Army Troubadour

A 265-pound Army private named Burl Icle Ivanhoe Ives was making a great hit last week with A.E.F. boys all over the globe. In a new short-wave act called G.I.* Jive, short-waved from the Manhattan studios of OWI to all U.S. Army bases overseas. Master of Ceremonies Ives's friendly small talk, familiar recordings and songs on the git-tar were just what the first sergeant ordered.

Big, blond Burl Ives was already a very busy soldier. In nine shows each week he mugged, sang, cavorted in the smash hit This Is The Army (TIME, July 13). Each morning he drilled with the rest of the cast on a vacant lot in Manhattan. Two mornings a week (Sundays 8:45 a.m., Thursdays 9:30 a.m. E.W.T.) his strumming guitar and his warm tenor voice plugged the Army show over CBS. He took the daily Jive stint happily in stride.

Private Ives could remember other, lazier days. A onetime Eastern Illinois State Teachers College footballer, burly Burl Ives bummed around the U.S. with his guitar, collecting folk songs and singing them to folks. In Manhattan he met Songsleuth Sigmund Spaeth, who sent him to NBC. Ambling amiably up to a mike, he started off with Robin He Married a Wife from the West. But NBC listeners that warm June day in 1940 heard no more than the opening line. "Special bulletin," the announcer broke in, "France has capitulated.''

Soon afterward, Burl ambled over to CBS to sing on Back Where I Come From. A million listeners were soon tuning in regularly to hear the "Wayfarin' Stranger." Strumming a tentative chord or two, singing as though he were alone and were singing just to hear himself sing, Burl acquainted his listeners with such magic Americana as Sweet Betsy from Pike:

Do you remember Sweet Betsy from Pike

Crossed the big mountain with her lover Ike

With two yoke of oxen, a big yaller dawg

A tall shanghai rooster and one spotted hawg

hoodle dang fol de dydle hoodle dang fol de day

Last April he was tapped for the Army. He has never married because "you know women--first thing they try to get you saving money. . . ."

* "Government Issue."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.