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Riders in the Sky gallop into BCPA for Friday performance

By Dan Craft
dcraft@pantagraph.com

You'd better be ready to address one of the last of the singing cowpokes as Ranger Doug. 'Cuz that's his stage name, pardner.

Mess it up, and it just might be happy trails for you.

Permanently happy trails, if you know what we mean.

As the ringleader of the Grammy-winning posse known as Riders in the Sky, Ranger Doug would probably just smile and slowly adjust his Stetson several degrees after you told him you'd made up the story about how you better address him as Ranger Doug, or else.

That's because Ranger Doug (nee Douglas B. Green) packs a sublime sense of humor along with his trusty guitar and baritone vocals.

He has to, pardner.

After all, here you have four grown men, fully into their maturity, walking around the stage in frilly leather vests, big-buckled belts and spurs that jingle-jangle-jingle.

The other three are stage-named Woody Paul, Too Slim and Joey the Cowpolka King.

One of them has a Ph.D. in nuclear physics.

Another has his master's degree in literature, and has written several books.

Ranger Doug agrees it's that sense of ambiguity that has become one of the secrets to the unique success of Riders in the Sky, galloping into the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts at 7:30 p.m. Friday.

Celebrating their 30th anniversary this year, the Riders have evolved into pop culture institutions.

And they're as famous to adults for their hip-but-sincere celebration of retro-singing-cowboy culture as to kids for crooning "Toy Story 2's" signature anthem, "Woody's Round-Up."

As a child of the '50s, Ranger Doug says he was amply exposed to the singing-cowboy tradition of the Sons of the Pioneers (from whence sprung Roy Rogers).

Not to mention Gene Autry, Tex Ritter, Rex Allen and all the others who could ride a horse and yodel at the same time -- with the bad guys not far behind.

Little Ranger Doug "picked up my Uncle Hank's guitar to see if I could do it, too."

He did, and then some.

Meanwhile, with Roy Rogers having moved from B movies to his own '50s TV series, Little Ranger Doug found himself absorbing the basic lifestyle tenets of the singing cowboy daily.

"It presented an appetizing picture of independence," he says, "where you had to answer to nobody but your own self's code of honor."

He explains further: "A kid couldn't understand about cheating wives and broken hearts and barroom brawls or that whole side of the (country) music. What does that mean to a 6-year-old kid?

"But riding on the range with your buddies? A kid could understand and fantasize about that."

Then a funny thing happened on the way to the '60s. Little Ranger Doug's love of the singing cowboy way found a companion in his developing sense of humor.

What evolved, more or less, was an ironic appreciation of the singing cowboy way -- part utterly sincere tribute on the musical harmony front, part knowing put-on on the attitude front.

Ranger Doug eventually found a pair of knowing soul-mates in Woody Paul (nee Paul Woodrow Chrisman) and Too Slim (nee Fred LaBour).

A curious bunch they were, too.

Ranger Doug was an English major and shot-putter.

Woody Paul was a theoretical plasma physicist.

And Too Slim was a wildlife manager.

Not exactly the kind of guys you'd expect to be working the happy-trails circuit.

But when the trio joined voices and sense of humor, all thoughts of plasma physics and wildlife management went out the window.

The fateful date for their first public unveiling was 30 years ago this fall, on Nov. 11, 1977, when the boys yodeled their way through a gig at the Nashville nightspot Phranks & Steins.

The eight people in attendance didn't walk out.

And the rest is Sky-high history for the Riders: 30-odd albums, their own weekly series on TNN (when it was still The Nashville Network), a Saturday morning kids' show on CBS, two Grammy Awards, being turned into cartoons for a "Duck Dodgers" cartoon, making more than 200 public radio show appearances and notching an amazing 700 Grand Ole Opry dates (as the first singing-cowboy group ever inducted into the Opry).

The Riders also forged a lucrative alliance with Pixar animation, and have performed "Woody's Round-Up" in "Toy Story 2," scored Pixar's Oscar-winning short "For the Birds" (2002) and appeared on the "Monsters, Inc.: Scream Factory Favorites" companion CD to the movie.

In 1990, the trio became a quartet with the addition of Joey the Cowpolka King (Joey Miskulin, a native of Illinois).

"You could take four guys and dress them in western clothes and traditions, but if you couldn't perform the music really well, it wouldn't work," Ranger Doug warns. "But we're deadly serious about the music, while we're having fun with the clothes and the traditions."

For the record, adds Ranger Doug, no one has ever galloped away from the Riders in the Sky and returned to the safety of terra firma.

