Burl Ives was an award-winning actor, folk singer, and banjo player who helped popularize folk music in America. ∙ Beginning in 1940, Ives hosted the CBS radio show The Wayfarin’ Stranger, bringing folk music into homes throughout the country, until he joined the Army in 1942. ∙ Along with Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, he was a member of The Almanac Singers, a political folk group active in the 1940s. ∙ His 1949 hit “Lavender Blue (Dilly Dilly),” from So Dear To My Heart, was nominated for an Academy Award, and he won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for 1958’s The Big Country. ∙ At the 1963 Grammy Awards, he won Best Country & Western Recording honors for his song “Funny Way of Laughin’.” ∙ “A Holly Jolly Christmas,” from the beloved 1964 stop-motion TV special Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer, was his biggest hit and a Top 40 song in over a dozen countries. ∙ Ives was awarded Illinois’ highest honor, The Order Of Lincoln, in 1976.