Life and career
[edit] Early life
Burl Ives was one of seven children born to a Scottish-Irish farming family. Born in 1909 near Hunt City in Jasper County, Illinois, Ives was the son of Levi “Frank” Ives (1880-1947) and Cordelia “Dellie” White (1882-1954). He had six siblings: Audry, Artie, Clarence, Argola, Lillburn, and Norma. His father was at first a farmer and then a contractor who did work for the county and others. One day Ives was singing in the garden with his mother, and his uncle overheard them. He invited his nephew to sing at the old soldiers’ reunion in Hunt City. The boy performed a rendition of the folk ballad “Barbara Allen” and impressed both his uncle and the audience.[2]
From 1927 to 1929 Ives attended Eastern Illinois State Teachers College in Charleston (now Eastern Illinois University), where he played football.[3] 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. As he walked out the door the professor made a snide remark and Ives slammed the door behind him.[4] Sixty years later, the school named a building after its most famous dropout.[5]
On July 23, 1929, in Richmond, Indiana, Ives did a trial recording of “Behind the Clouds” for the Starr Piano Company’s Gennett label, but the recording was rejected and destroyed a few weeks later.[6]
[edit] 1930s-1940s
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.[7] 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).[8]
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. 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 played Colonel Sherman T. Potter on M*A*S*H many years later. In December 1943, Ives returned to New York City and went to work again for CBS radio for $100 a week.[9]
On Dec. 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. 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).
[edit] Broadway roles
Ives’ Broadway career included 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.[citation needed]
[edit] 1950s: Communist “blacklisting”
Ives was identified in the infamous 1950 pamphlet Red Channels as an entertainer with supposed Communist ties.[11] In 1952, 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. It also led to a bitter rift between Ives and many folk singers, including Seeger, who felt that Ives had betrayed them and the cause of cultural and political freedom to save his own career. Forty-one years later, Ives and Seeger were reunited in a benefit concert in New York City; they sang “Blue Tail Fly” together.[13]
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