NUMBER ONE HITS!!!: Sixteen Tons - Tennessee Ernie Ford

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Sixteen Tons - Tennessee Ernie Ford

November 26, 1955 - January 13, 1956

Tennessee Ernie Ford

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Born in Bristol, the seat of Sullivan County in far northeastern Tennessee, to the former Maud Long and Clarence Thomas Ford,[1] Ford began his radio career as an announcer at station WOPI in Bristol. In 1939, he left the station to pursue classical music and voice at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music in Ohio. First Lieutenant 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, California. In San Bernardino, Ford was hired as a radio announcer. He was assigned to host 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 and recorded songs such as The Bonnie Blue Flag. 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 "Shotgun 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 Kollege 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.

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ORIGIN OF MUSIC

DARWIN'S theory that music had its -origin "in the sounds made by the half-human progenitors of man during the season of courtship" seems for many reasons to be inadequate and untenable. A much more plausible explanation, it seems to me, is to be found in the theory of Theophrastus, in which the origin of music is attributed to the whole range of human emotion.

When an animal utters a cry of joy or pain it expresses its emotions in more or less definite tones; and at some remote period of the earth's history all primeval mankind must have expressed its emotions in much the same manner. When this inarticulate speech developed into the use of certain sounds as symbols for emotions - emotions that otherwise would have been expressed by the natural sounds occasioned by them —then we have the beginnings of speech as distinguished from music, which is still the universal language. In other words, intellectual development begins with articulate speech, leaving music for the expression of the emotions.