"Rawhide" is a Western song written by Ned Washington (lyrics) and composed by Dimitri Tiomkin in 1958. It was originally recorded by Frankie Laine. The song was used as the theme to Rawhide, a western television series that ran on CBS from 1959 to 1965. Members of the Western Writers of America chose it as one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time.^[1]

Background

The song is about the job of a drover on a cattle drive.

In other media

• In The Blues Brothers, the band performs "Rawhide" in a local country western bar.
• The song is played in a scene on An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, when the titular character is rolling through the desert inside a tumbleweed. The song is actually the cover reused from The Blues Brothers, mentioned above, performed by an uncredited Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi as various desert animals. However, the song is not heard on the soundtrack for copyright reasons.
• In My Favorite Martian, the sentient, wise-cracking metallic suit Zoot (voiced by an uncredited Wayne Knight) sings a verse of the song as he and fellow Martians Martin (Christopher Lloyd) and Neenert (Ray Walston) leave Earth on their spacecraft.
• The song is parodied in the Histeria! episode "North America" as the Cowpie Song.
• In A Little Curious, episode Long, Short, Roll, there is a segment with a song that is a parody of "Rawhide".
• On The Simpsons, the Canyonero jingle featured in "The Last Temptation of Krust" is a parody. Additionally, in "Milhouse Doesn't Live Here Anymore", the song Homer, Lenny, and Carl sing while rolling on toxic barrels is sung to the tune of "Rawhide".
• In Shrek 2, Donkey (voiced by Eddie Murphy) is briefly heard singing the song; however, the song wasn't included in the soundtrack.
• In Happy Feet Two, the elephant seals were heard singing with an Australian accent while marching to the iceberg was included in the soundtrack.
• The theme song to the 1980 Japanese Super Sentai series, Denshi Sentai Denjiman, is heavily based on the Rawhide theme song.^[2]
• The jingle for the Rosen Motor Group used car dealership ("Rosen, Rosen, Rosen, Rosen, Rosen, Rosen") is based on the Rawhide theme.
• A series of mid-1990s advertisements for the Walmart chain that focus on its rolling back prices use a song based on the Rawhide theme.
• In the Star Trek tie-in novel "How Much For Just The Planet" by John M. Ford, the play-acting Direidi barbarian followers of Queen Janeka sing a song whose lyrics (about the difficulties of being a barbarian horde in the 23rd century) parallel those of the "Rawhide" theme.

Notable covers

• Dan Sartain
• 101 Strings Orchestra
• Big John Bates
• The Blues Brothers (on the soundtrack to their eponymous film)
• Johnny Cash
• Frank Chacksfield and his Orchestra;^[3] the first bars of this instrumental version were used in a news jingle by Radio Veronica in the 1970s^[4]
• Dezperadoz (The legend and the truth album, 2006)
• Ensiferum^[5]
• Greenbriar Boys
• Happy Feet Two
• Helgi Björnsson (Icelandic, as Ríðum, ríðum, ríðum)
• The Jackson 5
• Dead Kennedys^[6]
• Frankie Laine (performed again with Jimmy Carroll and his orchestra); this version was used in an advertisement for Google Chrome in 2013
• Litfiba (Pirata live album, 1989)
• The Men They Couldn't Hang
• The Meteors
• Liza Minnelli
• The New Zealand Railways Department used a cover of the song in a 1978 television advertisement for its freight services^[7]
• Nassim (full name Nassim Ait-Kaci) recorded an instrumental version for the soundtrack of Tony Hawk's American Wasteland
• Oingo Boingo
• Riders in the Sky
• Sheb Wooley (who actually starred in Rawhide)
• Jan Rot translated the song in Dutch as "Yippieyayee" for the 2008 album An + Jan gaan landelijk
• Sublime
• Johnny Western
• The Chaps, 1982 Scottish novelty version (coupled with "Ghostriders in the Sky")
• The Survivors, 1965 Jamaican ska cover, released on UK label RIO Records
• Jared Irish^[8]