But to most who came of age after the folk revolution of the s, Ives was just a name, and a rather unusual one at that. Frank and Dellie Ives often sang to their son, acquainting him with music that sometimes traced its roots to the s, when the Ives clan first migrated to the New World seeking its fortune.
The boy mastered the banjo and began to appear publicly in school shows while still finding time to play fullback on his high school football team. He enrolled at Eastern Illinois Teachers College in as a physical education major, hoping to graduate and become a football coach. Instead, he fell under the spell of wanderlust and spent much of the next few years traveling the United States, learning myriad folk songs that residents of isolated hamlets sang for him.
He also had taught himself the guitar and mastered dozens of menial jobs which he performed for even more menial pay. He eventually settled down and enrolled at Indiana State Teachers College, singing on a local radio station to pay his tuition. But he again became bored, and by had migrated to New York City, where he took vocal lessons, attended Juilliard and landed small parts in Upstate New York summer stock.
By the s, he had hits on both popular and country charts. He recorded over 30 albums for Decca and another dozen for Columbia. In he was singer-narrator of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer , an often-repeated Christmas television special.
His Broadway debut was in , though he is best remembered for creating the role of Big Daddy in the s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof when it ran on Broadway through the early s. Ives officially retired from show business on his 80th birthday in and settled in Anacortes, Washington, although he continued to do frequent benefit performances at his own request. Burl Ives died in Sign In. Edit Burl Ives.
Showing all 38 items. Frequent benefits for Indian reservations, peace academies, Boy Scouts, environmental groups, arts foundations, children's medicine. Burl Ives was the voice of Sam the Eagle, the narrator of the classic Disneyland attraction "American Sings" in Tomorrowland. Was initiated into DeMolay at the George N. Finally, he landed a job singing ballads for NBC-Radio. But war news interrupted the introduction to his debut performance, and he was unable to go on air.
In , Ives married Helen Peck Ehrlich, who he met while working on a radio show. The two adopted a son, Alexander, and lived in a New York apartment while Ives was touring, and between tours stayed at their California ranch, where Ives enjoyed racing his boat and flying planes, raising goats, hiking and camping. But he never left music and performing for long.
Ives cooperated with the committee, which cost him several friendships, tarnished his reputation in the eyes of many colleagues and fans, but allowed him to continue his career. The role was so successful for Ives that Big Daddy became the nickname and would stick with him for the rest of his life. Ives and Helen divorced in the s, with Helen taking custody of their son. Ives remarried in , to Dorothy Koster.
He published 10 books and dozens of songbooks. In , Ives and Dorothy moved to Anacortes, Wash. In the s, folk music means many different things to many different people, and a "folk music festival" may include such diverse sounds as blues, reggae, electric pop, or jazz. What folk music officially means, though, is a set of traditional songs, sung by ordinary people, for their own pleasure, not in concert, but on the front porch.
Ives's music is the real folk music, the traditional songs; Ives brought these songs into the mainstream of American popular music, and has been instrumental in keeping that part of American heritage alive. Itinerant musician ; stage debut in Ah, Wilderness! Ballads, Folk and Country Songs, Decca, Down to the Sea in Ships, Decca, Greatest Hits, MCA, Song in America, Duell, Sloan and Pearce, Periodicals Billboard, July 3, Christian Science Monitor, July 26,
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