Further on the HUAC connection:

" In the 1950s, along with almost every other folk singer and many Hollywood entertainers, he ran into trouble with the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), and the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. And although Ives was cleared by the committees, his testimony was bitterly criticized by some. Fellow folk singer Pete Seeger, as quoted in How Can I Keep from Singing, accused Ives of "fingering, like any common stool pigeon, some of his radical associates."

Ives did testify before the committee, but he volunteered to do so because, according to an interview with the New York Times, he was disillusioned with the party when he discovered that they were not, in fact, "professional do-gooders on a political level, as they have long masqueraded." While Seeger claimed that Ives talked to the committee "because he felt it was the only way to preserve his lucrative contracts," Ives stated that he believed that the party was an enemy of the country he loved. Although Seeger remained bitter towards Ives, and Seeger fans avoided Ives' recordings, Ives was not even the one who named Seeger or the Weavers to the committee."

From this biography at http://www.musicianguide.com/biographies/1608000249/Burl-Ives.html


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