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Burl Ives

Burl Icle Ivanhoe Ives (14 June 1909 – 14 April 1995) was an acclaimed American folk music singer, author, and actor.

Life and career

Born near Hunt City in Jasper County, Illinois, Ives is probably best remembered for his music. The prominent music critic John Rockwell has been quoted in the New York Times as saying that "Ives's voice... had the sheen and finesse of opera without its latter-day Puccinian vulgarities and without the pretensions of operatic ritual. It was genteel in expressive impact without being genteel in social conformity. And it moved people."[1]

From 1927 to 1929 Ives attended Eastern Illinois State Teachers College in Charleston (now Eastern Illinois University), where he played football.[2] During college he was a member of the Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity.[citation needed] One day during his junior year, he was sitting in English class, listening to a lecture on Beowulf, when he suddenly realized that he was wasting his time. So he got up to leave, but as he walked out the door, the professor made a snide remark, so Ives slammed the door behind him, breaking the glass.[3] Sixty years later, the school named a building after its most famous dropout.[4]

Ives traveled about the U.S. as an itinerant singer during the early 1930s, earning his way by doing odd jobs and playing his banjo. He was jailed in Mona, Utah, for vagrancy and for singing “Foggy Foggy Dew,” which the authorities decided was a bawdy song.[5] In c. 1931 he landed on WBOW radio in Terre Haute, Indiana. He also went back to school, registering for classes at Indiana State Teachers College (now Indiana State University).[6]

In 1940 Ives began his own radio show, titled The Wayfaring Stranger after one of his ballads. The show was very popular. In the 1940s he popularized several traditional folk songs, such as “Lavender Blue” (his first hit, a folk song from the 17th century), “Foggy Foggy Dew” (an English/Irish folk song), “Blue Tail Fly” (an old Civil War tune) and “Big Rock Candy Mountain” (an old hobo ditty).

Ives was drafted by the military in 1942 but was discharged a year later for medical problems.[7] On Dec. 6, 1945, he married 29-year-old script writer Helen Peck Ehrlich.[8] The couple divorced in 1971.[9] He married Dorothy Koster Paul in London in 1971.[10]

In 1946 Ives was cast as a singing cowboy in the film Smoky. Other movie credits include East of Eden (1955); Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958); The Big Country (1958), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor; and Our Man in Havana (1959), based on the Graham Greene novel; and many others.

His autobiography, The Wayfaring Stranger, was published in 1948. He also wrote or compiled several other books, including Burl Ives Song Book (1953); Tales of America (1954); Sea Songs of Sailing, Whaling, and Fishing (1956); and The Wayfaring Stranger's Notebook (1962).

Ives had an impressive Broadway career, including appearances in The Boys From Syracuse (1938-39), Heavenly Express (1940), This Is the Army (1942), Sing Out Sweet Land (1944), Paint Your Wagon (1951-52), and Dr. Cook's Garden (1967); his most notable Broadway performance was as Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955-56), a role written specifically for Ives by Tennessee Williams.

Ives was identified in the infamous 1950 pamphlet Red Channels as an entertainer with supposed Communist ties.[11] He cooperated with the House Unamerican Activities Committee and named fellow folk singer Pete Seeger and others as possible Communists.[12] His cooperation with the HUAC ended his blacklisting, allowing him to continue with his movie acting.

In the 1960s Ives began singing country music with greater frequency. In 1962 he released three major hits, “A Little Bitty Tear,” “Call Me Mr In-Between,” and “Funny Way of Laughing,” all three of which crossed over and topped the pop charts as well.

Ives played the narrator, Sam the Snowman, in the Rankin-Bass animated television special, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964). He performed in other television productions, most notably Pinocchio (1968) and Roots (1977). He starred in two television series: O.K. Crackerby! (1965-1966) and The Bold Ones: The Lawyers (1969-1972).

His favorite song was "I Know an Old Lady (Who Swallowed a Fly)"; supposedly he sang it at "every concert."[13] He did indeed perform the song at a concert in Chautauqua, New York, in the 1980s; the concert is available on DVD.

