Subject: RE: Life of Burl Ives
From:
Don Firth
Date: 21 Aug 09 - 04:12 PM
From Wikipedia: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).
In early 1942 Ives was drafted by the military and spent time first at Camp Dix, then at Camp Upton, where he joined the cast of Irving Berlin's This Is the Army [It is my understanding that Burl Ives was singing at the Village Vanguard at the time he was drafted and asked Richard Dyer-Bennet to take over for him when he left for the Army -- DF]. When the show went to Hollywood, he was transferred to the Army Air Force. He was discharged honorably, apparently for medical reasons, in September 1943. Between September and December 1943, Ives lived in California with actor Harry Morgan (who would later go on to play Colonel Sherman T. Potter on M*A*S*H). In December 1943, Ives returned to New York City and went to work again for CBS radio for $100 a week.
On December 6, 1945, Ives married 29-year-old script writer Helen Peck Ehrlich.[10] The next year, Ives was cast as a singing cowboy in the film Smoky. Their son (Alexander) was born in 1949.* * * *Ives was identified in the infamous 1950 pamphlet "Red Channels" and blacklisted as an entertainer with supposed Communist ties. In 1952, he cooperated with the House Unamerican Activities Committee, or HUAC, and volunteered to testify. He stated that he was not a member of the Communist Party and had attended various union meetings with fellow folk singer Pete Seeger in order to simply stay in touch with working folk. He stated: "You know who my friends are; you will have to ask THEM if they are Communists." ####
As to the importance of Burl Ives as an initiator of the revival of interest in folk music in the United States:
Having lived through that period myself (in fact, that's when I became actively interested in folk music), I have a bit of perspective on it. Indeed, Burl Ives was probably the first singer of folk songs that most city people heard. When I was in my very early 'teens, I often listened to his radio program, The Wayfaring Stranger in the 1940s (Sunday afternoons as I recall), on which he talked about particular aspects of American history (e.g., the building of the Erie Canal) and sang songs related to them.
Although she faded into obscurity as interest in folk music increased in the late 1950s, if you were to ask most people if they could name a female folk singer, the name you probably would have heard was Susan Reed. She appeared in a movie in 1948 (Glamour Girl—grade B movie at best, but lots of good singing by Susan), and was on both radio and television. Lovely, sweet voice accompanied by Irish harp or zither. The whole folk revival seemed to pass her by, and the last I heard, she was running an antique shop on Long Island.
BIG influence around the turn of the decade (end of the Forties, beginning of the Fifties) were The Weavers. The first time I heard them was on juke boxes about the time I graduated from high school. "Goodnight Irene," "On Top of Old Smoky," "Wimoweh," "The Frozen Logger," and others—before they suddenly disappeared, to re-emerge a few years later in their spectacularly successful Carnegie Hall concert. But—before they vanished (temporarily), they were on the top of the Hit Parade: a lot of radio play on pop music stations.
Next big name to arise was Harry Belafonte. Immensely popular. I saw one of his concerts in 1956 in the Denver University football stadium. The place was packed.
My particular active interest was sparked in 1952 by Claire Hess, a young woman I was dating at the time. She had a roommate at the University of Washington's Women's Residence Halls who was from Chicago and who played the banjo and sang a batch of folk songs, some of which she'd learned from her father, and some from Carl Sandburg's "American Songbag." About that time, Claire heard Walt Robertson sing at a party, and was enthralled by the songs he sang. Claire's grandmother gave her her old George Washburn parlor guitar ("Ladies Model" 1898) and a delighted Claire set about teaching herself to play it and began learning songs from her roommate and from John and Sylvia Kolb's paperback, "A Treasury of Folk Songs." I bought a cheap guitar and Claire showed me my first chords.
Then, she and I attended an informal concert by Walt Robertson. I have written about this in detail elsewhere: CLICKY. That evening was a definite turning point in my life.
Walt's interest in folk music developed when he was attending Haverford College in Pennsylvania in the late 1940s. He took in the folk festivals at Swarthmore College about a mile and a half down the road, and there he heard—and met—John and Alan Lomax, Lead Belly, Richard Dyer-Bennet, Susan Reed, Pete Seeger, John Jacob Niles, Woody Guthrie, Josh White, Jean Ritchie. . . .
Walt brought his talent and his enthusiasm back to Seattle, and several people caught the bug here. The late Sandy Paton was one. Lesser known names were Dick Landberg, Bob Clark, Mike Reedy, Patti McLaughlin—Claire and me, and many, many others. Bob (Deckman) Nelson took a slightly different route, catching the bug from a fellow named Bill Higley (who knew Haywire Mac McClintock). And just by following our own inclinations, each of us gave the bug to others.
This would have happened with or without Burl Ives.
And I'll bet that a very similar scenario took place in most other American cities at about the same time.
By the time the Kingston Trio came along in 1958, they were "Johnnie-Come-Latelys." Although a lot of people trace their interest in folk music to them, the KT were surfing on a wave that had started long before they came along.
Burl Ives was one of the first mass media (radio) singers of folk songs that most Americans had heard, or heard of, but—was he primarily responsible for the folk music revival in the United States? I don't think so. As I just said, I'm sure it would have happened anyway.
Besides, as the folk music revival got under way in the U. S. in the Fifties, he tended to move away from folk music and sing a lot of lightweight stuff like "Little White Duck," "Little Bitty Tear," and "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer." He became better known as an actor. And a damned fine one at that!
Don Firth
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