“Wildfire” is a song written by Michael Murphey and Larry Cansler in 1968. It was recorded by Murphey and appears on his gold-plus 1975 album Blue Sky – Night Thunder. The song became Murphey’s highest charting pop single in the United States. It went platinum in 2010 and was voted one of the top 100 western songs of all time by members of The Western Writers of America. Murphey said the song came to him in a dream and could have been influenced by a Native American legend his grandfather told him about a ghost horse.
The song is written from the perspective of a farmer. He sings of a woman who died in a blizzard while searching for her horse, Wildfire. His crops have failed, due to an “early snow” and he believes the woman is coming for him, and that they will ride Wildfire together.
Larry Lee Cansler is an American composer, arranger, conductor, musical director, and pianist. In the song, Michael Murphey is on piano and vocals, Jac Murphy on piano, Sam Broussard on guitar, Richard Dean on guitar and background vocals, Michael McKinney on bass, Harry Wilkinson on drums, John McEuen on mandolin, Jeff Hanna and Jimmy Ibottson on background vocals.
Murphey later added his middle name, Martin, to avoid confusion with an actor with the same name. An interesting fact: when he was 17 running his own Dallas coffeehouse called the Windjammer, a drunken, disgruntled patron blasted the front door and room with a shotgun because nobody knew the songs he was requesting.
Jim’s Challenge: This week the theme is to find a song about the American West, or one that mentions cowboys, a sheriff, an outlaw, horses, cactus, or tumbleweeds.
