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.
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.
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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).
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| Ives and Dorothy Koster |
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.
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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)