Once a Rider, always a Rider?

"Yep," he says, "as long as you keep the hotel rooms separate."

At a glance

What: Riders in the Sky

When: 7:30 p.m. Friday

Where: Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts, 110 E. Mulberry St.

Tickets: $18.10 to $28.50

Box office number: (866) 686-9541

Dudes in the duds

The spiffily attired cowpokes comprising Riders in the Sky are:

Ranger Doug

• Real name: Douglas B. Green

• Surname: "The Idol of American Youth"

• Saddle secret: Has a master's degree in literature

• Riders role: Guitar, baritone vocals

Woody Paul

• Real name: Paul Woodrow Chrisman

• Surname: "King of the Cowboy Fiddlers"

• Saddle secret: Has a doctorate in nuclear physics

• Riders role: Bunkhouse bass, tenor vocals, chainsaw (discontinued by popular demand)

Too Slim

• Real name: Fred LaBour

• Surname: "A Righteous Tater" and/or "The Man of a Thousand Hats" and/or "A Man Aging Like Fine Cheese"

• Saddle secret: Has a master's degree in wildlife management

• Riders role: Fiddle, tenor vocals, rope tricks

Joey

• Real name: Joey Miskulin

• Surname: "The Cowpolka King"

• Saddle secret: Was an executive producer for Johnny Cash

• Riders role: Accordion (or "Stomach Steinway"), baritone vocals

Second-tier Roy Rogers once called Central Illinois home

By Dan Craft | dcraft@pantagraph.com

It's true: Riders in the Sky are the first authentic singing-cowboys group to perform a concert along the Bloomington-Normal frontier in many a decade.

But they were almost beaten to the draw by one of their own.

Sort of.

The quick-draw artist was one Cal Shrum, who enjoyed a run in the late '40s and early '50s as a kind of second-tier Roy Rogers.

Cal eventually packed up his saddle and retired to Central Illinois.

In his prime, though, Shrum followed the singing-cowboy way of Roy: He yodeled and rode horses, often concurrently, in a string of hour-long second features, most of which seem to have disappeared from the face of the earth.

And just as Roy had his Dale Evans and Gabby Hayes for some good ol' prairie home companionship, Cal had his Alta Lee and Max Terhune.

A la Evans and Rogers, Alta Lee was Shrum's real-life romantic partner.

And Terhune performed Hayes' role as sidekick comic relief, but with a twist: he not only packed guns, but also a ventriloquist's dummy (a singing cowboy movie first -- and last).

Shrum got his start around 1940 at Republic Pictures, playing second fiddle to resident Republic cowpokes like Rogers, Gene Autry, Tex Ritter and William "Hopalong Cassidy" Boyd.

Eventually he rose to headliner status at a tiny studio called Westernair, where he and Alta Lee headlined a string of singing cowboy epics, shot in five days at $45,000 apiece.

Though forgotten by all but a few die-hard B-western movie buffs and (of course) Riders in the Sky, Shrum wound up settling into the pastures of Central Illinois and became something of a local hero -- especially in Springfield, where he was a popular radio personality in the '50s and '60s.

Before he bade us "happy trails" for good in 1996 (he was 85 when he died), Shrum spent his final years entertaining area nursing home residents and senior citizens with his nostalgic show -- including one at Normal's Orlando Estates, circa 1989.

Both Cal and Alta Lee were there, packing a couple reels of film, Cal's shiny Colt 41 (not loaded) and a 16mm projector -- all the better to screen a little 55-minute number called "Bad Man from Big Bend."

Only about a half-dozen seniors showed up for the free showing, and none of them ever seem to have heard of Cal Shrum or Alta Lee. But they stayed to hear Cal and Alta serenade each other, between fisticuffs, in flickering black-and-white.

"Well, I don't like to think that, but I can only name about five of us who are still living," Shrum told a Pantagraph reporter, who asked him if he was the last of his breed. "So I guess that's so."

More than 18 years later, Cal and the others are all gone (including Rogers and Autry, who followed him shortly).

But thank goodness Riders in the Sky posse leader Ranger Doug (Douglas B. Green), who wrote an entire book on singing cowboys ("Singing in the Saddle"), remembers Cal with affection.

"Oh, yes, I do for sure," says Ranger Doug. "And Alta Lee, too."

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Riders in the Sky are, from left, Joey the Cowpolka King, Woody Paul, Too Slim and Ranger Doug.

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Second-tier Roy Rogers once called Central Illinois home

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