Tennessee Ernie Ford

The booming baritone voice of Tennessee Ernie Ford was best known for his 1955 cover of Merle Travis' grim coal-mining song "Sixteen Tons," watered down by the dulcet strains of a Hollywood studio orchestra but retaining its innate seriousness thanks to the sheer power of Ford's singing. But there was more to Tennessee Ernie Ford than that. Over his long career, Ford sang everything from proto-rock & roll to gospel, recorded over 100 albums, and earned numerous honors and awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award. His popularity and recognition transcended country music, and he was among the earliest and most successful "crossover" artists to come out of country music, paving the way for such diverse popular culture figures as Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Reba McEntire, and many more. Born Ernest Jennings Ford in 1919, he was a native of Bristol, TN, a town that subsequently came to be regarded -- thanks to the Ralph Peer field recording sessions (featuring Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family) conducted there in 1927 -- as one of the birthplaces of modern country music. He started singing as a boy and, after graduating from high school, became a voice student at Virginia Intermount College. The latter was officially a women's college but admitted a limited number of male students to its daytime study program, and it was with the help of one of his teachers and her husband that Ford, with his deep and resonant voice, broke into radio, as an announcer on WOPI in northeast Tennessee. By 1939, he'd moved to Cincinnati, OH, and was studying at that city's Conservatory of Music. He moved around the country in the year leading up to America's entry into World War II, holding announcer jobs in...