Buck Page has been leading various incarnations of the Riders of the Purple Sage off and on since 1936. These two recent releases feature two different lineups, with only Page and Mike Ley in common. The stronger of the two lineups is on the live disc, which is also musically more satisfying.
The Riders play a very straightforward brand of Western music, leaning hard on cowboy ballads from the Sons of the Pioneers repertoire. They also include some Western swing, a waltz or two, and some novelty numbers. All feature the group’s trademark three- and four-part harmonies. In addition to Page and Ley on guitar/vocals and bass/vocals, this live set has Dart Zubis on accordion/vocals and Cody Bryant singing and playing fiddle, banjo and guitar.
27 Hits is a lot of songs, and clocks in at about 70 minutes. If you’ve ever heard and loved a cowboy-style Western song, it’s probably on this CD. The Riders do a bang-up job on old standbys like “Cattle Call,” “Pecos Bill,” “Tumbling Tumbleweeds,” “Cool Water,” and “Ghost Riders in the Sky.” Their yodeling on “Cattle Call” isn’t quite up to that of Eddie Arnold or the Sons, but they acquit themselves reasonably well.
Some of the other nuggets here include Stuart Hamblen’s “Out on the Texas Plains,” Merle Travis’s “Smoke, Smoke, Smoke,” Rex Allen’s “Ride Cowboy Ride,” and Cole Porter’s “Don’t Fence Me In.” The disc ends with three Page compositions. “Wind Lullaby” has a little jazzy clarinet along with the accordion, “Rollin’ Rollin’ Prairies,” swings along with some nice steel guitar, and “California Waltz” has of all things a flute solo.
A couple of songs seem out of place. Boudleaux and Felice Bryant’s overworked chestnut “Rocky Top” is more of a bluegrass standard, and while the crowd seems to enjoy it, it sticks out among these cowboy ballads like a skunk at a wedding. And “Interstate Madonna,” a jazzy shuffle about a hitchhiking truckstop prostitute, seems a little perverse in this otherwise squeaky-clean repertoire.
The tracks don’t run together, sparing us between-song banter, but they all end abruptly, sometimes in the midst of a fade-out. It’s a jarring effect and not entirely professional.
If 27 Hits sometimes drifts with the tumbleweeds perilously close to a “Lawrence Welk Goes West” feel — as on “California Waltz” and Red Rowe’s “Clouds” — Drifting Clouds sometimes crosses that fenceline. This one features a mostly different band playing some of the same numbers in the studio, and although it has most of the same elements, including Page’s mellow baritone anchoring the cowpoke harmonies and some sweet accordion and fiddle accents, it lacks the verve of the live set.
“Clouds” has several things going for it, including a cast of guest musicians like fiddler Candy Lerman and renowned session drummer Hal Blaine, and what must be the last vocal tracks ever laid down by the late great Cliffie Stone (who also produced). But with the lower energy level, the tributes to Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, ultra-sentimental ballads and geezer humor, it’s pretty much for the Geritol set.
That’s not intended as an insult. The Riders’ shtick is strictly nostalgia, and they ride that horse right into the sunset years with their audience. There’s Mike Ley’s “Will Work for Food,” a semi-humorous bit about the plight of old-timers in a dot-com world; “RV Cowboys,” which pokes fun at weekend faux-cowpokes in their air-conditioned SUVs; Pal Owens’ “Seven Shot Six Gun,” an homage to old Western movie heroes; and “When I Was a Kid,” a duet in which Stone and Page trade memories of idyllic childhoods.
If you’re a fan of the neo-Western acts like the other Riders (“in the Sky”), this might not be your cup of joe. But if you’re pinin’ for the olden days, when a man was a man and his best friend was his horse, those days still live amid the Drifting Clouds with the Riders of the Purple Sage.
(Wagon Wheel, 1999 and 2000)
