Subject: OBIT: Burl Ives
From:
Joe Offer
Date: 19 Jul 00 - 08:04 PM
Here's an interesting obituary:
BURL IVES
(1909-1995)
Balladeer and actor Burl Ives died at the age of 85 in Anacortes, Washington, on April 14 [1995] from complications of oral cancer.
Ives came to great popularity through the singing of songs such as "The Blue Tail Fly" and "Big Rock Candy Mountain." He was also widely known by way of his acting roles on Broadway, television and motion pictures, winning an Academy Award for his work in "The Big Country." Ives' first major success came in 1940 via a highly popular radio program on the CBS network called "The Wayfarin' Stranger" after his popular rendition of the song of the same name.
A student of the ballad form, Ives compiled collections of ballads and folk songs for publication. Remarkably, many times during his career his recordings of obscure or otherwise academically prized songs on the Columbia and Decca labels rose to top the country and pop music charts. He recorded more than 100 record albums. Carl Sandburg called Ives "the mightiest ballad singer of this or any other century."
Born Burl Ide Ivanhoe Ives on June 14, 1909, in Jasper County, Illinois, the youngest of Frank and Cordella White Ives' six children, he was heir to the songful legacy of a long line of Kentucky and Illinois farmers and preachers. As a child, he learned hundreds of ballads of English, Irish and Scottish origin taught to him by his grandmother Kate White.
Ives began singing professionally at the age of 4, earning all of 25 cents a performance. A football star at Newton High School and at Eastern Illinois State Teachers College, he left the latter in his third year to travel about the country, supporting himself by singing and playing banjo and by doing odd jobs. He visited all but two of the lower 48 states before landing in New York City to try his hand at acting and performing music.
In the early 1950s, at the height of the House Un-American Activities Committee witch-hunt, Ives became estranged from many of his folk music colleagues when, rather than wait for a subpoena, he requested to speak to the committee —this, while others remained defiantly silent.
During testimony, Ives denied personal left-wing involvement, and, according to newspaper accounts of the period, named more than 110 people he knew to have left-wing or communist leanings. Many of these names were previously unknown to the committee. The silence or defiance of others in the entertainment community led in many cases to blacklisting and loss of livelihood for those named.
Oddly enough, Ives' own left-wing sentiments were well-known to his friends. He had attended, with the others, scores of progressive rallies and gatherings. Yet, in an apparently incongruous explanation of why he attended, he said he was led to them by his dear and good friend, ballad singer Richard Dyer-Bennet. From that moment forward, Dyer-Bennet's career was over.
Woody Guthrie, nonetheless, visited Ives at Ives' Los Angeles houseboat sometime after the hearings. Upon returning to New York, Guthrie related to Oscar Brand that Ives was "God's angry man." "Who is he angry with?" asked Brand. "Himself," Guthrie said. "He's angry with himself."
— Roger Deitz
From Sing Out! Magazine, Vol 40 #2, Aug/Sept/Oct 1995
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