tull, who introduced us to the Heavy Horses of Agricultural England.

These shire horses, great beasts of burden, pull their weight all daylight hours but as dusk falls Bob Dylan can´t help but feel sorry for All The Tired Horses,

And then, as they fall asleep standing up, and the wind dies down and darkness falls the only sound that can be heard is away on the horizon. As the moon peeps out from behind a cloud it illuminates a black silhouette figure of a Rider in The Rain.

Randy Newman, perhaps. He wrote the song, after all.

But it might be Jim Schofield, a revered folkie of North West England in the seventies and eighties of the last century who rode Randy´s horse to winning positions in all his gigs. I heard his live performance of that song almost every week over a four or five year period. And if I am going to put  that horse among the runners, then Jim Schofield with his superb interpretation, deserves to be among the riders !