Burl Ives born 14 June 1909

Burl Icle Ivanhoe Ives (14 June 1909 – 14 April 1995) was an Academy Award winning American actor and acclaimed folk music singer and author. He won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the movie The Big Country.

A dyed- in-the-wool country boy, Burl Ives came from a sharecropping family in Jasper County, Southern Illinois. He was singing for his supper virtually since the age of four when he was handed a shiny half dollar by a Civil War veteran for chanting "Lord Thomas and Fair Eleanor". He learned Scottish, English, and Irish ballads from his grandmother.

With his grandfatherly image, Burl Ives parlayed his talent as a folksinger into a wide-ranging career as a radio personality and stage and screen actor. After spending his early 20s traveling the country as an itinerant singer, Ives moved to New York City in 1937. By the end of 1938, he had made his Broadway debut, and he also sang folk songs in Greenwich Village clubs.

In 1940, Ives began to appear regularly on radio, including his own show, The Wayfarin' Stranger, on CBS. Ives made his first records for Stinson, a small folk label, then was signed to Decca, a major label. He made his movie debut in Smoky in 1946. In 1948, his first book, Wayfaring Stranger, was published. In 1949, he had his first chart hit with "Lavender Blue (Dilly Dilly)." The same year, he moved to Columbia Records.

With the advent of the long-playing record, Ives suddenly had a flurry of LP releases from his three labels: The Wayfaring Stranger on Stinson; three volumes of Ballads & Folk Songs, Women: Folk Songs About the Fair Sex, Folk Songs Dramatic and Humorous, and Christmas Day in the Morning on Decca; and Wayfaring Stranger, Return of the Wayfaring Stranger, More Folk Songs, American Hymns, The Animal Fair and Mother Goose Songs on Columbia. He also recorded a series of albums for Encyclopedia Brittanica Films under the overall title Historical America in Song.

 In 1951, he hit the Top Ten with "On Top of Old Smoky." In 1952, he returned to Decca. While continuing to publish books and to act on Broadway and in the movies, Ives made a series of albums that included Coronation Concert, The Wild Side of Life, Men, Down to the Sea in Ships, In the Quiet of the Night, Burl Ives Sings for Fun, Songs of Ireland, Old Time Varieties, Captain Burl Ives' Ark, Australian Folk Songs, and Cheers, all released in the second half of the 1950s.

                              

In 1961, Ives oriented himself toward country music, resulting in the hit "A Little Bitty Tear," which made the Top Ten in both the pop and country charts. The single was contained on The Versatile Burl Ives. "Funny Way of Laughin'" was another pop and country Top Ten in 1962; it appeared on It's Just My Funny Way of Laughin' and won Ives a Grammy Award for Best Country Western Recording. 

He turned his attention primarily to movie work from 1963 on, especially with the Walt Disney studio. But he charted with Pearly Shells in 1964 and made a children's album, Chim Chim Cheree and Other Children's Choices, for Disney Buena Vista Records.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Ives had a number of television roles. He played the narrator, Sam the Snowman, in the Rankin-Bass animated television special, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964). He performed in other television productions, most notably Pinocchio (1968) and Roots (1977). He starred in two television series: O.K. Crackerby! (1965-1966) and The Bold Ones: The Lawyers (1969-1972).

Ives and Dorothy Koster

Ives and Helen Peck Ehrlich were divorced in 1971. Ives then married Dorothy Koster Paul in London in that same year. In his later years, Ives and his wife, Dorothy, lived with their children in a home located alongside the water in Anacortes, in the Puget Sound area of Washington.

Burl Ives was seen regularly in television commercials for Luzianne tea for several years during the 1970s and 1980s, when he was the company's commercial spokesman. In 1989, Ives officially announced his retirement from show business on his 80th birthday. However, he continued to do occasional benefit concert performances on his own accord until 1993.

In the summer of 1994, Ives, a long-time smoker of pipes and cigars, was diagnosed with oral cancer. After several unsuccessful operations, he decided against further surgery. He fell into a coma and died from the disease on April 14, 1995, at the age of 85, at his home in Anacortes, Washington. He was buried in Mound Cemetery in Hunt City Township, Jasper County, Illinois.

(Edited from Wikipedia but mainly All Music)