Riders in the Sky saddle up to soar at Gold Coast

Melissa Schorr

Friday, July 18, 1997 | 12:13 p.m.

There's something about a man who can yodel.

"Ranger Doug" Green, baritone of the retro cowboy group "Riders in the Sky," and described by People magazine as "possibly the world's greatest living yodeler," is quivering up the phone lines, yo-dee-lay-hee-hoo-ing in my ear all the way from Harmony Ranch, his homestead in Nashville, Tenn.

How long can he keep it up?

Says he with pride: "39.5 seconds."

With a sigh, he adds: "I've done it longer, but nobody ever bothered to time it."

But this yodel is but a quickie, a demonstration of the cattle call that cowboys on the range once sang to their herd.

That is, if the yodeling cowboy ever actually existed.

In fact, the entire genre of the singing cowboy was never more than a manufactured American icon, immortalized by silver screen legends Gene Autry and Roy Rogers.

Although crooning cowboys may be pure Hollywood concoction, "Riders in the Sky" -- galloping into the Gold Coast hotel-casino this weekend -- are determined to carry on their tradition.

"We want to see it survive," says Ranger Doug. "Just between you and me, did the cowboy on horseback ever do it? I doubt it. But people love to hear it. There's something about yodeling that makes people smile."

Copy that, Ranger Doug.

He discovered yodeling from a 1968 recording of Elton Britt "It just blew my hat off," he says, tipping said hat to the "best that ever was."

But yodeling is not to be undertaken casually.

"If you try it at home, you will lose friends and family," says Ranger Doug, the husband and father of five. "The trick is getting in a truck and rolling up the windows and driving around and practicing."

The uninformed might associate yodeling with the Swiss Alps rather than the Wild West, but Ranger Doug assures that it is an integral part of The Cowboy Way.

According to yodeling legend, the singing style became "entrenched in the cowboy image and the West" when blues singer Jimmie Rodgers adapted the sound of Swiss yodelers to his southern blues style back in the late 1920s.

Still, when Ranger Doug was called upon to flex his vocal muscles in an upcoming Mercedes-Benz commercial, he yodeled Swiss-style.

"You won't recognize me," he promises. "I'll be wearing an alpine hat" -- a far cry from his trademark 10-gallon Stetson.

So why have Ranger Doug, and his co-Riders, Woody Paul (The King of the Cowboy Fiddlers) and Too Slim, devoted the past 20 years of their musical careers to continuing the genre of cowboy music?

"With Gene and Roy retired, someone had to step in and be the cowboy hero," declares Ranger Doug, who has saddled himself with the moniker, "Idol of American Youth" -- role model to all those pint-sized "Saddle Pals" -- and with their new website, "Cyber Saddle Pals."

"We're probably the foremost people in the country carrying on that tradition," he says. "And one of the nice things is that the people we've idolized, like Gene Autry, have been enthusiastic and supportive of us."

The trio's most recent album, "Public Cowboy #1," is an homage to Autry featuring classic tunes such as "Back in the Saddle Again."

For their next album, the group will include "undiscovered western classics" along with some original tunes, while Ranger Doug also produced a solo album, "Songs of the Sage" this year.

"We've always felt it was important not just to create the past, but move the tradition forward by adding new material," says the Ranger, a former historian at the Country Music Hall of Fame.

But despite writing about 60 original songs for their 18 albums, including those with such pithy wisdom as "Always Drink Upstream From the Herd," the group has never recorded a chart-climbing single.

"We don't do hit records," says Ranger Doug, "it's not what we do. We're not chasing that brass ring. We've had a commitment to a career -- it's not a lark with us."

"People who live and die by the hit record, 20 years later, they're pumping gas. And 20 years later, here we are...we've plowed our way to the middle," he concludes with an unlikely farming metaphor.

"It's a niche music, a unique style that nobody thought would work," he says. "But we got the cast-iron airplane off the ground."

So well, in fact, that "Riders" has also spawned an entire cottage industry of western merchandise including the "Learn to Sing Western Harmony Video," and of course, "Riders in the Sky" bandanas and denim jackets.

The burden of being singlehandedly responsible for an entire genre of music has saddled them with a grueling touring schedule of 200 days a year, and has kept them busy with appearances at the Grand Ole Opry and the Olympics, on TV movies and their own radio show.

Ranger Doug points out that it's "astonishing that you could take a style of music out of date 20 years ago and make a whole career out of it."

It's so rare than any band with original members stays together 20 years," he says, "especially with a style of music that was already out of date when we started."

In celebration of hitting the two-decade mark, the troupe is planning for an appearance on the Nashville Network's "Prime Time Country," as well as a radio show on National Public Radio.

But don't count on seeing the "Riders in the Sky" trotting off into the sunset as the credits roll anytime soon.

"As long as people want to hear us yodel," asks Ranger Doug, "then why the heck not?"