American songwriter and screen actor, primarily writing country-western music, best remembered for penning the cowboy-styled song “Ghost Riders in the Sky” in 1948. Members of the Western Writers of America chose it as the greatest Western song of all time.
He grew up among cattle ranches and desert. One of his pleasures was to write and tell ghost stories to his friends. During his college years, he lived with a sister in California but the great outdoors called him. He held many jobs all over the Western USA, including copper mining in Jerome, Arizona, driving a snowplow, logging and fighting fires in the Pacific Northwest.
During World War II, Stan Jones was a field director for the American Red Cross in Bend, Oregon where he met and married Olive Jones. After the war, he joined the Park Service, serving in Death Valley, the scene or inspiration of many of his songs. When film crews came to the desert to make Westerns, Stan met them as the official representative of the Park Service.
He was encouraged to publish his music which caught the ear of Burl Ives. Ives recorded “Ghost Riders” and Vaughn Monroe heard it. Monroe reportedly rushed to record the song and release his own version before Ives could release his. Monroe’s deep voice made the song famous. When director John Ford heard his music, he asked Jones to write the score for the musical Wagonmaster. Ford also gave Jones a part in the movie. Jones composed most of the music for John Wayne’s movie The Searchers.
With his song-writing career burgeoning, he left the Park Service and moved back to the Los Angeles area with his wife. He was hired by Walt Disney Studios for the score of many of their movies and TV shows including Spin and Marty. Throughout the 1950s he was busy writing and singing his music for various movies, TV shows; in his “spare” time he wrote about glaciers for a book and began writing his novel based on Queen Nefertiti of Egypt. All in all, he wrote over two hundred songs with over 100 of them recorded, many achieving gold record status.
Stan Jones married twice. He had a daughter with his first wife, but later gave up all parental rights. His second marriage produced one son. He died from cancer in Los Angeles on 13 December 1963, aged 49. He was elected to the Western Music Hall of Fame posthumously in 1997.
Link to Wikipedia biography