After checking a fairly reliable source... this song has a very strange history... and the melody almost matches, "When Johnny Comes Marching Home."

Ghost Riders was written by Stan Jones (no, not my golfing friend in Texarkana so many years ago) and was recorded by about a half dozen or more talents of that era. Vaughan Monroe was popular with my peers but Burl Ives, Johnny Cash and others did it justice.

I'd love to have been a fly on the wall listening to the negotiations that went on to skirt or recognize copyright, big egos and the odds of it becoming a "hit."