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Writer's picture30 and Nerdy Podcast

Shotgun Boogie: The Legend of Tennessee Ernie Ford


Tennessee Ernie Ford:

  • Born Ernest Jennings Ford on February 13th, 1919 in Fordtown, Tennessee to Maud and Clarence Thomas Ford.

  • He was an American singer and television host who enjoyed success in the country and western, pop, and gospel musical genres. 

  • He is noted for his rich bass-baritone voice and down home humor.

  • His two big numbers he is known for is The Shotgun Boogie and Sixteen Tons.

  • He performed under Capitol Records and Word Records and performed with the likes of Dean Martin, Glen Camplbell, Johnny Cash, Eddy Arnold, and Kay Starr.

  • Brian, you want to talk about The Early Years a little?


EARLY YEARS


  • He spent most of his time  in his early years listening to country or western musicians, in person or on the radio.

  • He began wondering around Bristol, Tennessee in his high school years, taking an interest in radio and began his radio career as an announcer at WOPI in 1937, being paid $10 a week. 

  • In 1938, the young bass-baritone left the station and went to study classical music at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music in Ohio.

  • He returned for the announcing job in 1939 and did it until 1941 in stations from Atlanta to Knoxville.

  • As a First Lieutenant, he served in The United States Army Air Corps in World War 2 as the bombardier on a B-29 Superfortress, but the war ended before he was to be sent to Japan. 

  • He was also a bombing instructor at George Air Force Base in Victorville, California. 

  • After the war, Ford worked at radio stations in San Bernadino and Pasadena, California. At KFXM, in San Bernadino, Ford was hired as a radio announcer and was assigned to host an early morning country music disc jockey program, Bar Nothin’ Ranch Time. 

  • To differentiate himself, he created the personality of “Tennessee Ernie Ford,” a wild, madcap, exaggerated hillbilly and became popular in the area. 

  • He was soon hired away by Pasadena’s country radio station KXLA. He also did musical tours. 

  • Some of his warm up buddies included The Mayfield Brothers of West Texas which included Smokey, Thomas Edd, and Herbert Mayfield. They played concerts for him in Amarillo and Lubbock during the late 1940’s.

  • At KXLA, Ford 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. Cliffie 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 became a local TV star as the star of Stone's popular Southern California Hometown Jamboree show. RadiOzark produced 260 15-minute episodes of The Tennessee Ernie Show on transcription disks for national radio syndication.

  • He also released almost 50 country singles through the early 1950s, several of which made the Billboard charts. 

  • Many of his early records, including ‘The Shotgun Boogie’ and ‘Blackberry Boogie,’ were exciting, driving boogie-woogie records featuring accompaniment by the Hometown Jamboree Band, which included Jimmy Bryant on lead guitar and pioneer pedal steel guitarist Speedy West. 

  • There was also “I’ll Never Be Free,” a duet pairing Ford with Capitol Records pop singer Kay Starr. It became a huge country and pop crossover hit in 1950. 

  • He also performed a duet with Ella Mae Morse called “False Hearted Girl” and it was a top seller for the Capitol Country and Hillbilly division.

  • Ford eventually ended his KXLA morning show and in the early 1950s, moved on from Hometown Jamboree. He took over from bandleader Kay Kyser as host of the TV version of NBC quiz show College of Musical Knowledge when it returned briefly in 1954 after a four -year hiatus.

  • Ford also became a household name in the U.S., largely as a result of his portrayal in 1954 of the ‘country bumpkin’, “Cousin Ernie” in three episodes of I Love Lucy.

  • In 1955, Ford recorded “The Ballad of Davy Crockett" which reached number 4 on the country music chart. On the B side of that record was “Farewell to the Mountains.”

  • Ford scored an unexpected hit on the pop chart in 1955 with his rendering of "Sixteen Tons", a sparsely arranged coal-miner's lament. 

  • Merle Travis had first recorded it in 1946. It reflected the experiences of the Travis family in the mines at Muhlenberg County, Kentucky.

  • The song's fatalistic tone and bleak imagery were in stark contrast to some sugary pop ballads and rock & roll also on the charts in 1955:

  • With Ford's snapping fingers and a unique clarinet-driven pop arrangement by Ford's music director, Jack Fascinato, "Sixteen Tons" spent ten weeks at number one on the country chart and seven weeks at number one on the pop chart. 

  • The record sold over two million copies, and was awarded a gold disc.[14] The song made Ford a crossover star, and became his signature song.

We are going to take a quick break and when we return, we are going to talk more about The Ford Show and his later years; when Between 2 Barrels Podcast returns.




(Quick Break)


The Ford Show (Brian)

  • Ford subsequently hosted his own prime-time variety program, The Ford Show, which ran on NBC television from October 4, 1956, to June 29, 1961 on Thursday evenings.

  • Ford's last name allowed the show title to carry a unique double entendre by selling the naming rights to the Ford Motor Company (Ford had no known relation to the Ford family who founded that company). 

  • The Ford Theatre, an anthology series also sponsored by the company, had run in the same time slot on NBC in the preceding 1955–1956 season. 

