Tennessee Ernie Ford - The Remasters (All Tracks Remastered) '2021

Tracks list

Tracklist:

01. Jealous Heart (Remastered 2020)
02. Stonewall Jacksons Way (Remastered 2020)
03. I Cant Help It (If Im Still in Love with You) (Remastered 2020)
04. Maryland, My Maryland (Remastered 2020)
05. Molly Darling (Remastered 2020)
06. I Can Whip the Scoundrel (Remastered 2020)
07. Twenty-One Years (Remastered 2020)
08. The Rebel Soldier (Remastered 2020)
09. Look Down (Remastered 2020)
10. The Southern Wagon (Remastered 2020)
11. The Night Herding Song (Remastered 2020)
12. Dixie (Remastered 2020)
13. Old Blue (Remastered 2020)
14. The Army of the Free (Remastered 2020)
15. Browns Ferry Blues (Remastered 2020)
16. Virginias Bloody Soil (Remastered 2020)
17. Gaily the Troubadour (Remastered 2018)
18. The Fall Of Charleston (Remastered 2020)
19. In the Pines (Remastered 2018)
20. The New York Volunteers (Remastered 2020)
21. Who Will Shoe Your Pretty Little Foot (Remastered 2018)
22. Marching Through Georgia (Remastered 2020)
23. Trouble in Mind (Remastered 2018)
24. John Henry (Remastered 2018)
25. Union Dixie (Remastered 2020)


 Read Full BiographyAfter the war, Ford -- who had married while serving in
the military -- moved his family to San Bernardino, CA, and took a DJ job on a
local radio station. It was there that he first took on the name Tennessee
Ernie, which became the focus of his comedic on-air persona, a kind of
good-hearted bumpkin who was smarter than he let on and funnier (and more
eccentric) than he seemingly knew; in some respects, Tennessee Ernie was a bit
like some of the more benign rural characters that had been essayed in the
movies by Walter Brennan. In reality, Ford had extraordinary flexibility and
range, so much so that some employers and potential employers in radio were
astonished to learn that they were drawing on the services of a vast array of
characters and personas -- he could speak and sing in a magnificent, full-bodied
baritone that would have been the envy of many an operatic singer, but he had an
array of twangy, Southern- (and distinctly rustic Southern) inflected voices
that he used, along with catch phrases that quickly got picked up by his
listening audience, in Pasadena and Los Angeles. He was almost a one-man radio
network and cast at one point on KXLA, and drawing an ever-larger audience. In
1947 he also made the acquaintance of Cliffie Stone, a musician, announcer, and
producer who was rapidly becoming one of the most influential figures in country
music on the West Coast. Initially, Ford appeared on Stones Hometown Jamboree,
which started on radio and moved to television later in the 1940s, and in 1948
Stone brought him to Capitol Records, the beginning of a relationship that would
last for 40 years, covering the rest of the singers life.

Five singles had been released by late 1949, including Tennessee Border and
Smokey Mountain Boogie (both Top Ten) and his first number one single, Mule
Train. His Western songs and boogie-flavored numbers offered an energy level and
sexual suggestiveness that made them rock & roll in all but name, and his
recordings featured the fabulous instrumental talents of Merle Travis on guitar
and Speedy West on pedal steel. Early in 1951, Shotgun Boogie became his second
number one, spending 14 weeks at the top of the country charts. By the beginning
of 1953, although Ford wasnt having as many hits, he remained popular in America
and also in England. He became a television quizmaster in 1954, hosting NBCs
presentation of Kay Kysers Kollege of Musical Knowledge. He also had his own
daily show and continued recording. A series of appearances on I Love Lucy (then
one of the top-rated shows in the country) as Cousin Ernie in two 1954 episodes
was so funny and so popular that he made a follow-up appearance the next year on
the same series in the identical role, using his comedic rural country persona.
These performances only helped him maintain and broaden crossover appeal, and at
the same time he was a downright ubiquitous figure on country music variety
shows of the period, including the Old American Barn Dance. On many of these
programs, he was billed simply as Tennessee Ernie, owing to the fact that
producers felt that using his last name would promote a car company that wasnt
necessarily a sponsor. The public was never confused, however, and knew exactly
who he was. He also contributed to movies as a singer. As early as 1946 hed
shown up uncredited as a hillbilly performer in the multi-Academy Award-winning
drama The Best Years of Our Lives, but a decade later his presence in movies was
a selling point, as with his performance of the title song over the credits of
the Marilyn Monroe/Robert Mitchum adventure film River of No Return in 1954,
which became a pop hit. And all of these activities serve to illustrate Fords
extraordinary range as a singer and performer, of music and comedy, and an
appeal that cut across regional and cultural -- and even national -- lines. And
although his hits tended to be written by others, he also composed songs,
including Hogtied Over You, Kiss Me Big, and Softly and Tenderly.

Amazing Grace: 14 Treasured HymnsFord had two Top Ten country hits in 1955 with
The Ballad of Davy Crockett and his biggest success, Sixteen Tons, which spent
ten weeks at number one on the country charts and eight weeks at number one on
the pop charts. From 1956 to 1965 he was a primetime network television host,
making Bless your little pea-pickin hearts a household catch phrase and
providing powerful exposure for Fords increasingly middle-of-the-road music. For
all of his occasionally risqué lyrics and humor, Ford also had a seriously
religious side to his work and persona, and his voice was ideally suited to big
arrangements of traditional hymns. His first gospel album, Hymns (1956), became
the first religious album to go gold, while his second gospel album, Great
Gospel Songs, earned him a Grammy. He was immensely popular as the 1960s
commenced and remained a popular fixture on television for most of that decade,
and his recordings were as ambitious as they were successful. We Gather
Together, a 1963 release made with the San Quentin Prison Choir, was the first
recording ever made at the prison. A year after that -- a period in which he
issued two more religious-oriented albums, one a Christmas recording and the
other a gospel collection cut with the Jordanaires -- he released Country Hits -
Feelin Blue, a back-to-basics recording on which Ford, backed solely by Billy
Strange on guitar and John Mosher on bass, ran through a dozen country music
standards; the latter is regarded by many fans as the best country LP of Fords
career. In 1965, he had his last major chart entry with the Top Ten single
Hicktown, but he continued to record gospel music and the occasional country
album over the next two decades, interspersed with an album of patriotic songs
in 1970 and a folk album the following year. He began working with Cliffie
Stones son Steve Stone early in that decade, which led to a revival of his
presence on the sales charts with Country Morning, released in 1973, which
yielded a brace of new singles including one hit, Printers Alley Stars. His most
enduring album of the decade, however, was Ernie Sings & Glen Picks, released in
1975; cut with Glen Campbell, it was similar to Country Hits - Feelin Blue from
12 years before as a stripped-down country effort, and it not only sold well at
the time but found a new audience as a CD in the 1990s. Ford joined the ranks of
the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1990, at age 71. By that time, he was a
beloved and somewhat enigmatic elder statesman in the field, having willingly
stepped out of the limelight apart from the occasional gospel recording. The
first serious reissues of his music began appearing on CD in 1990, starting with
Rhino Records 16 Tons of Boogie: The Best of Tennessee Ernie Ford, which covered
material going back to his early honky tonk sound, and collections of his gospel
recordings began appearing from Capitol during this same period. At the time of
his death from liver failure in the fall of 1991, he remained a much-loved
figure far beyond the boundaries of the country music audience. ~ James Manheim

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