Background
She was born Iris Colleen Summers in Pasadena, California, the daughter of Jenny May ("Dorothy") White and Marshall Summers, a Nazarene minister.
(This budget-priced collection gathers a great mix of hit ...)
This budget-priced collection gathers a great mix of hit ballads and up-tempo tunes from the legendary husband and wife duo. Includes Tennessee Waltz; Mockin' Bird Hill; Smoke Rings; I'm Sitting On Top Of The World; In The Good Old Summertime , and more. A dozen timeless treasures!
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(Les Paul and Mary Ford were the most popular male/female ...)
Les Paul and Mary Ford were the most popular male/female duo of the 1950s, registering 16 US Top Ten hits between 1950 and 1954 and selling more than six million records in 1951 alone. Indeed, their hit making prowess was almost without equal as they racked up five Top Ten hits in nine months and another five in just seven months. This album therefore contains the smash hits How High The Moon and Vaya Con Dios, both of which reached the summit.
https://www.amazon.com/Very-Best-Paul-Mary-Ford/dp/B0042AFCWA?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B0042AFCWA
She was born Iris Colleen Summers in Pasadena, California, the daughter of Jenny May ("Dorothy") White and Marshall Summers, a Nazarene minister.
She attended high school in Pasadena and El Centro, California, but never earned a diploma.
She first performed with her parents and seven siblings as a religious music group on Pasadena's KPAS radio station. After two brief marriages in 1941 (to Dave Palmquist and Marvin Watson), she began performing on hillbilly radio shows in Los Angeles and making live appearances in the area. Show host Cliffie Stone commented that Ford had "an amazing ear.
She sang quietly, succinctly, and always in tune. . She was a terrific rhythm [guitar] player, which was very hard to find. "
In the summer of 1945, Ford auditioned for Les Paul, pioneer guitarist and audio technician, who gave her her stage name. Paul was married at the time, and he and Ford began an affair. They were involved in an automobile accident in 1948 that almost resulted in Paul's death.
In 1949, Ford sang on a Les Paul recording for the first time. Seeing her prowess as a rhythm guitarist, Paul made her a permanent part of his stage act. After Paul was divorced from his wife, he and Ford were married in the midst of a busy touring schedule on December 29, 1949. During their first years together, Les Paul and Mary Ford made a number of experimental recordings utilizing Paul's pioneering overdubbing and multitrack techniques.
On these recordings, Ford played guitar and stacked her voice in four- and five-part harmony. A transcription radio series, the "Les Paul Show with Mary Ford, " was broadcast on NBC in 1950. Pursuing television work they eventually moved to New York City. In their squalid home recording studio in Jackson Heights, Queens, Paul and Ford made the first of their most popular recordings, "How High the Moon, " which featured an unprecedented twelve layers of guitar and vocal tracks.
The song had already been heavily recorded by jazz artists, and Capitol Records, Paul and Ford's label, delayed releasing it. Capitol did release "Tennessee Waltz" (December 1950) and "Mockin' Bird Hill" (February 1951), recordings that demonstrated Paul and Ford's ease at moving between jazz, pop, and hillbilly styles. Their rendition of "Tennessee Waltz" successfully competed with Patti Page's, who had a hit with the song a month earlier. "Mockin' Bird Hill" became the second-largest selling disk in the country.
Their success persuaded Capitol to release "How High the Moon, " which soon joined "Mockin' Bird Hill" at the top of the Hit Parade spots. It was the first single by a white act to reach the top of the rhythm and blues charts and influenced musicians in the United States and Europe who would later become major rock stars, including Bill Wyman of the Rolling Stones, Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, and Paul McCartney of the Beatles. Within twenty-two weeks, Paul and Ford released several more hits, with record sales exceeding four million units.
They signed a new contract with Capitol in 1951, with the stipulation that Mary Ford would relinquish her stage name if the couple ever separated. Their live appearances were usually sold out. Offstage singers and instrumentalists were used to replicate the multitrack effects of their recordings.
The live shows also featured cutthroat, virtuoso guitar battles between Paul and Ford. In a carefully rehearsed but seemingly spontaneous routine, Ford would match Paul's intricate guitar work lick for lick until, in exasperation, Paul would rip the plug out of her guitar amplifier.
In 1953, Les and Mary recorded their biggest hit, "Vaya con Dios, " a Latin-flavored song released on June 1. It was uncharacteristically simple and tender, and won the hearts of the public, zooming to number one and remaining on the charts for nearly three months.
In October 1953, the duo finally broke into television with the "Les Paul and Mary Ford Show, " a five-minute-long segment that was essentially a Listerine commercial. The relentless pace of recording and touring began to take its toll on Ford. She was borderline diabetic and developing an addiction to alcohol.
On November 26, 1954, she went into premature labor; the baby died four days later. Rock and roll, emerging around 1955, proved to be the duo's downfall.
The mellow and wholesome sound of Les, Mary, and other crooners of the day was lost on the modern audience. Record sales plummeted; their final release for Capitol was "Small Island" in 1958. That same year, Paul and Ford adopted a baby girl, and in 1959 Ford gave birth to a son. Worn out with relentless touring and longing for a stable family life, Ford left Paul in 1963; they were divorced in 1964.
Her health, however, remained fragile. Overweight, alcoholic, and suffering from diabetes, she died after an eight-week diabetic coma at the age of fifty-three.
She was buried in Forest Lawn cemetery in Covina Hills, Calif. Her grave marker bore the carving of a guitar and the title of her favorite song, "Vaya con Dios. " Most of Les Paul and Mary Ford's recorded output on Capital and Columbia was issued as 45 rpm singles.
Their vinyl LP collections include, on Capitol, Les and Mary (1955), The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise (1974), Very Best of Les Paul and Mary Ford (1974), Les Paul and Mary Ford: Their All-Time Greatest Hits (1980); and, on Columbia, The Fabulous Les Paul and Mary Ford (1965).
(Les Paul and Mary Ford were the most popular male/female ...)
(This budget-priced collection gathers a great mix of hit ...)
Les Paul divorced his wife and wed Mary Ford on December 29 in a "small private ceremony without much fanfare" in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The couple had had three children: a baby born on November 26, 1954, who died four days later; Mary Colleen Paul, whom they fostered from 1958; and Robert Ralph "Bobby" Paul (born in 1959). Les and Mary divorced in December 1964.
Ford married Donald Hatfield, who had attended high school with her, in 1965 and abandoned show business for a quiet life in suburban Los Angeles.
