Signature Song

Early in my career as a radio-music jock at KPOD in Crescent City, I used to sign off every evening with what was known at the time as a “signature song.” I’m not sure if there are any stations left anymore that allow their talent to do this sort of thing, if there are, I haven’t heard them.

The song I selected was “Wildfire,” by Michael Martin Murphy. He wrote the tune in 1968 with a fellow by the name of Larry Cansler and it appeared on Murphy’s 1975 album, “Blue Sky –Night Thunder.”

The first time I heard the song, I fell in love with it for its imagery —

She comes down from Yellow Mountain
On a dark, flat land she rides
On a pony she named Wildfire
With a whirlwind by her side
On a cold Nebraska night

Oh, they say she died one winter
When there came a killing frost
And the pony she named Wildfire
Busted down it’s stall
In a blizzard he was lost

She ran calling Wildfire [x3]

By the dark of the moon I planted
But there came an early snow
There’s been a hoot-owl howling by my window now
For six nights in a row
She’s coming for me, I know
And on Wildfire we’re both gonna go

We’ll be riding Wildfire [x3]

On Wildfire we’re gonna ride
Gonna leave sodbustin’ behind
Get these hard times right on out of our minds
Riding Wildfire

In a 2008 interview with writer Vernell Hackett, Murphy talked about the origins of the song and the context in which in was written.

“I was working on a concept album called The Ballad of Calico for Kenny Rogers with my friend Larry Cansler. I was in my third year of college at UCLA, but I was living in the mountains in California. I would drive down to Larry’s apartment in Los Angeles and sleep on his floor, because we would work sometimes 22 hours a day on the album.

The night “Wildfire” came to me, Larry went to bed and I went to sleep in a sleeping bag on the floor. I dreamed the song in its entirety. I woke up and pounded on Larry’s door and said, “Can you come down and help me with this song?”

His wife got up and made us coffee and we finished it in two or three hours.

The song came from deep down in my subconsciousness. My grandfather told me a story when I was a little boy about a legendary ghost horse that the Indians talked about. In 1936, author J. Frank Dobie identified this ghost horse story as the most prominent one in the lore of the Southwest.

We were working on my album Blue Sky – Night Thunder at the time, and my producer Bob Johnson said, “I don’t see how that song will fit in with the rest of the material for that album.”

I asked him if I could record it as an album cut, because I felt very strongly about it.

We recorded the song at Caribou Ranch in Colorado, ten thousand feet up in the Rocky Mountains. After we recorded the song, Bob said, “You know it came out better than I thought it would. Let’s play it for the kitchen staff here and see what they think.”

They loved it, so Bob said, “OK, we’ll release it as the first single.”

I can’t tell you that I understand what the song means, but I think it’s about getting above the hard times. I’ve had people tell me they wish they could ride that mystical horse and get away from their hard times, whatever they are. I also think a lot of it is wrapped up in my Christian upbringing.

In the Biblical Book of Revelation, it talks about Jesus coming back on a white horse. I came to be a Christian when I was five or six years old and I was a cowboy kid with Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, so when the preacher told me that Jesus would come back for me on a white horse, I was all wrapped up in that.

In the ghost story, the horse is a symbol of the Savior, in the same way C.S. Lewis used animals in The Chronicles of Narnia. When I lived in California in the late 60s, a lot of my friends were into the culture of the day—drugs and free sex—and I felt out of place there.

After “Wildfire” came out and was a hit for me, I was able to move back to Texas. So not only was a song I dreamed my most famous song, it also helped me get back to my native state.

People always ask me if I have a horse named Wildfire, and up until a few years I did not. I always said I’d never name a horse after the song. But when I got my Palomino mare, she was exactly what I always dreamed Wildfire to be, so gave her the name to my most famous song.”

Even today, if “Wildfire,” comes on the radio, I find myself belting out the lyrics and painting pictures in my mind from the words as I sing them.