Early life

Ives was born in Hunt City, an unincorporated town in Jasper County, Illinois, near Newton, to Levi "Frank" Ives (1880–1947) and Cordelia "Dellie" (née White; 1882–1954). He had six siblings: Audry, Artie, Clarence, Argola, Lillburn, and Norma. His father was first a farmer and then a contractor 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 (now Eastern Illinois University) in Charleston, Illinois, 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 he was wasting his time. As he walked out of the door, the professor made a snide remark and Ives slammed the door behind him, shattering the window in the door.^[4] Sixty years later, the school named a building after its most famous dropout.^[5] Ives was a member of the Charleston Chapter of The Order of DeMolay and is listed in the DeMolay Hall of Fame. He was also initiated into Scottish Rite Freemasonry in 1927.^[6] He was elevated to the 33rd and highest degree^[7][8] in 1987, and was later elected the Grand Cross.^[9]

On July 23, 1929, in Richmond, Indiana, Ives made 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. In later years Ives did not recall having made the record.^[10]

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 Dew" (an English folk song), which the authorities decided was a bawdy song.^[11] Around 1931, he began performing on WBOW radio in Terre Haute, Indiana. He also went back to school, attending classes at Indiana State Teachers College (now Indiana State University).^[12] In 1933, Ives also attended the Juilliard School in New York. He made his Broadway debut in 1938 with a small role in Rodgers and Hart's hit musical, The Boys from Syracuse. In 1939, he joined his friend and fellow actor Eddie Albert, who had the starring role in The Boys from Syracuse, in Los Angeles. The two shared an apartment for a while in the Beachwood Canyon community of Hollywood.

In 1940, Ives named his own radio show, The Wayfaring Stranger, after one of his ballads. Over the next decade, he popularized several traditional folk songs, such as "Foggy Dew", "The Blue Tail Fly" (an old minstrel tune now better known as "Jimmy Crack Corn"), and "Big Rock Candy Mountain" (an old hobo song). He was also associated with the Almanacs, a folk-singing group which at different times included Woody Guthrie, Will Geer, Millard Lampell, and Pete Seeger. The Almanacs were active in the American Peace Mobilization (APM), a far left group initially opposed to American entry into World War II and Franklin Roosevelt's pro-Allied policies. They recorded such songs as "Get Out and Stay Out of War" and "Franklin, Oh Franklin".^[13]

In June 1941, after the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union, the APM abandoned its pacifist stance and reorganized itself into the pro-war American People's Mobilization. Ives and the Almanacs rerecorded several of their songs to reflect the group's new stance in favor of US entry into the war. Among them were "Dear Mr. President" and "Reuben James" (the name of a US destroyer sunk by the Germans before the official US entry into the war).^[13]

In early 1942, Ives was drafted into the U.S. Army. He spent time first at Camp Dix, then at Camp Upton, where he joined the cast of Irving Berlin's This Is the Army. He attained the rank of corporal. When the show went to Hollywood, he was transferred to the Army Air Forces. He was honorably discharged, apparently for medical reasons, in September 1943. Between September and December 1943, Ives lived in California with actor Harry Morgan. In December 1943, Ives went to New York City to work for CBS Radio for $100 a week.^[14] In 1944, he recorded The Lonesome Train, a ballad about the life and death of Abraham Lincoln, written by Earl Robinson (music) and Lampell (lyrics).

In 1946, Ives was cast as a singing cowboy in the film Smoky.^[15]

In 1947, Ives recorded one of many versions of "The Blue Tail Fly", but paired this time with the popular Andrews Sisters (Patty, Maxene, and LaVerne). The flip side of the record was a fast-paced "I'm Goin' Down the Road". Ives hoped the trio's success would help the record sell well, which it did, becoming both a best-selling disc and a Billboard hit.^[16]

His version of the song "Lavender Blue" became his first hit and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song after Ives introduced it in the 1949 film So Dear to My Heart.

Music critic John Rockwell said, "Ives' voice ... had the sheen and finesse of opera without its latter-day Puccinian vulgarities and without the pretensions of operatic ritual. It was genteel in expressive impact without being genteel in social conformity. And it moved people".^[17]

1950s–1960s

Ives in 1955, photographed by Carl Van Vechten

Ives (left) with Paul Newman in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Ives was identified in the 1950 pamphlet Red Channels and blacklisted as an entertainer with supposed Communist ties.^[18] In 1952, he cooperated with the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and agreed to testify, fearful of losing his source of income. Ives's statement to the HUAC ended his blacklisting, allowing him to continue acting in movies, but it also led to a bitter rift between Ives and many folk singers, including Pete Seeger, who accused Ives of naming names and betraying the cause of cultural and political freedom to save his own career. Seeger publicly ridiculed Ives for attempting to distance himself from many of the far left organizations he had supported.^[19] In 1993, Ives, by then using a wheelchair, reunited with Seeger during a benefit concert in New York City, having reconciled years earlier. They sang "Blue Tail Fly" together.^[20]

External audio
Wayfaring Stranger Burl Ives Performs at the Book and Author Luncheon, 17:33, Ives begins at 4:00, WNYC, 1954[21]

Ives expanded his appearances in films during this decade. His movie credits include the role of Sam the Sheriff of Salinas, California, in East of Eden, Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, roles in Desire Under the Elms, Wind Across the Everglades, The Big Country, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, Ensign Pulver, the sequel to Mister Roberts, and Our Man in Havana, based on the Graham Greene novel.