  • Ford's program was notable for the inclusion of a religious song at the end of every show, a tradition he recalled during his days as a cast member on Cliffie Stone's Hometown Jamboree live radio and TV show.

  •  Ford insisted on ending with a hymn on his own show despite objections from network officials and the ad agency representing 

  • Ford, who feared it might provoke controversy. Everyone relented after the hymns received overwhelmingly favorable viewer response. 

  • The hymn became the most popular segment of his show. He earned the nickname "The Ol' Pea-Picker" due to his catchphrase, "Bless your pea-pickin' heart!" He began using the term during his disc jockey days on KXLA.


Later years (Tyler)

  • In 1956, he released Hymns, his first gospel music album, which remained on Billboard's Top Album charts for 277 consecutive weeks; his album Great Gospel Songs won a Grammy Award in 1964 and was nominated for several others.

  •  After the NBC show ended, Ford moved his family to Portola Valley in northern California. He also owned a cabin near Grandjean, Idaho, on the upper South Fork of the Payette River, where he would regularly retreat.

  •  In 1961, he recorded two albums of American Civil War songs, one for songs of the Union and another for songs of the Confederacy.

  • From 1962 to 1965, Ford hosted a daytime talk/variety show, The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show (later known as Hello, Peapickers) from KGO-TV in San Francisco, broadcast over the ABC television network. 

  • In 1968, Ford narrated the Rankin/Bass Thanksgiving TV special The Mouse on the Mayflower for NBC. (I used to have a VHS Tape of that)

  • The mouse narrator seen at the beginning of the special, William the Churchmouse, was a caricature of Ford, in keeping with a Rankin/Bass tradition. Ford was the spokesman for the Pontiac Furniture Company in Pontiac, Illinois, in the 1970s. He also became the spokesman for Martha White brand flour in 1972.

  • Although he left his own TV show, he went on other shows like Hee Haw in the 1970s,  The Dolly Show and on Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters in the early 1980s.

  • Ford left Capitol Records in 1975. By that time, the quality of his country albums had become uneven and none of his releases were selling well. He would never record for a major label again.

  • Ford's experiences as a navigator and bombardier in World War II led to his involvement with the Confederate Air Force (now the Commemorative Air Force), a war plane preservation group in Texas. 

  • He was a featured announcer and celebrity guest at the annual CAF Airshow in Harlingen, Texas, from 1976 to 1988. He donated a once-top-secret Norden bombsight to the CAF's B-29 bomber restoration project. In the late 1970s, as a CAF colonel, Ford recorded the organization's theme song "Ballad of the Ghost Squadron".

  • Over the years, Ford was awarded three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, for radio, records, and television. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1984, and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1990.

  • Out of the public eye, Ford and wife Betty contended with serious alcohol problems; Betty had the problem since the 1950s, as well as emotional issues that complicated both their lives and the lives of their sons.

  •  Though his drinking began to worsen in the 1960s, he worked continuously, seemingly unaffected by his heavy intake of whiskey. By the 1970s, however, it had begun to take an increasing toll on his health, appearance and ability to sing, though his problems were not known publicly. 

  • After Betty committed suicide in 1989 because of prescription drug abuse, Ernie's liver problems, diagnosed years earlier, became more apparent, but he refused to reduce his drinking despite repeated doctors' warnings. 

  • His last interview was taped on September 23, 1991, by his long-time friend Dinah Shore for her TV show, and was later aired on December 4 that year.

  • Ford received posthumous recognition for his gospel music contributions by being added to the Gospel Music Association's Gospel Music Hall of Fame In 1994.


  • Time Check / End of Regulation Time


  • Patreon Cut

Personal life & Death

  • Ford was married to Betty Heminger from September 18, 1942, until her death on February 26, 1989. They had two sons: Jeffrey Buckner "Buck" Ford (born 1950); and Brion Leonard Ford (born 1952, in San Gabriel, California), who died on October 24, 2008, in White House, Tennessee, of lung cancer, aged 56. In 1980 Ford lived in the Smoke Tree neighborhood of Palm Springs, California.


  • Less than four months after Betty's death in 1989, Ford married again. 




  • His second wife, Beverly Wood Ford (1921–2001), died 10 years after Ernie; her body was interred with his.



  • Founded in 1872 from a regular meeting of journalists, artists, and musicians, it soon began to accept businessmen and entrepreneurs as permanent members, as well as offering temporary membership to university presidents (notably Berkeley and Stanford) and military commanders who were serving in the San Francisco Bay Area


  • Today, the club has a membership of many local and global leaders, ranging from artists and musicians to businessmen.



  • Some of Tennessee Ernie Ford’s Top Discography:

  • Billboard Top 200


  • Top US Country Charts

  • Country Morning hit 46th on the Top Country Charts

  • Make A Joyful Noise hit 35th on Top Country Charts

  • Amazing Grace: 14 Treasured Hymns hit 19

  • Song Tennessee Border hit 8th

  • Smokey Mountain Boogie hit 8th

  • Mule Train hit 1st

  • The Shotgun Boogie hist 1st

  • Blackberry Boogie hit 6th

  • The Ballad of Davy Crockett hit 4th

  • Sixteen Tons hit 1st

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