Who wrote the song "(Ghost) Riders in the Sky: A Cowboy Legend"?

"(Ghost) Riders in the Sky: A Cowboy Legend" is a cowboy-styled country/western song written in 1948 by American songwriter Stan Jones. A number of versions were crossover hits on the pop charts in 1949, the most successful being by Vaughn Monroe. Members of the Western Writers of America chose it as the greatest western song of all time.

The song tells a folk tale of a cowboy who has a vision of red-eyed, steel-hooved cattle thundering across the sky, being chased by the spirits of damned cowboys. One warns him that if he does not change his ways, he will be doomed to join them, forever "trying to catch the Devil's herd across these endless skies".

Stanley Davis Jones (June 5, 1914 – December 13, 1963) was an American songwriter, primarily writing Western music. Jones was born in Douglas, Arizona, and grew up on a ranch. His physician father was one of the first settlers in Cochise County, Arizona. In his free time he wrote songs, and eventually more than 100 were recorded. His most famous, "(Ghost) Riders in the Sky", was written in 1948 when he worked for the National Park Service in Death Valley, California.