IVES, Icle Ivanhoe "Burl" [1909-1995] -- American folk singer, actor and author, Academy Award

Born of humble origins in Bible Belt Illinois, he retained that character throughout his life. He was singing songs taught him by his tobacco-chewing grandmother at the age of four -- his age, not hers! -- and also learned the banjo and guitar at a early age. After high school, and with a promising career as a football star before him, he threw that up - dropping out of college in 1930 with but fifteen cents in his pocket - to hitch-hike around North America as a sort of itinerant minstrel, collecting folk songs. In a career spanning nearly sixty years, he became America's best-known folk artist.

Not as political as his pal and fellow folk singer Woody Guthrie, he became identified with the whimsical and delightful aspects of folk music: The Blue-Tail Fly, Big Rock Candy Mountain, I Know An Old Lady (Who Swallowed a Fly), and so on. With no effort at all, I can still hear his distinctive voice singing any number of folk classics - or more modern compositions, like Holly Jolly Christmas or Lavander Blue (Dilly, Dilly). (Lavander Blue was actually based on an 18th century folk song.) In the course of his career he was variously: a radio star, and a respected stage, screen and television actor, collecting an Academy Award along the way. He did numerous voice-overs and narrations; produced an astonishing body of recorded songs; and somehow found time to write a couple of songbooks still valued for their well-researched commentary, several children's books and an autobiography. (Despite his public association with children's works, he is reported to have had a private dislike for the little monsters.)

He was hailed by the great poet, Carl Sandburg, as "The mightiest ballad singer of this or any other century." I have in hand a 1945 songbook (The Wayfarin' Stranger, compiled and edited by Herbert Haufrecht, pub: 1945, Leeds Music Corp), with a goofy-looking youthful Ives pictured on the cover. Inside, several of the 21 folk songs are credited with words and/or music by Burl Ives.

His widow, Dorothy (Koster) Paul, is a working casting director. (2002)  
 

1913

1927

1930

1933

1940

1946

1950-1987

1958

1958

1959

1962

1989