Burl Ives

[Tim Szeliga]

I've been looking for episodes of Burl Ives
The Wayfaring Stranger radio show. Just fifteen minutes

of Burl in the studio, picking and chatting and singing.

Sounding very old and wise and very young and nervous,

all at once.  He would have been in his early twenties,

not sure if he would wind up as a ballad troubadour,

or on broadway, or as a stop-motion animated snowman, with a goatee.

 

Found about four or five shows.

I ordered some on e-bay and got an early studio album instead

called "The Wayfaring Stranger".  Seems he had a nickname, an

album, a song, a radio show and an autobiography

all with the same name.  Curse those eponymous artists!

Have they learned nothing from Led Zeppelin and Peter Gabriel?

 

I guess Burl is one-up on Ozzy Osborne.  He only had

a song, an album and a band called Black Sabbath.

 

 

PS: STAY AWAY from Burl Ives' Greatest Hits CD.

Absolutely horrible!  Bad Nashville music arrangements,

the song selections were the dying gasps of Tin Pan Alley,

and his persona was a slightly creepy, slightly gay
"Lavender Cowboy".