Mary Ford

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Mary Ford was born in 1924 as Iris Colleen Summers in El Monte, California. As a girl she sang in churches and made gospel recordings. In 1943 she formed the trio the Sunshine Girls with Vivian Earles and June Widener, who sang with Jimmy Wakely on the radio programme The Hollywood Barn Dance. In 1945 she met the guitarist Les Paul. They began performing together in 1946 and married at the end of 1949. In the meantime she had begun performing under the name Mary Ford: Paul picked that name from a telephone directory, because it had to be almost as short as his own.

Music and breakthrough

With Les Paul she had a string of hits for Capitol Records in the first half of the 1950s. They included Tiger Rag, Mockin' Bird Hill, How High the Moon, Bye Bye Blues, The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise and Vaya con Dios, which spent eleven weeks at number one. How High the Moon stayed at the top for nine weeks. On these records Ford harmonised with herself: she sang the voices over one another, while Paul played the guitar and recorded multiple tracks.

Influence

The result sounded like a whole choir and a whole band, made by two people with a recording machine. In this way the duo became an example for those who later used multitrack recording to treat the studio as an instrument. Besides being a singer, she also played the guitar. The couple also presented radio programmes for NBC, such as Les Paul and Mary Ford at Home. Ford died in 1977.

Listening

Discography

Studio albums

• ?The Hit Makers

Mentioned in other articles

• How High the Moon SongOn 4 January 1951, the guitarist Les Paul and the singer Mary Ford recorded How High the Moon in their apartment in Queens.