Tennessee Ernie Ford

I have several Ernie Ford songs on the Ipod, and last night his "Who At The Door Is Standing" came up in the shuffle.  
In the fifties, everybody I knew loved Ernie.  He was funny and lovable, and such a good singer.  
Each week, he closed his TV show with a hymn.  I understand the network tried to get him to stop with the hymns, but he told them, "People like those songs."  
His album, "Hymns", was the first religious record ever to go gold.  
I suppose all of America thought Ernie grew up singing those songs, and that he was a stalwart Christian soldier.  
Not so.  
A while back I read the book Jeffrey Buckner Ford wrote about his dad's life.  You could have knocked me over with a feather when I read that Ernie and his family were not religious, not even a little bit.  
It just goes to show how we can get ideas in our minds about entertainers and others in the public eye.  Ernie never claimed to be a Christian; he never proselytized or testified.  All he did was sing a hymn once a week.  
Why?  
Because people liked it.  It was a marketing technique that worked for him.  
That doesn't make him a bad person; his job was to get people to watch the Ford show, and that's what he did.   
But I still love to hear him singing those songs that I grew up with, even now that I know the whole story.  

And it all started with a Youtube video

Someone on a message board first brought this video to my attention, and I shared it here on my blog. I later learned that the little boy stealing the show is Ernie's son, Brion. The kid in front of him wearing the same kind of shirt is Ernie's other son, Jeffrey.

My curiosity sent me to Google to find out what happened to those boys.

I found out Jeffrey had written a book about his growing-up years, "River of No Return", which of course I ordered on half.com; the book left me wishing I had just watched the video and let it go at that.

Back when I watched Ernie every week, one of the highlights of the show was the hymn he always sang at closing. It was considered controversial back then, and Ernie fought to keep the hymn in the show. So imagine my surprise at finding out Ernie wasn't particularly religious at all. I had this idea of Ernie as a strong Christian and a genuine hillbilly; he was neither.

Life in the Ford home was pretty miserable most of the time for all parties concerned.

As outgoing as he seemed on his show, Ernie hated being in the public eye constantly, and he tried his best to escape the whole Hollywood scene.

I'm glad I've never been rich and famous, if being so means carrying that much baggage through life.