Perhaps the most versatile entertainer America has produced in the twentieth century, Burl Ives did it all. He sang; acted on stage, screen, and television; wrote songs and prose; compiled books of traditional music—which he often arranged—and taught music in a series of popular guitar manuals. Once dubbed by Carl Sandburg as "the mightiest ballad singer of any century," throughout his life Ives remained quintessentially American. A man of strong populist leanings (as evidenced by his 1949 autobiography The Wayfaring Stranger), Ives always saw himself as a grassroots folksinger. It is Ives's musical legacy that remains his most significant contribution, preserving for future generations an enormous wealth of material, a musical portrait of the America he had known.

Burl Ives

Born to a farm family of modest means in Jasper County, Illinois, Ives was raised on music. His whole family sang. His maternal...