| TENNESSEE
"ERNIE" FORD (ARTIST BIOGRAPHY)
Ernest Jennings Ford (February 13, 1919 – October 17, 1991), better
known by the stage name Tennessee Ernie Ford, was a pioneering U.S.
recording artist and television host who enjoyed success in the
country & western, pop, and gospel musical genres.
Born in Bristol, Tennessee, Ford began his radio career as an
announcer at station WOPI in Bristol, leaving in 1939 to study
classical music and voice at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music.
1st Lieut. Ford served in World War II as the bombardier on a B-29
Superfortress flying missions over Japan. After the war, Ford worked
at radio stations in San Bernardino and Pasadena, Calif. In San
Bernardino, hired as a radio announcer, Ernest J. Ford did the news
and general announcing. He was assigned the job of hosting an early
morning country music disc jockey program titled “Bar Nothin’
Ranch.” To differentiate himself, he created the personality of
“Tennessee Ernie,” a wild, madcap exaggerated hillbilly. He became
popular in the area and was soon hired away by Pasadena’s KXLA
radio.
At KXLA he continued doing the same show and also joined the cast of
Cliffie Stone’s popular live KXLA country show “Dinner Bell Roundup”
as a vocalist while still doing the early morning broadcast. Stone,
a part-time talent scout for Capitol Records, brought him to the
attention of the label. In 1949, while still doing his morning show,
he signed a contract with Capitol. He also became a local TV star as
the star of Stone’s popular Southern California “Hometown Jamboree”
TV show. He released almost 50 country singles through the early
1950s, several of which made the charts. Many of his early records,
including “The Shot Gun Boogie,” “Blackberry Boogie,” and so on were
exciting, driving boogie-woogie records featuring exciting
accompaniment by the Hometown Jamboree band which included Jimmy
Bryant on lead guitar and pioneer pedal steel guitarist Speedy West.
“I’ll Never Be Free,” a duet pairing Ford with Capitol Records pop
singer Kay Starr, became a huge country and pop crossover hit in
1950.
Ford eventually ended his KXLA morning show and in the early 1950’s,
moved on from Hometown Jamboree. He took over from bandleader Kay
Kyser as host of the TV version of NBC quiz show “College of Musical
Knowledge” when it returned briefly in 1954 after a four-year hiatus.
He also portrayed the ‘country bumpkin’ “Cousin Ernie” on I Love
Lucy.
Ford scored an unexpected hit on the pop charts in 1955 with his
rendition of Merle Travis’ “Sixteen Tons,” a sparsely arranged
coal-miner’s lament that Travis wrote in 1946, based on his own
family’s experience in the mines of Muhlenberg County, Kentucky. Its
fatalistic tone contrasted vividly with the sugary pop ballads and
the rock and roll just starting to dominate the charts at the time:
You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Saint Peter, don’t you call me, ‘cause I can’t go;
I owe my soul to the company store
With a unique clarinet-driven pop arrangement by Ford’s Musical
Director, Jack Fascinato, “Sixteen Tons” spent ten weeks at number
one on the country charts and eight weeks at number one on the pop
charts, and made Ford a crossover star. It became Ford’s ‘signature
song.’
Ford subsequently helmed his own primetime variety program, “The
Ford Show,” which ran on NBC from 1956 to 1961. Ford’s program was
notable for the inclusion of a religious song at the end of every
show; Ford insisted on this despite objections from network
officials who feared it might provoke controversy. It quickly became
the most popular segment of the show. He earned the nickname “The Ol’
Pea-Picker” due to his catch-phrase, “Bless your pea-pickin’ heart!”
In 1956 he released “Hymns,” his first gospel album, which remained
on Billboard’s “Top Album” charts for a remarkable 277 consecutive
weeks; his album “Great Gospel Songs” won a Grammy Award in 1964.
After the NBC show ended, Ford moved his family to Northern
California and from 1962-65, hosted a daytime talk show The
Tennessee Ernie Ford Show from San Francisco, broadcast over the ABC
TV network.
Over the years, Ford has been awarded three stars on the Hollywood
Walk of Fame, for radio, records, and television. He was awarded the
Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1984 and was inducted into the
Country Music Hall of Fame in 1990.
Ford, who offstage contended with a serious alcohol problem that
never affected his professional work, began suffering increasing
liver problems in the 1980s that worsened in 1990, the year he was
inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. He fell ill in 1991
after leaving a state dinner at the White House hosted by President
George H. W. Bush, and died in a Virginia hospital on October 17,
exactly thirty-six years after “Sixteen Tons” was released and one
day shy of the first anniversary of his induction into the Hall of
Fame.
Ford was posthumously recognized for his gospel music contributions
by adding him to the Gospel Music Association’s Gospel Music Hall of
Fame in 1994. |