Ives's "A Holly Jolly Christmas” remains a popular tune during the Christmas season; it was featured in the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer special. Frank Black of the Pixies is a contemporary fan of Ives according to Apple's iTunes Music Store. In a contribution to “Celebrity Playlists”, Black includes no fewer than 15 of Ives' hits in his playlist. Madison, Wisconsin, punk rock band Killdozer released the EP Burl in 1986, which they dedicated “in loving memory of” Ives, who was still alive (and evidently still remembered) at the time.

The Ren and Stimpy Show's first season episode "Stimpy's Invention” featured a record, “Happy Happy Joy Joy,” which parodied Ives' singing style and recreated some of his crusty dialogue from The Big Country. When Ives saw the episode, he contacted Ren and Stimpy Show creator John Kricfalusi and said that he would have been willing to do the voice-over work for it.

Ives is known to Star Wars fans for his role as the narrator in the 1984 made-for-TV film Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure.

In his later years, Ives and his wife, Dorothy, lived with their children in a home located alongside the water in Anacortes, in the Puget Sound area of Washington, where he died of cancer of the mouth at the age of 85. Burl Ives is interred in Mound Cemetery in Jasper County, Illinois.

Discography

Albums

Singles (Selected)

  • Grandfather Kringle / Twelve Days of Christmas (1951, 10 in., 78 rpm, Columbia MJV-124)
  • That's My Heart Strings / The Bus Stop Song (c. 1956, 7 in., 45 rpm, Decca 30046)
  • I'm the Boss / The Moon Is High (c. 1963, 7 in., 45 rpm, Decca 31504)
  • Salt Water Guitar / The Story of Bobby Lee Trent (1964, 7 in., 45 rpm, Decca 31811)
  • Evil Off My Mind / Taste of Heaven (c. 1967, 7 in., 45 rpm, Decca 31997)
  • Gingerbread House / Tumbleweed Snowman (c. 1970?, 7 in. 45 rpm, Big Tree BT-130)
  • The Tail of the Comet Kohoutek / A Very Fine Lady (1974, 7 in., 45 rpm, MCA 40175)
  • It's Gonna Be a Mixed Up Xmas / The Christmas Legend of Monkey Joe (1978, 7 in., 45 & 33 1/3 rpm, Monkey Joe MJ1)
  • The Night before Christmas / Instrumental (1986, 7 in., 45 rpm, Stillman/Teague STP-1013)

Radio Work (selected)

  • Wayfaring Stranger
  • The Burl Ives Show (1946-1948)[14]
  • Burl Ives Sings

Theater Appearances (selected)

Filmography

Television (selected)

Movies (selected)

Concerts (selected)

  • Town Hall, New York, Dec. 1, 1945[17]
  • Opera House, San Francisco, Feb. 9, 1949[18]
  • Columbia University, New York, Oct. 19, 1950[19]
  • Royal Festival Hall, London, May 10, 1952[20]
  • Albert Hall, London, Oct. 20, 1976[21]
  • Chautauqua, New York, 1982 (VHS)
  • Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, Illinois, April 27, 1990[22]
  • Brodniak Hall, Anacortes, Washington, 1991 (VHS)

Bibliography

  • The Wayfarin' Stranger: A Collection of 21 Folk Songs and Ballads with Guitar and Piano Accompaniment. New York: Leeds Music, 1945.
  • Wayfaring Stranger. New York: Whittlesey House, 1948 (autobiography)
  • Favorite Folk Ballads of Burl Ives: A Collection of 17 Folk Songs and Ballads with Guitar and Piano Accompaniment. New York: Leeds Music, 1949
  • Burl Ives Song Book. New York: Ballantine Books, 1953
  • Sailing on a Very Fine Day. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1954
  • Burl Ives Folio of Australian Songs, collected and arranged by Percy Jones, 1954.
  • Song in America: Our Musical Heritage, co-authored with Albert Hague. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, n.d.
  • Tales of America. Cleveland: World Publishing, 1954
  • "Introduction" to Paul Kapp's A Cat Came Fiddling and Other Rhymes of Childhood, New York: Harcourt Brace, 1956.
  • The Ghost and Hans Van Duin [excerpt from Tales of America]. Pittsburgh: Carnegie Institute of Technology, 1956
  • Sea Songs of Sailing, Whaling, and Fishing. New York: Ballantine Books, 1956
  • The Wayfaring Stranger's Notebook. Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1962
  • Irish Songs. New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, n.d.
  • The Burl Ives Sing-Along Song Book. 1963
  • Albad the Oaf. London: Abelard-Schuman, 1965.
  • More Burl Ives Songs. New York: Ballantine Books, 1966
  • Sing a Fun Song. New York: Southern Music Publishing, 1968
  • Burl Ives: Four Folk Song and Four Stories, co-authored with Barbara Hazen. N.p.: CBS Records, 1969
  • Spoken Arts Treasury of American Ballads and Folk Songs, co-authored with Arthur Klein and Helen Ives, n.d.
  • Easy Guitar Method. Dayton, Ohio : Heritage Music Press, 1975
  • We Americans: A Musical Journey with Burl Ives. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 1978 (pamphlet)
  • "Foreword" to Martin Scot Kosins's Maya's First Rose. West Bloomfield, MI: Altweger and Mandel Publishing, 1991

