Michael Burton
Michael passed away on December 19, 2019, in Tucson, Arizona, after a thirty-year battle with Coronary Artery Disease; thirteen operations, including more than a few open-heart procedures.
Not only was Michael a very talented songwriter, his legendary “Night Rider’s Lament,” recorded by everyone from Garth Brooks to Nanci Griffith on her Grammy album, Other Voices, Other Rooms. He was also a poet, and his works are known in Europe and South America. He was also a respected Maya archaeologist and explorer with twelve expeditions to uncharted country in the Upper Amazon.
Michael was also a working cowboy and a dory fisherman in Alaska. His parents loved the frontier atmosphere of Alaska and the family established, and named, the tiny isolated Alaskan community of Cohoe on the Kasilof River, about a hundred miles south of Anchorage. He attended a one-room schoolhouse in winter and set-netted for salmon in the summer with his father. Michael kept his favorite stone from their old fishing site all his life.
Michael’s mother was from a famous English family, daughter of Sir Richard Jenkins, and whose family ran the British East India Company for a few hundred years. When Michael was young and living in Alaska, he began speaking Aleut, the native language of his playmates over English, his mother decided that Michael needed to share the experiences of the outside world. From then on she and Michael spent half of the year in Alaska, and the other half in remote and exotic places in the world. By the age of fifteen, Michael has accompanied his family on three extended expeditions: Guatemala, Peru, and the upper Orinoco river, Venezuela, where his uncle was a resident geologist/anthropologist there.
Michael’s childhood was spent in Alaska and Canada, which provided close contact with Indians and Eskimos, from which he received extensive training in tracking and field skills, this played a part in his military duty in Vietnam with special operation unit – U.S. Special Forces (Commandos).
After leaving service, Michael resided in England, and Latin America, where he mounted twelve extended expeditions into Central and South America. Their primary mission/objective to explore and collect data on Archeology/Anthropology and uncharted Geography. Due to previous knowledge of the areas and his ease of picking up languages, nine of these treks were conducted alone, with the accompaniment of Indian guides indigenous to the region. It should be made clear in respect to the aims of the society, that these solo treks were in no lack of appreciation of team effort (which is preferred) but rather by necessity: to facilitate the most politically conducive entry, at the time, into remote/primitive areas from local authorities and natives – and the unavailability of qualified team members with sufficient native contact, and disciplined expedition experience.
Not only was Michael a very talented songwriter and poet, but he was also a screenwriter, among his feature films are “Flight of the Navigator,” “Shoot to Kill," and “The Last Spy.” At the 52nd Writer Guild Awards, he was nominated for his writing of “The Last Spy.”
For the past twenty-plus years, Michael and his beautiful wife, Karen, have lived on their working ranch outside of Tucson, Arizona, with their quarter horses, miniature Sicilian donkeys, golden retrievers, Turkish angora cat, Maltese puppy, wild deer, coyotes, javelinas (wild pigs), and of course roadrunners, and many other wild critters.
After the September 11 attacks, 9/11, Michael joined the Arizona Rangers and would provide homeland security and terrorism presentations and training in Southern Arizona to domestic intelligence agencies.
During the Tucson Symphony Orchestra’s 83rd Season’s Back in the Saddle Again: More Music of the West event, "Night Rider’s Lament" was played by The Bill Ganz Western Band, along with the Symphony Orchestra and the entire concert hall gave Michael a standing ovation.
Thanks to all of you fans out there of this great American song.
Not only was Michael a very talented songwriter, his legendary “Night Rider’s Lament,” recorded by everyone from Garth Brooks to Nanci Griffith on her Grammy album, Other Voices, Other Rooms. He was also a poet, and his works are known in Europe and South America. He was also a respected Maya archaeologist and explorer with twelve expeditions to uncharted country in the Upper Amazon.
Michael was also a working cowboy and a dory fisherman in Alaska. His parents loved the frontier atmosphere of Alaska and the family established, and named, the tiny isolated Alaskan community of Cohoe on the Kasilof River, about a hundred miles south of Anchorage. He attended a one-room schoolhouse in winter and set-netted for salmon in the summer with his father. Michael kept his favorite stone from their old fishing site all his life.
Michael’s mother was from a famous English family, daughter of Sir Richard Jenkins, and whose family ran the British East India Company for a few hundred years. When Michael was young and living in Alaska, he began speaking Aleut, the native language of his playmates over English, his mother decided that Michael needed to share the experiences of the outside world. From then on she and Michael spent half of the year in Alaska, and the other half in remote and exotic places in the world. By the age of fifteen, Michael has accompanied his family on three extended expeditions: Guatemala, Peru, and the upper Orinoco river, Venezuela, where his uncle was a resident geologist/anthropologist there.
Michael’s childhood was spent in Alaska and Canada, which provided close contact with Indians and Eskimos, from which he received extensive training in tracking and field skills, this played a part in his military duty in Vietnam with special operation unit – U.S. Special Forces (Commandos).
After leaving service, Michael resided in England, and Latin America, where he mounted twelve extended expeditions into Central and South America. Their primary mission/objective to explore and collect data on Archeology/Anthropology and uncharted Geography. Due to previous knowledge of the areas and his ease of picking up languages, nine of these treks were conducted alone, with the accompaniment of Indian guides indigenous to the region. It should be made clear in respect to the aims of the society, that these solo treks were in no lack of appreciation of team effort (which is preferred) but rather by necessity: to facilitate the most politically conducive entry, at the time, into remote/primitive areas from local authorities and natives – and the unavailability of qualified team members with sufficient native contact, and disciplined expedition experience.
Not only was Michael a very talented songwriter and poet, but he was also a screenwriter, among his feature films are “Flight of the Navigator,” “Shoot to Kill," and “The Last Spy.” At the 52nd Writer Guild Awards, he was nominated for his writing of “The Last Spy.”
For the past twenty-plus years, Michael and his beautiful wife, Karen, have lived on their working ranch outside of Tucson, Arizona, with their quarter horses, miniature Sicilian donkeys, golden retrievers, Turkish angora cat, Maltese puppy, wild deer, coyotes, javelinas (wild pigs), and of course roadrunners, and many other wild critters.
After the September 11 attacks, 9/11, Michael joined the Arizona Rangers and would provide homeland security and terrorism presentations and training in Southern Arizona to domestic intelligence agencies.
During the Tucson Symphony Orchestra’s 83rd Season’s Back in the Saddle Again: More Music of the West event, "Night Rider’s Lament" was played by The Bill Ganz Western Band, along with the Symphony Orchestra and the entire concert hall gave Michael a standing ovation.
Thanks to all of you fans out there of this great American song.