Illinois festival to honor Burl Ives’ 100th anniversary
By Ted Gregory (Chicago Tribune)
Many people under 40 likely know little about the man whose life will be celebrated next week at an Illinois festival.
His lasting presence may be as the voice of Sam the Snowman, narrator in the 1964 animated classic, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”
All that talent came from a Jasper County farm in southeastern Illinois, where Ives was born 100 years ago Sunday, where he ordered his remains to rest in eternity and where, for 2 days – June 19 and 20 – he will be celebrated at the Newton Folk Festival (jaspercountytourism.com).
“I think of him, when he was alive, as a walking encyclopedia of American roots music,” said Gary Crum, lecturer from the University of Virginia’s College at Wise.
He will give an Ives presentation at the festival in Newton, on June 19. “You add the acting career, and you have a pretty complex individual.”
Burl Ives was a folk-music monster, churning out 74 albums from 1941 to 1977. But he also won an Oscar for best supporting actor in 1959 and was nominated a second time for his role as Big Daddy in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” He hosted a wildly popular national radio show credited with reviving folk music. He performed in 12 Broadway shows, collected a Grammy and an Emmy and wrote 10 books. That doesn’t count his 10 TV specials and three TV series.
One of seven children, Ives was immersed in music from birth and became a high school football star in Newton. He played three seasons of football at Eastern Illinois University. But his notorious carousing off the field led him to decide at age 20, with a nudge from the college president, that he was less suited for a university education than for the education one he could get on the road.
Ives died in 1995 in Anacortes, Wash. His gravestone at Mound Cemetery near Newton contains a quote from Carl Sandburg, who called Ives “the mightiest ballad singer of this or any other century.”
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