Barred for a while from American employment, he frequently played on BBC Radio's Children's Hour, with such favorites as "Big Rock Candy Mountain", "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain", and "Lavender Blue".

He was the Mystery Guest on the August 7, 1955 and February 1, 1959, episodes of What's My Line.

1960s–1990s

In the 1960s, Ives began singing country music with greater frequency. In 1962, he released three songs that were popular with both country music and popular music fans: "A Little Bitty Tear", "Call Me Mister In-Between", and "Funny Way of Laughin'". His records, recorded in Nashville for Decca Records, were produced by Owen Bradley, one of the record producers who (along with Chet Atkins) helped define the Nashville Sound style of country music that expanded the music's appeal to a wider audience. Bradley used Nashville's famous "A-Team" of session musicians behind Ives, including the Anita Kerr Singers, which enhanced Ives' appeal. Bradley also produced the recording of Ives's perennial Holiday favorite "A Holly Jolly Christmas" in Nashville.

Ives had several film and television roles during the 1960s and 1970s. In 1961, he sang the folk song, "I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly" for a short film of the same name produced by the National Film Board of Canada.^[22] In 1962, he starred with Rock Hudson in The Spiral Road, which was based on a novel of the same name by Jan de Hartog. He also starred in Disney's Summer Magic with Hayley Mills, Dorothy McGuire, and Eddie Hodges, and a score by Robert and Richard Sherman. In 1964, he played the genie in the movie The Brass Bottle with Tony Randall and Barbara Eden.

Ives's "A Holly Jolly Christmas" and "Silver and Gold" became Christmas standards after they were first featured in the 1964 NBC-TV presentation of the Rankin/Bass stop-motion animated family special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Johnny Marks had composed the title song (originally an enormous hit for singing cowboy Gene Autry) in 1949, and producers Arthur Rankin, Jr. and Jules Bass retained him to compose the TV special's soundtrack. Ives voiced Sam the Snowman, the banjo-playing "host" and narrator of the story, explaining how Rudolph used his "nonconformity", as Sam refers to it, to save Christmas from being cancelled due to an impassable blizzard. The following year, Ives rerecorded all three of the Johnny Marks hits which he had sung in the TV special, but with a more "pop" feel. He released them all as singles for the 1965 holiday season, capitalizing on their previous success. In 2022, 27 years after his death, "A Holly Jolly Christmas", made the Billboard Year-End chart.^[23]

Ives performed in other television productions, including Pinocchio and Roots.

He starred in short-lived O.K. Crackerby! (1965–66), a comedy which costarred Hal Buckley, Joel Davison, and Brooke Adams, about the presumed richest man in the world, which replaced Walter Brennan's somewhat similar The Tycoon on the ABC schedule from the preceding year.

He played Walter Nichols in the drama The Bold Ones: The Lawyers (1969–72), a segment of the wheel series The Bold Ones.

Ives narrated the 1971 season highlight film for the Washington Redskins of the National Football League produced by NFL Films. The Executive Producer was NFL Films founder Ed Sabol, and chief producer was Ed's son, Steve Sabol. Ed and Steve Sabol are members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Ives occasionally starred in macabre-themed productions. In 1970, for example, he played the title role in The Man Who Wanted to Live Forever, in which his character attempts to harvest human organs from unwilling donors. In 1972, he appeared as old man Doubleday in the episode "The Other Way Out" of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery, in which his character seeks a gruesome revenge for the murder of his granddaughter.

In honor of Ives's influence on American vocal music, on October 25, 1975, he was awarded the University of Pennsylvania Glee Club Award of Merit.^[24] This award, initiated in 1964, was "established to bring a declaration of appreciation to an individual each year who has made a significant contribution to the world of music and helped to create a climate in which our talents may find valid expression."

When America Sings opened at Disneyland in 1974, Ives voiced the main host, Sam Eagle, an Audio-Animatronic.

In 1976, Ives was featured as a main character in Little House on the Prairie season 3 episode 10 titled "The Hunters". Ives played an old fur trapper who was blind and afraid to leave the comfort and safety of his cabin which he shared with his adult son. In this episode Ives paired off with Laura Ingalls (Melissa Gilbert) to help rescue her injured father who was accidentally shot while hunting for venison.^[25]

Ives lent his name and image to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's "This Land Is Your Land – Keep It Clean" campaign in the 1970s. He was portrayed with the program's fictional spokesman, Johnny Horizon.

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.^[26]

In 1982 he played Carruthers, a dog trainer, in Samuel Fuller's controversial and critically acclaimed film White Dog.

In 1989, Ives officially announced his retirement from show business on his 80th birthday. However, he continued to do occasional benefit concert performances of his own accord until 1993.