References

  1. ^ John Rockwell, quoted in book review of Outsider, John Rockwell on the Arts, 1967-2006, by John Rockwell, the New York Times Book Review, 24 December 2006, page 13
  2. ^ Betsy Cole, "Eastern Mourns Burl Ives," Daily Eastern News, April 17, 1995. Reprinted on the Web at http://eiuhalloffame.com/burlives/ivesart2.html.
  3. ^ Burl Ives, Wayfaring Stranger, New York: Whittlesey House, 1948, pp. 108-109
  4. ^ Associated Press, "Eastern Illinois University Honors Famed Dropout Burl Ives," St. Louis Post Dispatch, May 3, 1990, p., 71. Accessed via NewsBank.
  5. ^ Burl Ives, Wayfaring Stranger, New York: Whittlesey House, 1948, pp. 129-132.
  6. ^ Burl Ives, Wayfaring Stranger, New York: Whittlesey House, 1948, p. 145.
  7. ^ Richard Severo, "Burl Ives, the Folk Singer Whose Imposing Acting Won an Oscar, Dies at 85," New York Times, April 15, 1995, p. 10. Accessed via ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
  8. ^ "Burl Ives Weds Script Writer," New York Times, Dec. 8, 1945, p. 24. Accessed via ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
  9. ^ "Burl Ives Divorced," New York Times, Feb. 19, 1971, p. 27. Accessed via ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
  10. ^ UPI, "Burl Ives Weds," Evening Sentinel, Holland, Michigan, April 17, 1971, p. 3. Accessed via Access NewspaperARCHIVE.
  11. ^ Michael D. Murray, Encyclopedia of Television News, Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1998. p 18. Accessed via Ebrary.
  12. ^ Dean Kahn, "Ives-Seeger Rift Finally Ended with 'Blue-Tail Fly' Harmony: Skagitonians Ives, Murros Were on Opposite Sides," Knight Ridder Tribune Business News [from Bellingham Herald, Washington], Mar 19, 2006, p. 1. Accessed via ProQuest ABI/Inform.
  13. ^ "Burl Ives," New York Times, Dec. 31, 1995, p. SM30. Accessed via ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
  14. ^ Guide to the Burl Ives Papers, 1913-1975, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts: link
  15. ^ Guide to the Burl Ives Papers, 1913-1975, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts: link
  16. ^ "Along the Straw Hat," New York Times, July 30, 1950, p. X3. Includes photo of Ives. Accessed via ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
  17. ^ Guide to the Burl Ives Papers, 1913-1975, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts: link
  18. ^ "Burl Ives to Be in S. F. February 9," San Mateo Times, San Mateo, California, Jan. 29, 1949, p. 5. Accessed via Access NewspaperARCHIVE.
  19. ^ Display ad, New York Times, Oct. 8, 1950, p. X3. Accessed via ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
  20. ^ "Burl Ives Packs London Hall," New York Times, May 11, 1952, p. 95. Accessed via ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
  21. ^ UPI, "Ives Returns [to London]," Syracuse Herald Journal, Syracuse, New York, Oct. 1, 1976, p. 33. Accessed via Access NewspaperARCHIVE.
  22. ^ Associated Press, "Eastern Illinois University Honors Famed Dropout Burl Ives," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 3, 1990, p. 71. Accessed via NewsBank.
Preceded by Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor
1958
for The Big Country 		Succeeded by
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