Burl Ives – Wayfaring Stranger: Selected Classics 1941-62

Burl Ives was a unique and remarkable entertainer, a folk and pop singer and guitarist, composer, radio performer and stage and film actor, who helped to popularise traditional folk music across all generations but also had pop hits in his later career. Born in Illinois in 1909, he gave up training to be a teacher to become an itinerant troubadour-style entertainer, working on radio where he could and once jailed for vagrancy in Utah. After Army service in WWII, and appearing in Irving Berlin’s “This Is The Army”, he became a radio regular, and started recording, revving many US and British folk songs. His early recordings of songs like “Blue Tail Fly”, “Big Rock Candy Mountain” and “I Know An Old Lady” became children’s radio favourites for decades. This 87-track 3-CD collection comprises selected A & B sides from releases on the Columbia & Decca labels from these years, plus selected titles from the Decca albums “A Collection of Ballads & Folk Songs