Stan Jones

Composer, songwriter and actor Stan Jones was born in Douglas, Arizona, on June 5, 1914. He learned to ride horses as a child, a skill that came in handy later in his life (as did his talent for singing and playing the guitar). After his father died his mother moved the family to Los Angeles. He attended UC Berkeley for a time, and began riding the rodeo circuit in his spare time to make money. He dropped out of college in 1934, however, to join the navy, and after his discharge held a variety of jobs all over the country, including copper miner, logger and snowplow driver. He was hired as a firefighter by the US Forest Service, and later became a Forest Ranger, being assigned to various national parks in the western US. While stationed at Death Valley, California, in 1948, he was assigned to be technical advisor for a western being shot there, The Walking Hills (1949).