Burl Ives-More Than A Snowman

The cool wind blew in my face and all at once I felt as if I had shed dullness from myself. Before me lay a long gray line with a black mark down the center. The birds were singing. It was spring. Burl Ives

Burl Ives was an actor in over almost 60 movies, recorded more than 100 albums, performed on radio throughout the 1940s and 1950s, acted on the stage from the 1930s to the 1960s, worked in television from the 1950s to the 1980s. Burl Ives won an Oscar for The Big Country.

But really, most of us know Burl Ives as the Snowman from Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer-the longest running holiday special in television history. The fact that he recorded mostly Folk Songs, and no one, but no one listens to Folk Music anymore, this is not all that surprising.

Burl Ives was the narrator of Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure, a 1984 made for TV movie that I am almost sure I watched, but am now drawing a complete blank on. Like that TV show about a young Indian Jones it is something that I quickly put out of my mind.
I don’t own any Burl Ives CDs, but I like some of his songs, predictably the ones he sings in Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer. Burl Ives music is good music, Burl was a pretty good singer. Holly, jolly Christmas still gets a lot of airplay during the Holidays-just like all the other old and/or dead people from the 1940s and 1950s that suddenly fill the airwaves this time of year. Christmas is just not a Rap and Hip Hop kind of holiday, is it?

Have a holly, jolly Christmas

It’s the best time of the year

I don’t know if there’ll be snow

But have a cup of cheer.